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 218 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Friedberg: GLP-1 agonists show health benefits beyond weight loss
“And like, the effects in some of the recent studies on the GLP-I agonists is it's not just weight loss, but there's like anti-inflammatory effects. They had good phase two on Alzheimer's. There's kidney disease. Hypertension. And crazy enough, they've got an i…”
David Friedberg predicts a US-China grand deal within Trump's first six months
“This kind of also leads to what I think will be The grand deal with China, which I think will happen in the first six months of the Trump administration.”
Friedberg: California FAIR Plan faces $6B exposure in Pacific Palisades
“It has about two hundred and twenty million dollars of capital in it, and then they bought about five billion dollars of reinsurance. They have about six billion of exposure in Pacific Palisades alone.”
Friedberg: Nearly $10 trillion of US debt must roll over within a year
“Nearly 10 trillion dollars. I think of our debt has to be reissued in the next year.”
Friedberg: US debt jumped $204 billion in one day to $35.7 trillion
“On the first day of the new fiscal year, federal debt jumped by two hundred and four billion dollars in one day. Federal debt now stands at 35.7 trillion dollars, and the biggest challenge we have in the year ahead is that 10 trillion of the outstanding debt c…”
Friedberg: California's bullet train costs $1B per mile
“California's bullet train project in 2008 was supposed to cost forty billion. We're 15 years into this thing. We spent eighteen billion. They're now asking for a hundred forty billion total to build a 171 mile track. That's a billion a mile.”
Lancet papers indicate SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site could be natural
“There are other scientists, including papers published recently in the Lancet and other like pretty reputable, like medical journals and research journals that indicate that the evolution seen in the furin cleavage site Can be traced back to an evolutionary or…”
Friedberg: Consumer Reports detected phthalates in every food product tested
“They measured phthalates, which are known to be toxic in terms of if you get enough of them, they can be carcinogenic and cause cancer. And they showed that every product they tested had phthalates in it.”
Friedberg: AlphaFold 3 predicts molecular binding to specific DNA sequences
“One of the things that this alpha fold three can do is predict what molecules will bind and promote certain sequences of DNA, which is exactly what we try and do with the Yamanaka factor based expression systems and find ones that won't trigger off target expr…”
Friedberg: FTX bankruptcy trustee expects 100% payout to depositors
“In early February, the trustee said they now expect a hundred percent Payment back to the depositors and all the accounts and all the excess will go to the shareholders and FTX, all the preferred holders that invested in the stock.”
Friedberg: TikTok saw post-Oct 7 surge in pro-Hamas vs pro-Israel videos
“After October seventh, that there was a significant surge in pro Hamas videos relative to Israel support video.”
Friedberg: Every 1% interest rate increase costs US $1 billion daily
“Every day that interest rates are off, are one percent higher based on the current federal debt level, we're paying an incremental billion dollars in interest payments per day.”
Friedberg: In 1913, Argentina was wealthier than France, Germany, or Spain
“Argentina at this time was wealthier than France or Germany. Twice as wealthy as Spain and had one of the top 10 highest GDP per capita of any nation on earth in 1913.”
Friedberg: TransDigm generates $7B revenue with 53% EBITDA margin
“And they do about seven billion in revenue, three and a half billion in EBITDA. So Tim off to your point a couple of weeks ago about what's the appropriate Competitive EBITDA margin that a company can ultimately achieve. Their EBITDA margin is 53%.”
Friedberg: Engineered microbes can make PET plastic biodegrade within a year
“There's a lot of efforts right now to develop microbes that can actually biodegrade these PET plastics. So there's so we're engineering these microbes that will produce enzymes. These are little bacteria that'll produce enzymes. Those enzymes can then be made …”
Friedberg: Federal tax revenue above 20% of GDP shrinks the economy
“We're already taxing 18% of GDP as federal revenue, which a lot of economists have shown you can only get to 20%, at which point economy starts to shrink.”
Friedberg: Florida's state reinsurance pool is largely underfunded
“In Florida, they have a reinsurance pool that is largely assumed to be completely underfunded.”
Friedberg: 31% of US debt faces refinancing in 2023
“Again, 31% of US debt coming up for refinancing this year.”
Friedberg: US interest on debt exceeds military budget in 2023
“It's going to be, you know, and we're already seeing, by the way, this year interest expense on the debt is greater than the military spending.”
Friedberg: Top 20% U.S. earnings up 60% since mid-1990s, bottom 80% flat
“So the top five percent of earners in the U.S. You know, since, call it the mid-nineties, have seen a near doubling of their earnings. The top quintile, which is the top 20% of earners in the United States, have seen their earnings climb by 60% since that time…”
Friedberg: US interest payments now exceed national defense spending
“We are, I think as of this month or last month, now spending more, the federal government is spending more on interest payments on the federal debt than they are on national defense.”
Friedberg: Half of public biotech companies trade below cash
“And that's why half of biotechs that are public are trading below cash.”
Friedberg: Chicago has a $44 billion pension shortfall
“The city of Chicago has a forty four billion dollar pension hole.”
Friedberg: Venture debt industry has typically generated 18% returns
“The asset as a, as an asset class, we can make fun of it all we want. It's actually performed pretty well. These guys have generated typically 18% as an industry.”
Friedberg: Venture debt comprised only 10% of SVB's loan portfolio
“If you look at SVB's loan portfolio, 70% are really these asset-backed loans, which are 56% of the portfolio is like, you know, pre-payments on, on LP commitments, and then 14% is private banking loans, which is loans against, you know, public securities that …”
Friedberg estimates a ChatGPT query costs 30 cents, 10x traditional search
“A recent estimate on running the GPT three model for chat GPT is that each result takes about 30 cents of compute. So it's about an order of magnitude higher cost to run that search result than it is to do it through a traditional search query.”
Friedberg: Over two-thirds of post-2020 IPOs trade below capital raised
“Over two thirds of companies now that have gone public since 2020. Are worth less than the capital that they have raised as in the venture market.”
Friedberg: Yamanaka factors increased mouse lifespan by 107%
“And by the way, when they applied those Yamanaka factors to the mice lived a 107% longer than they were supposed to.”
Friedberg: EVs and solar power are already cheaper than traditional energy
“Absolutely. They're cheaper.”
Friedberg: Emerging market debt dropped roughly 20% in recent months
“We've seen in the last couple of months a decline of emerging market debt of about 20%.”
Friedberg: US consumer credit jumped $60B in a single month
“Sachs's point is like, I mean, the number was sixty billion of new consumer credit last month, which is like something we haven't seen in a very long time as consumers try and bridge this gap to afford the things that they've gotten used to spending money on. …”
Friedberg: US median home price to income ratio reached 7x vs 5x in 2008
“In the 2008 financial crisis, the median home price to median income in the United States was five X. Today it's seven X.”
Friedberg: One-third of public biotech stocks trade below cash
“Roughly one third of public biotech stocks are trading below cash.”
Friedberg: Global food supply operates on just 90 days of stored calories
“The whole world runs on a 90 day food supply, which means roughly 25% of the world's calories are in storage right now.”
Friedberg: China holds 150% of its annual food consumption in reserves
“And at this point, China has a 150% of their annual consumption of food in storage.”
Friedberg: Planet Earth operates on a 90-day food supply buffer
“And I just to take a step back, the whole planet Earth operates on a 90 day food supply.”
Friedberg: 65%–70% of Lukoil shares were held by Western pension funds
“This company that we were texting about called Luke oil. They were worth sixty billion dollars a few days ago. We effectively wiped them out to zero. And 65 to 70% of the shares in that company were held and owned by public retirement funds, pension funds, mut…”
Friedberg: YouTube beats Netflix in revenue with double the growth rate
“YouTube now has more revenue than Netflix and is growing at likely. 40 to 60% year over year revenue growth rate. Whereas Netflix is, you know, considered one of the fang stocks, you know, one of the top stocks and Netflix only growing at 22%.”
Friedberg: Square issued a third of its stock for 4% revenue growth
“They issued a third of their stock to buy this company. So basically, Square is a public company. They issued shares to Afterpay shareholders. And Afterpay only represents about four percent of Square's revenue.”
Friedberg: Investing the three US stimulus checks in Dogecoin yields $300,000
“It turns out if you put your stimulus check out of each of the last three stimulus checks into Dogecoin, you would have 300,000 dollars.”
Friedberg: SPAC capital raises hit $100 billion in Q1 2021
“Last year, eighty billion was raised in SPACs. This quarter, a hundred billion in SPACs.”
Friedberg predicts COVID-19 vaccine restrictions will drop within six weeks
“In six weeks, I think a lot of those restrictions are going to fall by the wayside because the supply is going to completely outstrip the nonsensical, you know, restrictions and prioritization methods we put in place”
Friedberg: Top 1% of households pay half of California personal income tax
“The state of California generates about a hundred and forty billion dollars in revenue. 70% of that comes from personal income tax, and as Sachs pointed out, half of that comes from the top one percent or 40,000 households.”
Friedberg: The French Laundry received a forgiven $2.6M PPP loan
“French Laundry, by the way, got a- They got a 2.6 million dollar PPP loan that got forgiven.”
Friedberg: Most California COVID-19 spread occurred in multi-generational homes, not businesses
“I think most of the spread is not happening at businesses. It's happening in homes. And in California, we have a particularly difficult problem because of multi-generational family homes, especially in the Latino communities that have been hardest hit by COVID…”
Friedberg: Regulatory barriers delayed mRNA vaccines despite 15 years of existence
“The mRNA vaccine technology has been around for like, 15 years, and regulatory barriers and regulatory constraints have largely kept this stuff from coming to market.”