June 2 2023
- Friedberg loves pistachios - besties had fun in Vegas
- Presidential candidates
- Sacks donation strategy
- RFK for Democrats
- DeSantis for Republicans
- Chamath and Sacks holding a fund raiser for RFK soon
- Chamath is independent
- Has donated millions to democrats
- Important to acknowledge Biden issues
- Challenge his mental acuity
- Not funny that its weekend at Bernie’s like meme going on around the President
- Someone needs to be in the arena on the democratic side and put Biden’s mental acuity to test
- Lack of turnover in the White House seems concerning
- Want to see Biden being in charge and not some shadow government
- So what people who are not elected are actually running the government?
- Biden has held fewest news conferences since Reagan
- Debates, town halls, rallies are cognitive tests - but if he doesn’t debate anybody, you won’t see it
- This is single important person/job in the world - how can we not take this seriously?
- Seems to be a concerted effort to keep RFK Jr out of the Democratic process - 538 polling is showing gaps in this aspect
- Jamie Dimon for office?
- Bill Ackman made a good case for him
- Sacks donation strategy
- Debt ceiling resolution
- Interest payments on debt are mounting way too high
- Federal government is spending more on interest payments than defense
- (social security, medicare, defense are major cost outlays for federal govt)
- Debt refinancing is happening at higher interest rates
- $2T savings over next 6 years from latest debt ceiling deal is only $2T out of $42T ($7T per year right now)
- Not clear that foreign governments are interested in holding US treasuries
- Foreign treasury holdings dropping
- In the past US had trading relationship with China where China had trade surplus, a huge part of that was used to finance US deficits and debt - and not bring it back home
- So China would fund US spending very cheaply
- China is in a demographic time bomb - do not have enough people - country will be halved in another 70 years or so
- BRICS countries are trying to do transactions without the dollar
- China brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran
- Yuan and Rial might be pegged to US Dollar (NOTE: needs checking)
- China is setting up an alternative to the IMF - that’s not dollar denominated
- On the one hand the US is spending a lot and wants other countries to fund our debt, on the other hand, the US is weaponizing the dollar, the capital system, the SWIFT system, geopolitical issues, etc and antagonizing the other countries that would buy our debt
- Something’s gotta give
- US is leading in innovation
- India is firing on all cylinders but will need 50+ years to match the US
- Book banning issue in Florida
- The question is about what books are allowed in the school library
- On the other hand Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming books are being re-written in ways the authors never intended
- To Kill a Mockingbird and Huck Finn, etc removed from curriculum
- Some books were moved from elementary school curriculum to middle school curriculum - but characterized by media as a book ban
- Removing the book from the library is preferable to being edited
- NVidia
- Vertically integrated AI hardware
- Grace Hopper design
- GPU-CPU superchip
- This + CUDA could create a high level of lockin
- They will create a 1 company monopoly in AI at this rate
- If in the next quarter, AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon don’t announce something, NVidia runs away with this
- Everyone wants portability other than NVidia
- Populism in both parties
- Biden fall might scare people more - though need to be empathetic to physical frailties - FDR was in a wheelchair
- Chamath had Joe Manchin for dinner
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