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 48 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
Friedman: Tax incentives will force all US startups into Opportunity Zones
“It's going to encourage every single business that's going to start up United States. It's going to force it for tax reasons, for economic reasons, to be in an opportunity zone.”
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.”
Friedman advises shorting Silicon Valley and selling Palo Alto real estate
“In fact, I would short Silicon Valley right now. If you have real estate in Palo Alto, you should be selling it, because if you're in Silicon Valley, you're, Except for a small place in Silicon Valley, which is an opportunity zone, those businesses are all goi…”
Friedman: Active managers will profit massively when indexation hits 95%
“I'm waiting for the day when the key is to have staying power to last, is when, you know, the machines or the indexes are 95% of the market. Then you'll make money hand over”
Friedman: Opportunity Zones will attract over $1 trillion in capital
“Right now it's probably seven, eight trillion dollars, but it's growing in another two and a half trillion dollars every year, and so that over a period of time, we believe at least a trillion dollars of capital is going to flow from one area, one geography, t…”
Friedman: Opportunity Zones Will Negatively Impact Traditional Real Estate Markets
“It's going to have a negative impact on a lot of real estate that's in more traditional areas.”
Friedman estimates Opportunity Zones will increase US GDP by 0.4%
“We estimate it'll increase GDP by four-tenths of percent.”
Friedman: Government inaction on Lehman Brothers triggered the 2008 financial crisis
“The crisis was created when Lehman failed and the government did nothing. They just simply decided, well, we don't have the authority to act, which we know is not true, because you can read laws a million different ways. Once that happened, people lost confide…”
Friedman: Opportunity Zones will drive $1T to $3T in total investment
“It's creating a tax advantage way to invest in, in these areas, which I believe over time will have a big impact, and certainly one of the biggest impact over time is on the economy, because I believe it'll be One, two, three trillion dollars.”
Friedman: Opportunity Zones will drive enormous regional bank loan demand
“This is an example where things are going to happen unbelievably quickly. It's gonna create enormous loan demand for small banks, regional banks, All over the country, and I believe, we'll see, I've been wrong a lot of times before, but I believe this will be …”
Friedman: The US will experience real wage inflation
“One view that is completely different from other people is I believe there will be real wage inflation in this country.”
Friedman: Oil and legacy assets will become stranded within 20 years
“So I would argue lots of assets that you think are very, very valuable, such as oil, will eventually be stranded. Might take 10 years, might take 1520 years, but when it's stranded, it doesn't mean it's worthless, it means it's Worth a lot less than it is toda…”
Friedman: Opportunity Zones are the biggest capital reallocation effort in his lifetime
“It's the biggest thing I've ever seen in my lifetime. To reallocate capital and let it flow and let it change the different parts of the country and let it equalize the economic areas of the country.”
Friedman: Legacy community tax credits and job programs are ineffective
“Doesn't take away your low-income tax credits, doesn't take away New Market, doesn't take away any of the job credits, but let's be realistic. These programs are so tiny and so artificial, they're a joke. They're a pinhead in terms of the net effect, and so yo…”
Friedman: Non-taxable allocators will invest in Opportunity Zones for higher returns
“There's no specific economic incentive. It's just they're going to get a higher return on their money. Do you want to be downtown New York, which where jobs are going to be moving out from, or do you want to be in Brooklyn or the tip of New York? Do you want t…”
Friedman: Port of Savannah is North America's fastest-growing port and 12% of GDP
“Savannah's the fastest growing port in North America. Period. No one's ever seen anything like it. It's now 12% of the GDP of the United States.”
Friedman: New Markets Tax Credit costs $200 to deliver $100
“Only to come up with a hundred dollars, it costs the government 200 dollars. It's a joke. It costs more to administer it, to put it together Then the net effect.”
Friedman: Post-2008 systemic risk worsened due to global interconnectedness
“In fact, the Federal Reserve Board, after the oh eight, oh nine crisis, thought they were going to be able to protect the whole system from all these changes. In fact, It's gotten worse because the interlocking the world is something nobody can control, and th…”
Friedman: TARP was brilliant and its critics misunderstand systemic risk
“And they did a brilliant, remarkable job. I can't believe that people still complain about TARP and what the government did. It's really because they literally lack an understanding of how the system works. How interconnected all the system is.”
Friedman: Machines and index funds become less effective as they grow
“I, when they're 20% of the market, it, you know, they're much more effective or the indexes than when they're 50. But by definition, the bigger they get, the more impossible it is.”
Friedman: US fiscal stimulus will cause big-city unskilled labor shortages
“Once you see the effect of these things, it's even gonna create in cities, in big cities, a, what we call an unskilled labor shortage.”
Friedman: The primary US divide is urban versus rural, not partisan politics
“If you really look at the split in this country, it's not between Clinton and Trump. It's not between Republican and Democrats. So much of it is really between Urban and rule where the rule parts are left behind and that portion is increasing.”
Friedman: European negative interest rates are artificial and unprecedented
“Historically, we've never had in history, it's impossible, it's like we have in Europe, negative interest rates. There's no such thing in history, it's artificial.”
Friedman: Opportunity Zones Will Be a Complete Failure Without Job Creation
“The fact is, which people don't realize, 70% of this is aimed at business. If this doesn't create jobs, Jobs, jobs, jobs. Then this is going to be a complete failure. You're going to have stranded real estate.”
Friedman: Google Is Moving 20,000 AI Employees to Lower Manhattan
“Google is just moving 20,000 AI people to the tip of New York. Now, some of it's not an opportunity zone, but it's surrounded by three opportunity zones.”
Friedman: Opportunity Zone small banks will be overwhelmed with loan applications
“One of the secondary benefits of Opportunity Zone is many of the small banks in the United States that sit in the middle of Opportunity Zones. They're going to be overwhelmed with new loan applications.”
Friedman: Congress and the administration display unprecedented childishness and political regression
“When I watch Congress, and when I watch the administration, I feel like I'm back, not in the seventh grade, I'm back in the first grade, and I just can't believe it, and especially when all these people were, growing up, were my heroes, and I've never seen suc…”
Friedman: Global financial markets show extreme correlation unlike the 1980s
“When I started in Really the eighties and then the nineties. You didn't have to think about what's happening in Germany and what's happening in China. There wasn't this extreme correlation that is today between every different piece that links up within the wo…”
Friedman: Absolute regulatory rules fail in a non-linear financial world
“The most important thing to keep in mind that the world is not linear, it's non-linear. So you know, I talk to different people who are Federal Reserve Board Governors, and over and over again, the lesson we've learned Not once, not twice, three times, four ti…”
Friedman: Fannie and Freddie represented two-thirds of US GDP during 2008 crisis
“Fannie and Freddie were 10 times bigger than Lehman, yet it didn't have any knockoff impact. It was two-thirds of the GDP of the entire United States, Fannie and Freddie at the time.”
Friedman: Unknowable macro shocks pose the greatest financial system risk
“To me the biggest risk of the financial system is that gigantic macro unknown, and therefore it's an unknown, and we don't even know what it is, and so that is always what fools everybody, and it's that, that massive non-linear effect that takes place.”
Friedman: Finding multi-year tailwinds is more important than individual genius
“What makes people smart in the market or geniuses in the market, there are no geniuses in the market, period, is to find those tailwinds. If you can find those tailwinds, that's what makes you brilliant.”
Friedman: Banks face massive disruption from mobile payments within 20 years
“Certainly banks are going to be under unbelievable pressure, but I'm talking 20 years from now by this. I'm holding up a cell phone, an Apple phone, because go to Kenya. You don't have banks. You have mobile payments. Go to China.”
Friedman: Big US banks will not see massive regulatory relief
“I think you're not going to get massive changes for the big banks, because the Federal Reserve Board's view is, look, we care about the 10 big banks in this country. They're significant. JP Morgan is systemically important. Citicorp is systemically important, …”
Friedman: Algorithmic trading has significantly reduced market liquidity
“Liquidity has declined because of really changes in the market of what machines do, and there's no doubt that liquidity has gotten a lot less than it used to be.”
Friedman: The 5,000 small US banks will undergo widespread industry consolidation
“There's 5000 small banks in the United States that small banks from a general viewpoint are going to go through a consolidation.”
Opportunity Zones cover 10% of U.S. land and 12% of population
“So in fact, it's 10% of the entire United States is an opportunity zone. That's in every city, every state, every rural area, all of Puerto Rico. So it's everywhere. That's the first thing, and it covers 12% of the population.”
Friedman: Micron Is Building a $3B Plant in Manassas Opportunity Zone
“Micron's building a plan in Manassas, three billion dollars, opportunity zone.”
Friedman: Amazon HQ2 in Northern Virginia Is Partially in an Opportunity Zone
“Amazon's second headquarters is partially an opportunity zone in northern Virginia.”
Friedman: State pension funds are exploring partnering on Opportunity Zones
“So we're already seeing non-taxpayers, state pension funds, begin to look at this as a way to change areas that are in need by joining with the people doing opportunity zones.”
Friedman: Sean Parker originated Opportunity Zone policy via EIG
“Sean Parker from Napster came up with this idea seven, eight years ago, and is really the Key driver. This is one of his think tanks”
Friedman: Regulators Will Release Follow-up Rules Followed by Anti-Abuse Guidance
“There will be another set of regulations that will allow people to really be aggressively doing things, and then there'll be abuse regulations, because whenever you create a program of a trillion dollars or more, it's only natural that there'll be abuses, and …”
Friedman: Houston Oil & Gas went 10x in months on gas discovery
“I had begun to look at oil and gas stocks, and one of my big recommendations was Houston Oil and Gas, which went from 10 to a 110 in a period of maybe Four months because it was at a big, gigantic gas discovery in what we called then the state waters. State wa…”
Friedman: Lost substantial money in 2008 despite anticipating the crisis
“That doesn't mean I didn't lose lots of money on the financial crisis, because even when you know something, you sometimes have trouble acting.”
Friedman: US has up to $6T in unrealized capital gains
“There's a trillion dollars of gains a year in capital gains in this country. There's probably three, four, five, six trillion dollars that are capital gains that people haven't taken.”
Friedman: Legacy infrastructure delays tech disruption while absent infrastructure accelerates it
“Wherever You have a lack of infrastructure in anything, a new technology can come in, overpower everything. It's when you have a very powerful old infrastructure, it takes technology a longer period of time to overwhelm the old infrastructure”
Friedman: New York capital gains taxes reach 53% short-term, 32% long-term
“In New York, it's 53% on short-term capital gains. It's 32 on long-term capital gains”
Friedman: CRISPR is changing the world with frightening potential
“The biggest thing I'm looking at is CRISPR, which is literally changing the world. It scares the hell out of me because of what its potential is. That's the basic gene editing technique that came out of Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, but it's just mind-boggling w…”