The Ledger, every show

“You can basically buy XLP, XLK, and XLV at 15 bibs and replicate with about 95% correlation a lot of these quality funds.”

“Macon Dalrahim, for example, is the attorney general for antitrust in the US. He was Google's lobbyist for the double click acquisition.”

“A classic one that hedge funds love and that I think is horrific is Transtime. Basically, there's not competition because to get an FAA part approved takes a very long time, and so you and I can go and provide seat belts cheaper than Transtime, and anytime the…”

“And the issue was he was trying to look at for the median industry. Are there fewer competitors? Is there less competition at the national level today versus 10, 20 years ago? And the answer is for about two thirds of industries, the answer is there's a lot le…”

“Facebook effectively killed off fine by preventing that from being shared, which was Twitter's video platform. Facebook wanted to own video.”

“It's very difficult for companies to get national distribution, so that those who do have it have a pretty big advantage, and then through a series of mergers, because the regulators don't honestly care, you've ended up with two companies having over 75% marke…”

“And in industry after industry, what's happened is that the DOJ and the FTC over the years, the level at which they will scrutinize mergers has sort of gone up and up. And then effectively, they've blocked almost no mergers and scrutinized almost no mergers.”

“It's not the only reason, but it's certainly a very important reason was the rise in industrial concentration in the U S. So the rise of monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies.”

“The U S spends more on healthcare and medicine than almost any other country with worse outcomes because you have some states with two insurers having about 90% market share.”

“And then if you look at, like, the big banks, only Goldman has a few leading indicators. Most economists, like the Fed, ignores them. The Wall Street banks ignore them.”

“The McCarran-Ferguson Act essentially Devolved regulation down to the state level, which meant that the state insurance commissioners are the ones who decide things, so you essentially have a duopoly or three players in almost all states when it comes to healt…”

“There was Wilson's disease was the classic with Valiant, where absent regulation, they would not be able to charge 300 grand a year for a life threatening drug that really should cost pennies, right?”

“There's extensive evidence that mergers, particularly under six players, lead to higher prices.”

“But ultimately, the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act were much more political than purely economic, meaning that there was a decision that we don't want to live in a society where one or two people control entire industries.”

“Thiel praised monopolies, but interestingly, if you read his book, The only examples he gives the monopolies are essentially ones that have very strong network effects, you know, and feedback loops where you do end up with a winner-take-all dynamic.”

“Broadly, globally, I think there's between 500 to 600 companies, and some markets are obviously a little harder to invest in than others internationally.”

“If you look at academic research, family run owner operator businesses tend to outperform.”

“Nine out of 10 economists had missed the last four recessions where we had the blue chip consensus estimates”

“Believe it or not, the insurance industry is exempt from antitrust supervision under McCarran Ferguson, right?”