The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 4,115 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 53 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rep. Gonzalez: January 6 was an unforgivable assault inspired by Trump
“My view remains that it's an unforgivable assault on the country. And it was led by the former president who was inspired by him. And ultimately my view, which I think is coming out in this January six commission is that he kind of liked it and kind of liked w…”
Dimon: $5B Mortgage Penalties Led Him to Never Trust the Government Again
“They made us pay five billion dollars on the more, the bad mortgages that Bear Stearns had done, and that's what made me make the statement I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't, put it this way, I don't know how to say this, I wouldn't really trust the governmen…”
Chang: Tim Cook told me in 2011 that Intel cannot run a foundry
“And anyway, he told me there's nothing to worry about because Intel just does not know how to be a Foundry.”
Schultz: Coffee in Italy is no longer as good as it once was
“The by and large coffee in Italy is not as good as it once was. There are certain coffee companies that have maintained the standard, but by and large, the coffee is not as good.”
Munger says top venture capital earners are trend-chasers, not great investors
“The people who made the most money out of venture capital are a lot like investment bankers deciding which hot new area they're going to get in. They're not great investors or great at anything.”
Munger claims BYD founder Wang Chuanfu is better at manufacturing than Musk
“The guy at BYD is better at actually making things than Elon is.”
Calacanis: Andreessen Horowitz is a soulless index fund of venture capital
“I think they're just an index adventure. I find it quite soulless, if I'm being honest. Like, I feel like it's a giant index on venture, and I don't think that their hearts are super into it.”
Bankman-Fried: FTX's revenue is clean, clear, and completely transparent
“When you talk about, like, recurring revenue, like, there's sort of, like, doesn't exist a clearer example of that than, like, you know, I don't know, we have volume each day, and we charge a transaction fee on it, right? It's incredibly clean, right? People a…”
Netflix functions as a utility button, not a brand with emotional equity
“The Netflix brand doesn't mean anything to anyone. The Netflix brand is the button that I push on my TV when I want to watch stuff. And sometimes it's great stuff, but if it's not great stuff, whatever. It whizzes by. I don't think one way or another about Net…”
The NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick following his 2016 national anthem protests
“The NFL blackballed Colin Kaepernick after this.”
Gilbert: Monopolies benefit society by generating cash flow for basic research
“There is a positive benefit to monopolies because they create the cash flows that fund these sorts of boondoggle basic research. A lot of the most important technologies that move society forward come out of these.”
Michael Lewis argues private companies are much better run than public ones
“I think there's an argument to be made that in any industry where they're both private and public companies, the private companies end up being much better run. And I mean like that mostly bad things happen when companies go public and certainly less pleasant.”
Meta AI's User Numbers Are Inflated by Accidental Instagram Searches
“That was complete garbage. That was people searching Instagram who accidentally hit a llama model that made some things happen, and they were like, oh, go away. I actually am just looking for a user.”
Ballmer: Google remains only a one to one-and-a-half trick pony
“I might argue that Google's a one to one and a half trick pony. Still. I mean, if you just look at its revenue.”
Ballmer: Bill Gates and I did not speak for a year after I became CEO
“I think it was basically from sometime in about March or April of 2000 to 2001. I mean, literally we weren't speaking. I didn't know what it meant to be his boss and he didn't know what it meant to work for me.”
Rosenthal: The IPL is structurally superior to the NFL
“To me, this is not a controversial statement. The IPL is better set up structurally than the NFL. It is the Most perfect sports league that exists.”
Morris Chang: Mark Liu declined TSMC BD role due to small headcount
“So, I, ah, first offered the marketing, ah, business development job to the guy who was in the Bigger job, advanced technology, Mark. And I explained to him that I did not think he had had any significant marketing experience in the past, and this would, this …”
Chang: None of Taiwan's PC makers liked dealing with Intel
“Before this Apple thing, Apple and we, before Apple became our customer, I knew a lot of Intel's customers in Taiwan. You know, all the PC makers are Intel's customers. I mean, they, none of them liked Intel. None of them.”
Gilbert: Cambridge Analytica impacting the 2016 election is wildly oversold
“They had an incredible treasure trove of data that apps could slurp up in the early 20 tens, but the actual narrative of Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica had impacted election results is, like, wildly oversold.”
Rosenthal: Taylor Swift Enterprise Value Is $11B Using Disney's 20x Multiple
“Disney trades at 20 X free cash flow. Taylor is five hundred and fifty million in free cash flow. That's a eleven billion dollar enterprise value for Taylor.”
Zuckerberg: Meta is unashamed to adopt and improve competitors' innovations
“We're not embarrassed about learning from things that other people, like, discovered that were good first, and then we build a better version of it, and I mean, I think that that's, You know, no one company is going to invent everything, right? I think if you …”
Zuckerberg: Meta's post-2016 political strategy was a 20-year mistake
“My guess is if the IPO Was a year and a half mistake. I think that the political miscalculation was a 20 year mistake.”
Zuckerberg: Companies lacking technical CEOs and boards are not tech companies
“You know, they, the CEO wasn't technical. The board of directors had no one technical on it. They had, like, one dude on the management team who was the head of engineering who was technical, and, like, everyone else wasn't. It's like, alright, if that's your …”
Zuckerberg: Accepting blame during political crises only invites more attacks
“If you take responsibility for things, because you think it's a corporate crisis, not a political crisis and your view is like, okay, I'm, like, I'm gonna take responsibility for all this stuff. Like, and people are basically, like, blaming social media and th…”
Zuckerberg: Meta's 2016 political mistake will take another 10 years to resolve
“I think that the political miscalculation was a 20 year mistake. And so it started in 2016... And I think it's going to take another 10 years or so for us to kind of fully work through that cycle before our brand and all of that is back to kind of the place th…”
Rosenthal: Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie deserve all credit for Azure's vision
“I kind of think all of the credit for the vision for it and the championing it for the initial seven years within Microsoft goes to Steve and to Ray.”
Schultz: An Il Giornale investor tried to hijack the 1987 Starbucks acquisition
“Jerry gave me about, I think he gave me 90 days to raise 3.8 million dollars. Around the second month, he just came to me and said, where are you with all this? And I think I had about half of it raised. I might have fibbed a bit and said I had a little bit mo…”
Schultz: Mobile Order & Pay is Starbucks' biggest Achilles' heel
“It is the biggest Achilles heel for Starbucks. And it's not even a close second.”
Schultz: Starbucks developed hubris and shifted to playing defense over time
“The worst thing that could happen to a company is believing that you are incapable of doing anything but succeeding, and you deserve the success. But if you start playing defense and don't have the offensive mind, it's not going to go well. And I think over ti…”
Schultz: No desire or intent to return as Starbucks CEO
“The first thing I want to say is I've made it clear to the Starbucks board, Howard Schultz, and I've made it clear to Loxman, Howard Schultz has no desire or intent to return as CEO of Starbucks.”
Munger says short-term gains should be taxed without any loss offsets
“If I were running the world, I would have a tax on short-term gains with no offset for losses on anything. And I would just drive this whole crowd every ball of business.”
Munger says consistently investing well in venture capital is nearly impossible
“It's very difficult to invest money well, and I think it's all but impossible to do time after time after time in venture capital.”
Munger claims most startup operators end up hating their venture capitalists
“By and large, having bumped into a lot of people in the businesses with venture capital financing, I would say the ordinary rule is that people in the business doing the work, they more or not, they hate the venture capitalists. They don't feel their partner t…”
Munger claims private fund managers enrich themselves while underdelivering to endowments
“The world is full of Goldman Sachs partners that formed a private fund, and they manage a billion dollars or something like that, and they charge two points off the top plus this, and that enables them to make very handsome livings themselves, but the endowmen…”
Munger admits he and Warren Buffett could not rebuild Berkshire today
“The answer to that is no, we wouldn't.”
Munger claims China's economy has better 20-year prospects than most
“Well, my position in China has been Well, that the Chinese economy has better future prospects over the next 20 years than almost any other big economy.”
Costco delayed its China entry for decades after refusing a $30,000 bribe
“The first store they tried to open in China, the first store somebody wanted a 30,000 dollar bribe. You know, Chinese culture. And they just wouldn't pay it. And that made such a bad impression on Jim Senegal. He wouldn't even talk to him going into China for …”
Munger claims excluding depreciation from earnings via EBITDA is lying about profits
“You got a big truck company and Take the depreciation out of the trucks, out of the earnings. You're ever lying about the earnings.”
Munger calls John Malone a great manipulator who avoided paying income taxes
“Well, I've never liked John Malone's extreme manipulations. I don't want to be known as the great manipulator like John Malone is. He paid less income taxes than anybody.”
Munger says business forecasting fails when CEOs like Bob Iger prioritize PR
“Well, I think a lot of companies are pretty good, but you can't confidently say what's going to happen because you may get some guy like Iger in that just wants to push everything and do the right public relations. So no matter how good the business is, it'll …”
Huang says he wouldn't have started NVIDIA if he knew the suffering
“The reason why I wouldn't do it, and it goes back to why it's so hard, is building a company and building a video turned out to have been a million times harder than I expected it to be, any of us expected it to be. And at that time, if we realized the pain an…”
DeMuro: Automakers Secretly Add Horsepower To Review Vehicles Via 'Press Finish'
“There is an option code that most automakers have but hide from their window stickers called press finish, and there is dispute about what that is. Some automakers, there is absolutely no question that press finish adds power. Absolutely no doubt, like they've…”
Ilya Sutskever argued next-token prediction inherently requires true world understanding
“The more accurately an LLM predicts that next word, i.e. The name of the criminal. Ipso facto, the greater its understanding, not only of the novel, but of all general human-level knowledge and intelligence, because you need all of your experience in the world…”
The SR-71 Blackbird Was Effectively a Decoy for Space Satellites
“This is heretical to say, because it's so beloved, but I think the Blackbird was a decoy. We were getting everything we needed from space. We just didn't want anybody to know about it.”
Ek: Spotify critics mistake increased creator competition for a broken business model
“But there's also more competition, which is, I think when people are talking about Spotify and criticizing it, that's the part I think is the biggest misconception. Because they hear so many, many people who are trying and it doesn't work where they're not mak…”
Lasky: Traditional sports owners who bought franchised esports teams hold dead assets
“I spent five years talking those owners, like the existing sports owners who had terrible FOMO from like dumping money into these things, and some of them took my advice, and some of them didn't, and ended up in, you know, with some really dead assets. But tha…”
Fenton: Late-stage investing dilutes venture fund return multiples
“If we start, all we're doing, we're investing more money in late stages. We're lowering our returns. That's all we're doing because our commitment is fixed. It's not like we're going to be more committed. So we're, you could say we're getting more cash on cash…”