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 9 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
McLean: Elon Musk has repeatedly lied to secure funding for his vision
“That's certainly true of Elon Musk. Wherever you believe he sits in that spectrum, when you look at his history, he's for sure lied at many points in time in order to keep funding his dream.”
McLean: Private equity fracking returns relied on a greater fool theory
“For a long time private equity could get a return on the greater fool theory. They would fund these fracking entrepreneurs who would go out and drill wells, and then they would sell that to a publicly traded company, and the private equity guys would make a to…”
McLean: Fracking executives extract wealth while leaving society cleanup liabilities
“It's another case of capitalism gone wrong, and that a lot of people at the top of these companies have made their billions, and walked away from it, and then the rest of society is left to clean up the mess, because the companies are bankrupt, and don't have …”
McLean: Most of Enron's transactions were legal fraud adhering to accounting rules
“Most of what Enron did was actually perfectly legal. So I coined this term once, which I love, which is a legal fraud. And that's what Enron was, because most of the transactions they engaged in, even the ones that appeared to be the most problematic, actually…”
McLean: Stock performance does not rationally prove Elon Musk is a genius
“In the Tesla debate, one of the main things Tesla bulls say is, look at the stock. So, because the stock has done so well, that proves that Elon Musk is a genius and that our belief is, is right. I mean, obviously, it proves nothing of the sort, right? It's a …”
McLean: Silicon Valley mistakenly excuses executive character flaws as Steve Jobs-like genius
“Part of what's gone wrong in modern Silicon Valley is that everybody believes he's the rule, right? So all sorts of character flaws have become forgivable, because hey, look at Steve Jobs, and look what he did. And flaws have almost become a good thing, becaus…”
McLean: Enron's hyped broadband division was conceptually Netflix before its time
“Enron's really hyped business was this business called Enron Broadband, which it's an interesting aside. It really was Netflix before its time.”
McLean: Hyped digital media models like BuzzFeed and Vice failed to work
“Most of the new business models that have come along and been hyped for a period of time have proven not to work any better than the old business models, whether it was Vice or BuzzFeed or what Vox or whatever else has come along that people have said, this is…”
McLean: Valeant's wrongdoing was drug price hikes, not hidden accounting
“The ways in which they were different, I don't think the substance of the Valiant story was accounting misrepresentation the way it was with Enron. You could actually see pretty clearly that what Valiant was doing with its numbers. There were a lot more of Enr…”