August 4 2022

JCal acting extra smart
- Sacks: You’re the hot dog dealer - he’s (Friedberg) LeBron James
Twitter Subpoenas
- Twitter sent Sacks subpoena
  - He’s not a party but still going after thim
  - They cited his tweets - being crazy
  - He might have been subpoenaed 3 times in his entire career and first time in personal capacity
  - They want all his communications - on Megyn Kelly, Will Cain, etc
  - He has never been in possession of non-public information about Twitter
  - They are just being petty and vindictive - at punitive and high cost to him
  - 5 years ago Chamath and a friendly large fund approached Twitter
    - Lot of public information is available and you can figure out a lot about Twitter
  - Joe Lonsdale is being subpoenaed for appearing at the All In Summit
  - Elon dialed in on Zoom - he wasn’t in the hallways
  - The recording is public
Markets overview

Gas finally down
Open Jobs under 11M - hopefully next year should be 5-6M
So markets and crypto might have got a bounce?
We are going to have volatility in the teens - so you will get short stocks - when its in the 30s you buy equities and you have hit the bottom - VIX
Gas demand is lower than summer of 2020
There were mini rallies even during dotcom bubble during 2000

We’ve never seen in american history before - that CPI when it hits 5%, that it hits under 5% without Fed funds
There are many issues right now - these can cause a big problem and flashpoint, lot of things can go wrong - any of these can go wrong - think in terms of probability - many low probability issues and if so many, anything might happen
- Getting gas to western europe
- Food insecurity in Africa and south asia
- Conflict in eastern europe
- Taiwan situation may not help
- NATO situation may not help - Sweden, etc joining NATO might be conflict escalation issue
- Argentina 60% inflation
- Brazil has a criminal for president - won’t leave office if he loses election which he is calling fraudulent
  - They are a massive food supplier and massive EM credit holder
  - He is saying publicly in a press release that army is on my side, etc
- US credit is in a problem
  - most credit cards issued since 2008
So result of above is that currently there is an indulgence in conflict - will cause more harm than good - Pelosi going to Taiwan
Markets’ output are the manifestation of social behavior - better off analysing quality of businesses instead of trying to time the market
There is always stuff going on in markets - they reflect our realities

Trend of de-globalization is playing out across the world - China losing trading partners, US has its own chip factory

Globalization has enabled more efficient pricing - getting cheap energy and cheap labor in overseas for cheap products - the opposite will happen now and so prices go up
Cheaper, Faster, Better is gone - so now higher prices for Better National Security
Pelosi going to Taiwan

They want better relations with us
Will they if and when China hurts them?
Biden administration told her not to go but she made an indulgent trip
Who is running this administration? She is not the President, she is not the Secretary of the State - she will pass her gavel to the new speaker, so its her valedictorian tour
There is bipartisan support for Taiwan
- This could be biggest flashpoint in the world - there might be a chance of a war between US and China
- Chinese view Taiwan as sacred territory - they are hell bent on unification of mainland China with Taiwan - they would like to do it peacefully and are waiting to become strong enough to take it by force
US has contradictory policy on this - support One China and also support Taiwan Relations Act
1895 Japan took Taiwan from China
John Foster Dulles came up with Island Chain strategy - Taiwan is the central one in this island chain -equidistant between Vietnam and Japan - so needed to control China
Look at these islands as unsinkable aircraft carriers

US is in Cold War 2 with China
- China has more ships than US now - bigger blue water navy - tonnage might be lower though
- CATL, Tesla’s biggest supplier delayed their announcement - was it worth this to do Pelosi’s visit
Thomas Friedman article says NSC, Blinken, Biden all asked her to stand down but she didn’t listen
Biden has the right strategy on Taiwan - force China to be the revisionist power - can’t come across as revisionist power - he wants status quo - this is the right thing

All the crap you never needed