April 4 2025
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Chamath entering Friedberg transgressions into White House records
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Ben Shapiro joining
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Antonio Gracias joining (from White House)
- Democrat for 20 years
- Knocked on doors for Hilary Clinton in Iowa
- Was a major donor to the democrat party
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Antonio with DOGE
- Wanted to go to VA but Elon suggested he go to SSA
- Took a finance guy and an engineer guy from Valor
- SSNs - you can get if you’re a legal immigrant, green card holder
- The growth in SSNs is quite surprising
- Extraordinary claims
- Apparently folks get in at the border, file a form which doesn’t make it hard to get into the country
- There is no real ID verification
- People get the SSN in their email
- 4 times more likely to get birthday as 1/1 - seems like clearly fake birthdays
- 20% of records didn’t have fingerprints
- Folks at border were overwhelmed
- Highest suicide rates among agents at this time
- So total 5.4M people
- Apparently 1.3M on Medicaid
- 1000s of these people registered to vote
- Some of them even voted
- Referred some to prosecution
- Tip of the iceberg
- When you get an SSN there are many downstream consequences
- Registering to vote (could be breaking federal law)
- Consume resources that could have gone to an American
- Found people on every medical program
- $13B-$15B per year to human traffickers - its a human rights tragedy
- How do the folks who pay $500-$20K to the traffickers to get them across pay them back? Indentured servants?
- Gives credence to the theory that Democrats did this to increase their voter base
- How far does this need to go to make a real change in a swing state?
- CA is the tip of the iceberg - Ronald Reagan gave amnesty and turned it in a permanent 1 party blue state
- Taxes, crime, can’t raise kids, prices
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Tariffs
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They were letting everyone know for months they would do tariffs - and they did it because people didn’t take them seriously
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1880-1910 when no tariffs many confounds
- Not enough global trade
- No income tax so free capital flow
- Industrial revolution
- Insane immigration and cheap labor
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Trump has been talking about tariffs for 40+ years
- Tried it in 1.0 admin - didn’t have enough backing
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Chamath Polymarket bet won out - Mag 7 shrinks below 30% of SP500 in 2025!
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Scott Bessent - The equity market selloff is a Mag7 problem, not a MAGA problem
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Their bet is working - the government sells Treasuries - government auction will clear
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While Scott Bessent is fixing the back end of the curve - the Fed has to fix the front end of the curve by cutting rates
- That will introduce liquidity into the market
- People can then borrow
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Its not all good news - businesses getting killed on their margins - this action is hitting them - moves business (example) from profitability into loss (competing with China)
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A recession takes everybody with it
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Military as a percentage of GDP/Budget has been flat/down since Iraq War
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Entitlement spending has grown as a percentage
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Tariffs and protectionism can lead to your manufacturers not being competitive enough
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American companies may lose revenue due to tariffs
- American spending may go up
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China had a state council meeting now - on IP infringement - will more openly steal IP
- Their better manufacturing will help them sell cheaper to other countries
- Their manufacturing in chips is also better now - don’t need Taiwan
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Bessent talking about a new world economic order - might be a big moment
- What is the new anchor asset
- First after WW2 it was USD
- Then after Nixon’s breaking of the gold standard - it became Petro dollars
- So now its AI?
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We only graduate 200 mining folks in the US per year - because all manufacturing moved offshore
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We don’t have the best lithography systems
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This will lead to de-dollarization
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We are hurting our trade relationships with the global empire
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USD stablecoins?
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China has its own problems like demographics and debt
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Lower regulation
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If recession happens all those who were friendly with Trump (tech bros) will get hurt - Bernie clan in leftwing will become powerful
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Same will happen on the right also
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Friedberg’s contrarian bet this year on rise of socialism
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America needs to sell the world ambition - that’s coming from China
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2017-2022 25% of US utility employees retired
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Struggling to find people to build nuclear submarines in the US
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2025 predictions
- Friedberg new polymarket on GDP -5% in Q3
- Chamath CDS insurance bet seems to be going well
- Similar signals happened during mortgage/great financial crisis
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Daily Wire clams $220M revenue
- Newsmax news is intriguing
- Stock market is a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine in the long term
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