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 1,500 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
Walthour: Larry Fink's diversity pledge was PR to deflect Blueprint's lawsuit
“Larry Fink comes out with an announcement on June, 22nd, that he's going to increase his black staff by 30% over four years. I'd like to think that we had positive influence there, but I think that it really was not a heartfelt announcement. It was really desi…”
Senate Republicans are the primary carbon pricing obstacle but are shifting rapidly.
“Well, it's Republicans in the Senate, let's be perfectly honest. I think that's changing quickly, let's just put it there.”
Siegel: Modern Keynesians constantly stimulate, exhausting ammunition for real crises
“Keynesians generally don't have anything to do with the economics of Keynes. They think it's always an emergency, so they're always trying to stimulate, and then when you have a real emergency, they're out of ammunition and can't do much of anything.”
Aitken: Fixed Income ETF Liquidity Creation is Buy-Side Propaganda
“The idea that ETFs were ever a self-liquifying instrument, that is to say that ETFs create liquidity in their underlying reference securities was always just buy-side propaganda. Absolute garbage. And to see dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens Of credit an…”
Bridgewater is an elite academic department run by a cult leader
“Bridgewater is like, take MIT and Harvard's economics department and Stanford and Caltech's comp sci department and have them run by a cult leader and shift that all together, and you've got Bridgewater.”
Private credit funds offer 8x leverage covenant-lite loans to hide defaults
“And they basically start buying market share by offering the riskiest loans. So they're offering unit tranche, eight times debt to EBITDA loans with no covenants, and basically because they don't want to show their LPs that any of their loans have defaulted, T…”
US private equity multiples are distorted and significantly overpriced
“Now I think private markets are much more expensive than public markets, and you can see this with the venture-backed stuff like WeWork. Private markets say it's worth seventy-five billion. Public markets say it's worthless. You can see it in the deal multiple…”
Distressed debt returns during crises have historically been disappointing
“Distressed debt doesn't do all that well. Everybody says, oh, the thing I want to do in the next crisis is buy a lot of distressed debt. Well, we have a simple rule at Verdad on both the equity side and the credit side, which don't buy things that go bankrupt.…”
Seides: Warren Buffett lacked a robust thesis for their 2008 index bet
“So he didn't have a robust thesis. He was just plying it, you know, to hope to make the point that fees, you know, in hedge fund world are expensive.”
Rattner: A company's primary fiduciary duty is to responsibly serve its shareholders
“And I'm almost with Milton Friedman, who wrote that famous New York Times Magazine piece in 1970, which said that the job of a company is to go out and make money ethically, legally, responsibly, but ultimately to serve the shareholders.”
Karp: Even 80th percentile hedge fund managers are doomed
“I think the averages are doomed. I think even 80th percentile is doomed. I think you have to be in the 99th percentile at this point, whereas 20 years ago you could have been in the sixtieth percentile and you were pretty good.”
Karp: 3G Capital's Kraft Heinz model has been horrific for human health
“And, you know, Kraft Heinz is the perfect example of this, is that there's been almost this three G mentality towards things that we put on and into humans. And that has been potentially for some period of time, good for shareholder value. It has been horrific…”
Antitrust Regulators Are Captured by Retrospective Bribes From Law Firms
“What they're ultimately doing is, it's what Nassim Taleb called the retrospective bribe, where it's not like someone's giving them a suitcase of cash, but rather they're very aware and conscious that if they're going to go back to their law firm, they want to …”
Warren Buffett Invests in Unnatural Monopolies Created by Regulatory Fiat
“Buffett tends to like what I call the unnatural monopolies, right? So he's an owner of Moody's. That only exists because it was an act of Congress which created the NRSRO designation, and it's easier to raise an armed militia in the U.S. Than it is to start a …”
Druley: Only 100 to 200 hedge funds merit institutional capital
“What I would say is hedge funds is an asset class not worth the money. That said, there's seven, 8000 hedge funds. We think there's a hundred to 200 that actually do merit institutional capital and continue to merit institutional capital.”
Novogratz: Bitcoin is finished as a project and serves as digital gold
“Bitcoin's kind of done. The project is finished. It's good enough to be decentralized gold. It doesn't have to change.”
Many investment funds are wealth transfers from LPs to GPs
“Many funds are structured as the greatest transfer of wealth from LPs to GPs.”
Friedman: The Community Reinvestment Act has largely been a failure
“The truth is, it's been a failure to a great extent, because there's so much paperwork, it's so artificial at times, that you make non-economic investments, and the money disappears, and that gets people upset, gets everyone upset.”
Russo: Refusing Defense AI projects threatens Google's science-driven leadership
“Well, the moment you say that you're not going to have an AI business that has an involvement with some aspect of the Defense Department, particularly if it's defense-oriented, and you say that we just won't touch it because of our values, the moment you stop …”
Beshore: Traditional PE outbids others via heavy leverage and slashing staff
“And they, by the way, they can pay more because they're loading it up with a tremendous amount of non-recourse debt. They're going to slash and burn the team. They're going to treat people for a short period of time while they own it terribly, right? Well, of …”
Wolfe: SoftBank-funded unicorn capital is 'dead' and trapped under their control
“Many of these businesses either have commercial deals that are tied to them, or economic terms that are tied to them where the VCs or the entrepreneurs that might be celebrating, they just became a unicorn and are valued over a billion dollars and SoftBank jus…”
Wolfe calls IBM Watson 'utter BS' and dangerous in its marketing
“And then the last thing that I rail against also, which I think is utter BS is IBM Watson. And I think it's actually dangerous what they're promoting.”
Scaramucci: Separating migrant children at the U.S. border is barbaric
“Doesn't reflect well on the American society, whether they're breaking the law, not breaking the law, don't separate people from their kids. Ok, that's a barbaric thing, and we're better than that as a society. Ok, so there's nobody can debate me on that, I ca…”
Germany's Decision to Punish Greece Triggered the Eurozone Systemic Crisis
“The key assumption Underpinning economic and monetary union. In fact, to this day, there's no default risk in peripheral credit of all kinds, whether it be sovereign or bank or whatever. And Ted, the Germans thought, here's an opportunity to teach everyone a l…”
Volatility is genuine risk because it induces investors to abandon their plans
“The smartest of the smart guys say that volatility is not risk. And I strongly, strongly disagree. Because if you're, what you're really trying to do is achieve your goals in life, and the more volatile an investment is, Makes it more likely that you're going …”
Pfeffer argues venture capital on average underperforms buyouts or loses money.
“So I figure that, I think that probably the asset class is somewhere between, on average, money losing to simply underperforming relative to, say, buyouts or whatever, as an asset class.”
Andy Redleaf: Warren Buffett is an above-average investor, but an elite borrower
“And I've always thought that Warren Buffett is not a great investor. He's a, he's an above average good investor. He's good on the asset side. He's the world record holder. He's the absolute best borrower in the world. And had sort of a unique model, and that'…”
Hamed: Bitcoin has the worst tech in index but unbeatable network effects
“Bitcoin's probably the worst technology of the ones in the index. It's probably slower, more expensive, but it's got stain power, and people trust it, and it's hit some level of network effect that would be very, very difficult to overcome.”
Monk: Hedge funds divert top scientists into socially useless activities
“It appalls me that we are dragging some of the best and brightest minds in society, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, Away from, you know, what I would describe as more traditionally value-adding activities and into the pursuit of basis points through a bl…”
Blitz: Popular short equity volatility strategies are a very risky proposition
“You know, I'd say one, I'd call it maybe an orange flag or red flag on the equity volatility side is you're seeing a lot of people today go, go explicitly short equity volatility and it's being packaged as a quote unquote alternative strategy. We think that th…”
Douvos Would Short Stanford University Due to Overhyped Entrepreneur Perceptions
“By the way, if I could short Stanford, I would. It's a fantastic place, but talk about perception, you know, kind of all those entrepreneurs coming out of there that are so have very full perceptions themselves.”
Seides: Would make the 10-year Buffett bet again based on favorable odds
“I would make the bet again, over and over and over again, enough times so that the odds played out.”
Moyo: First super cycle in 40 years driven by AI, energy transition.
“It seems to me this is the first time from an economic lens we've had a super cycle in 40 years. We had women coming into the workforce and brought new consumers in the 19 forties and fifties. Then we had the fall of the wall in 1989. It brought in the globali…”
Moyo: Emerging markets face a very high hurdle to beat U.S. returns.
“I now have come to the realization that it's a hard perch, high hurdle to leave the U.S., take my one marginal dollar and invest in country X in the emerging markets and expect a competitive risk-adjusted return.”
Dorsey: Adobe's Aggressive Pricing Makes Customers Eager to Switch to AI
“You're seeing this right now with Adobe. There's an AI problem here. Had they not been so aggressive in pricing over time, would the customers be as willing to switch to new AI tools? It's an interesting counterfactual to think about.”
Jain: Hedge funds charge too much in today's highly efficient markets
“Fees, I think what's the biggest problem in hedge funds? They charge too much. There's only so much juice in the game. These are efficient markets. It's not like seventies. Buffett can do whatever sitting, reading Moody's manual and pick up stock two times ear…”
Jain: Software has low entry barriers; almost none survive 30 years
“If you look at it, how many companies have survived in software business over 30 plus years? Microsoft is an exception, and maybe Oracle, it's a lower barrier to business.”
Jain: Established software at 10-12x earnings shows strong growth and lock-in
“Look at software today. We feel that it's a very intriguing area. These established businesses, but 10, 12 times earnings and folks feel they're completely going out of business. There's no sign of that. Not only that, they're growing 20% in some cases, and yo…”
Comegys: The S&P 500 Should Not Be Your Benchmark or Portfolio
“The S&P 500 should not be your benchmark nor your portfolio.”
Comegys: Vanguard Believes Private Assets Belong in Every Portfolio
“We believe privates belong in everyone's portfolio.”
Private Asset Obsession Destroyed Endowments' Ability to Invest Countercyclically
“Historically, endowments have done a great job of that, but in the last 10 or 15 years with the obsession of private assets, that tool has been taken out of the toolkit.”
India Faces Severe Macro Pressures From AI Disruption and Energy Dependencies
“India right now is going through a very difficult period. It's got a double whammy now of being in the crosshairs of AI because of IT services and the huge part of their economy that that sector represents. It's got the risk that it's facing from the Iran war,…”
Non-traded BDCs recreate the structural asset-liability mismatches of the past
“Maybe we do a non-traded BDC, which was now up to 2018. That's where I was like, well, this is the original asset liability mismatch that you tried to cure by doing a drawdown fund because You might have all the investors looking for the exit, even though it's…”
Grantham: Investors should own non-US and emerging value stocks
“For a long time now, you should be owning non-US stocks, developed value stocks, and emerging country value stocks.”
Grantham: The US stock market is completely overpriced
“The US is simply too high priced from top to toe.”
Grantham: Climate Denial Is Predominantly an American Phenomenon
“You don't find climate deniers around the world. You find a few in England, all extreme right-wing libertarians, and you find a small army in the US, but that's it. This is an American thing, climate denial.”
Baker: Multi-manager hedge funds are driven by a few star pods
“At a lot of these multi-managers, there are a couple of pods, and maybe I am out of date, who are running a disproportionate amount of money with really good returns. The reason they have a disproportionate amount of money is because they have a long history o…”
Baker: Private Markets Suffer Far More Bad Behavior Than Realized
“There is more bad behavior in private markets than I think people realize. FTX, it's very public, but these companies, they're not filing always audited financials. They don't have the controls. Particularly when something starts to go bad, there's a lot of ba…”