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 39 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 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
Sorkin: AMC CEO is selling shares at vastly overvalued prices
“And I don't want to say he's taking advantage of them, but if they're taking advantage, he's taking advantage by selling shares to them at prices that I think he knows full well are vastly overvalued.”
Sorkin: Large charitable stock transfers by billionaires should be taxed
“I very unpopularly would probably tax great philanthropy, meaning most philanthropists, including Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, effectively are transferring shares Typically founder shares into their foundations or to a charity, which means that those shares, …”
Sorkin: Justifying AI Valuations Requires Eliminating Human Labor Costs
“Meaning if you ever wanted to think about what would this country look like with 25% unemployment, how would you get there? And I think the answer is potentially if AI is as successful as I think we all hopefully want it to be to the extent you believe these v…”
Sorkin: Humans Will Not Code Their Own Software In The Future
“I just don't see how we're gonna be sitting around doing our own programming. I just don't see it.”
Sorkin: In Five Years, AI Will Co-Author Books And Articles
“But five years from now, do you really think that people are going to write books even by themselves? I assume you would be co-authoring a book with AI. I imagine people will be writing articles at minimum with AI if AI is not doing it in entirely”
Sorkin: AI wealth will concentrate in big tech and incumbents hiring agents
“I believe that the wealth and the great riches are going to go both to the model makers, some of the big tech companies, and probably the folks who already have had success because they will be at the top of these food chains, and instead of hiring more people…”
Sorkin: Private equity and credit both delay markdowns to preserve valuations
“There is a whole sort of universe that I'd put in the category of mark to make believe. And the incentive system is such that you want that mark to make believe to go on as long as possible, because if you are The equity owner, you don't want to mark your mark…”
Sorkin: AI Faces Potential Dot-Com-Style Bubble And Bust Timing Mismatch
“The bigger question is whether there's going to be like a timing mismatch, that there's going to be some period of time. Same way, by the way, we had a dot com bubble and bust where the economics didn't match the investments at that time. Now, Amazon is still …”
Sorkin: Post-WWII middle-class American dream was a historical aberration
“I actually think that was a historical aberration. That was not the way it used to be. If you look at the 19 twenties, it was not like that. You look at the 19 thirties, it wasn't like that. The leave it to be for American dream that I think this individual is…”
Sorkin: SpaceX IPO Will Likely Outpace OpenAI in Valuation
“Oh, I imagine it does. I mean, I, if we're talking, I think the numbers now, 1.75 trillion dollars with a T. I think right now OpenAI isn't, doesn't start with a T yet, but maybe.”
Sorkin: SEC Chair Gary Gensler might target Elon Musk and SPAC promoters
“And so could he go after some individuals? I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't, and I wouldn't be surprised if he even went after an Elon Musk. I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to go after some of the people some of the higher profile people involved in S…”
Sorkin: MicroStrategy has turned into a leveraged Bitcoin fund
“Michael Saylor at MicroStrategy. He's now effectively raising money from public investors in taking out loans. This is like a, his company's turned into a leveraged, basically a leveraged Bitcoin fund is effectively what it is.”
Sorkin: Every financial crisis is driven solely by excessive debt leverage
“Every financial crisis is really only a function of one thing. It's too much debt. It's too much credit leverage in the system.”
Sorkin: Proponents of 'democratizing finance' fail to protect everyday investors
“What I find so strange, what I find so strange is the people who are, who Say they're trying to democratize finance seem to do such a lousy job of actually trying to protect the people that they say they're democratizing it for.”
Sorkin: Economic growth has historical upper limits and is partly zero-sum
“Some of this is a zero sum game. It is not like that the pie can just grow exponentially. I know there are people who believe that it could, but invariably at least historically hasn't. There are sort of upper limits to even what growth could ultimately even l…”
Sorkin: AI Will Consolidate Into A Single Voice-Driven Consumer Interface
“I think I'll go with, there's gonna be one interface. I don't know if it's one bot, but one interface that you will interact with. I imagine likely talking rather than even typing.”
Sorkin: AI presents Google's best chance to take share from Apple
“I would imagine that this should be the greatest opportunity for Google and Alphabet Effect or Alphabet to truly take share because Gemini, if built the way I think it should be built, should be able to move you around their phone in shocking ways, right? It s…”
Sorkin: Private credit cannot collapse before private equity loses money
“The private credit business really can't fall apart before, frankly, the private equity industry falls apart. Meaning, if you think about it, who has taken on the biggest loans from private, from the private credit space? It's oftentimes the private equity pla…”
Sorkin: AI Threat To SaaS Recurring Revenue Could Trigger Credit Defaults
“Well, if you decide the software company is no longer a thing and may not have this recurring revenue, all of a sudden its value has to come down, and all of a sudden, therefore, they would have to lose all their money, and then if for the credit guys who loan…”
Sorkin: Data centers differ from railroads because chips require continuous upgrades
“The one other thing about data centers, which is a little bit more nerve-wracking, is it's not like putting, you know, people compare it to putting fiber in the ground or building the railroads. You put the tracks down. Because once you build a data center, yo…”
Sorkin: Prediction market speculation is driven by US wealth inequality
“One of the reasons why people are moving to prediction markets and moving to what I would describe as the sort of a lottery ticket approach to life. It's a little bit YOLO. Is a function of the inequality that we have in this country.”
Sorkin: Investor Losses Get Socialized When Individuals Cannot Afford Them
“The truth is, depending on how you run a country and a social safety net and a system, if you can't afford the loss, then the loss gets fully socialized.”
Sorkin: Governments must inject liquidity rather than impose austerity during crashes
“When you have a crash, you can't move into a period of austerity. You actually have to throw money at the problem as politically unpopular as the bailouts are. The Federal Reserve needs to throw money in.”
Sorkin: 1929-Scale Crash Is Less Likely Today Due to Lower Leverage
“I think that's harder to do today in part because individuals don't have that much leverage in the system. So I'd like to think not, and I also think we have this extraordinary playbook, which we now know works to some degree.”
Sorkin: Valuations of AMC, GameStop, and Bed Bath are divorced from reality
“The AMC apes and the GameStop hysteria and don't forget Bed Bath and beyond or some of the others that are completely and utterly divorced from reality, Alex.”
Sorkin: Downside crash for meme stock retail investors is inevitable
“I think it's also about protecting them on the downside, and it's almost impossible to believe that the downside won't come.”
Sorkin doubts Bitcoin will remain uncorrelated when liquidity stops
“There's a lot of money floating around, and the question is, when the music stops, and the music will stop, is Bitcoin somehow completely not correlated to all, to everything else? I have a hard time believing that”
Sorkin predicts Chamath Palihapitiya will be remembered as the SPAC king
“I think 20 years from now, he will get credit as the SPAC king.”
Sorkin: Apple is not an antitrust monopoly in Epic case or broadly
“I don't think Apple is a monopoly in the way it's being argued in the construct of the Epic case clearly, and probably More, more broadly, I don't think it's a monopoly either yet.”
Sorkin: Forcing multiple App Stores on iPhone will make hardware more expensive
“Let's say there was now multiple app stores in the iPhone. What happens? It just means that the hardware will get more expensive. That's a good point. It'll get passed on to you.”
Sorkin: Amazon is unlikely to get broken up
“Do I think that Amazon unto itself is going to get broken up? I'd be very hard pressed to see that really happen.”
Sorkin: Facebook will not ultimately be broken up
“I think Facebook will ultimately get broken up? No, I don't.”
Sorkin: Journalism's value will shift to in-person, off-the-record reporting
“AI can't walk into the locker room and start to interview the athlete or figure out what the coach did two days earlier and try to get somebody to tell them something off the record or behind the scenes. And that'll become a sort of higher order value proposit…”
Sorkin: Altman And Ive AI Device May Arrive In Six Months
“You know, if Sam Altman and Johnny Ive have their way, we will have something sitting on this desk probably in six months from now that may be watching what we're doing all the time.”
Sorkin: AI will endure long-term and ultimately need current data centers
“I mean, I imagine long term that AI is going to be very much like the internet on steroids, which means that it will be here for a very long time, and we will ultimately need these data centers. That is, to me, not really the question.”
Sorkin: Retail investors cannot drive meme surges in mega-cap stocks
“I mean, it would be very hard For a retail base of investors to move the stock of an Apple or a Walmart or an Amazon in this kind of way.”
Sorkin: The Russell 2000 is performing well because AMC and GameStop are in it
“I mean, one of the things that's so interesting is if you own the Russell 2000, which is an index, passive index, it's actually doing quite well, almost spectacularly so. Why? Because AMC and GameStop are part of it.”
Sorkin: The SPAC boom will lead to tighter regulations and better practices
“I think that this sort of SPAC phenomenon we're seeing is probably going to be long-term actually a good thing for SPACs insofar as they're going to create more regulations and other policies and better practices around these things so that they're not effecti…”