Chamath started his newsletter and subscription service for research
Sacks also producing more content since Pod started
Ukraine War “Cronkite” moment
Cronkite basically went to Vietnam and came back said the war is not winnable - and that helped turn public sentiment against the war in 1968 - which still took 5 years to end
Now recent developments in Ukraine - Zelenskyy’s own inner circle is saying the war is lost (see Sacks articles and posts about the Time magazine article)
Simon Shuster is the guy who profiled Zelenskyy for Time magazine of the year
He has given favorable coverage to Zelenskyy in the past - so this is now a legit source
War will still take a long time to end
Now its up to the US govt folks to stop the war
Apparently people in Ukraine are stealing all the money that’s being donated
Markets are up because fiscal year buying of stocks for mutual funds starts in November 1 - they were selling till Oct 31 to do tax loss harvesting, etc - now they cant hold cash they have to buy stocks
War maybe ending is also a good sign
Lots of stocks doing well - Doordash, OpenDoor, etc
If you believe rate decrease is likelier than rate increase
Commercial Real Estate
$3T of CRE loans
Owners are trying to restructure their debt from the banks - so trying to sell property on auction for much less than the loan amount
Buildings selling for ~$200/sqft - 10-20% of their replacement cost
08-09 is when SF started to take off - bubble - young folks, ZIRP environment
Sacks owns buildings in Jackson Square
One of the last few decent neighborhoods in SF
Chamath doesn’t want his team to move to an office in SF
No other major market has 30% vacancy rates
City needs to clean its act up
They have to choose to fire half the govt employees or become a partner to business
Bill Gross (PIMCO fame) is already buying bank stocks
Pointed to how Jamie Dimon sold $100M of stocks
Biden act to convert office buildings to residential buildings
Positive message to blue cities to fix their issues
SF will be a case study on return on invested capital on left wing ideology
If it fails it will never be tried again for a very long time
SF Budget shortfall will increase from ~$500M soon to like $1.7B in a few years
Wework Bankruptcy
Drowning in lease obligations
Burned $8B in FCF since Q4 of 2019 - capital destruction machine!
Smart PE player will come in and use bankruptcy to fix the lease obligations
Get rid of some obligations
Re-negotiate with landlords
Softbank put in $16.9B investment into WeWork
Old saying in real estate: “3rd owner makes all the money”
Biden’s executive order on AI
Requires companies to turn over their algorithms, systems and models to ensure it provides safety, DEI, etc
This order’s language is going to look like medieval literature in 3 years given the fast pace of change in the field
India, China, Singapore will run far ahead
Outlandish infringements on first amendment rights with saying we need to watermark stuff produced with AI
AI is being convicted of pre-crime
Steven Sinofsky blog is nice - he references all the fear mongering when PCs started - no one took that seriously - IBM would have been happy to work with the government
They don’t want foreigners to use IaaS
Apparently Joe Biden got more worried about AI after watching the Mission Impossible movie
This pulls up the ladder against open source software
Its activating every agency of the government to create more bureaucracy - authorize them to examine private companies’ systems and methods
You are in non-compliance just by existing
Everyone will hire lawyers and lobbyists
US vs India vs China
Time to bet on India
They are going to create a software commission
That’s the end game - they will force us to ask for it ourselves
This will kill the 2 guys in a garage dream
Silicon Valley’s right shift
Events in Israel exposing Democrats as anti-semitic and crazy far left leaning
Chamath is a case study himself
Liberal causes are too extreme
Causes
Reckless fiscal policy from Govt
SF and crime
Covid policies, ruined kids and work culture
Long con of regulatory capture with AI, etc
Free speech and open inquiry
Visionaries like Elon being targetted
Growing awareness that wokeness has gone way off the rails
Wokeness seen as breaking up the world into oppressed and oppressor
Way too many people on the woke left basically cheering for Hamas from day one
Interesting from Kamala Harris to launch a campaign on islamophobia when jews are also being attacked and are their big donors
Governments just grow
In a democracy over time there is a group of folks who get elected and so a philosophy that endures in the system that we need to overcome a power that exists
So you push the government as big as possible to attack systems of power for a minority of the people
Therefore end-game is socialism
Instead goal should be to figure out how to maximize benefit to people of this country through private enterprise
Government should stop negative outcomes but should not just grow employing people
Government in US has highest employee spend in human history - there is no accountability standard for anything in the government
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