April 25 2025
- Jason out - he’s at Knicks game in Detroit
- Andrew Ross Sorkin joins the show
- Trump Rally vs Bessent Put?
- Put is usually when treasury (tarp etc) or Fed buys maybe bonds/treasuries
- If market selloff delegitimizes Trump does that mean a market rally gives him unconditional credit?
- Clearly Trump/Bessent will not let global economy grind to a halt
- Trump tariffs seem like a negotiating point
- Developing nation status vs developed nation status - China has been able to leverage that with tariffs, etc and exploit rare earth situation
- China owns ~90% of rare earth processing
- Monsanto example in India with price fixing
- Ken Griffin skeptical of US economic environment and favorability
- Trumpian approach is “controversy elevates message”
- If China controls inputs to all important technologies - then US needs to stand up and figure out how to push back
- Apple is apparently moving iPhone sourcing to India from China
- Security first, then Trade
- US-India relationship is therefore aligned because both view China as the biggest adversary
- India has educated population, lower labor costs than China
- India - build infrastructure
- India buying oil from Russia is smart - its in their interest
- India is tough place to invest - works differently from Western economic model
- Now Russia is #3 so US should be making friends with them - just like they did with China decades ago when they were #3 (Nixon and Kissinger made a deal with Mao even though he had reportedly much more blood on his hands than current Putin regime)
- Spreading American style democracy world wide might be a good intention but failure rate is too high - Afghanistan, Iraq, etc
- Crimea locals apparently prefer Moscow to Kiev
- Why hasn’t Ukraine deal been done yet - is it Zelenskyy’s fault?
- Alphabet earnings - Google is killing it
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Dividends + share buyback is almost like 4% per year yield on just owning the stock
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$90B revenue is incredible
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Amazing resiliency
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They also own 10% of SpaceX
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ChatGPT is a risk - its used so much more
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Google innovator’s dilemma with 10 blue links vs AI interface - its tough because people are building new habits where they use ChatGPT for their questions
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Sometimes you need to let someone impose their will to make difficult product decisions
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- Elon back to Tesla
- Can’t spend a lot of time on DOGE (he’s an SGE - so maybe only has ~130 days)
- Efficiencies he found have to be followed through by Congress
- Issue with Democracy is that eventually you realize you can vote yourself all the money
- Seems like only Tesla bull case right now is FSD
- China’s thorium nuclear reactor
- Claim they can power China for 60000 years
- Molten salt reactor
- Can have very distributed energy capacity
- US didn’t get this done because of regulations
- Thorium doesn’t need to go through a refinement process
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