Barak

Just because Donald Trump acts goofy doesn’t mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Lately, some of the people who know Trump the best have been saying in no uncertain terms that he should not be president again.

Joe Biden has been one of America’s most consequential presidents, as well as a dear friend and partner to me. Today, we’ve also been reminded – again – that he’s a patriot of the highest order. Here’s my full statement: barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-o…

@mulegirl 😢

@karaswisher And audio book?

It has arrived—The just-published hardcover Joel Whitburn’s “Top Pop Singles Vol. 2: 1990-2022” book. The last project Joel Whitburn started before he passed away last year. So fresh it contains a list of every number one song through September 30th of 2023!

“Nothing. You began as nothing and you will end as nothing. And in between—everything, and nothing. In between—joy and sorrow, beauty and decay. Everything yours to partake of yours to bear. Yours to see, to know, to give birth to—and to let go. None of it yours to have. Not even you are yours to have. You belong to a wholeness so great you cannot even conceive of it. No, it is not a belonging; nothing owns you. You are simply part of it. You came out of it, and you will return to it. You do not ever leave it; you are part of it forever. And this is your moment to be alive.” This poem—by Marcia Falk—found me in the Synagogue today and gripped me. If only we could tune into that unperceived, larger-than-life wholeness and find peace in the part that’s our to play, somewhere between Galaxy Cluster SMACS 0723 and David Geffen Hall.

@BillAckman @NeriOxman I listened to the whole thing on one walk and I was moved and inspired! Blew me away.

I haven’t watched yet, but I can still predict that this will move you in profound ways and make you optimistic in your darkest moments. @NeriOxman is one of the most incredible human beings on earth. Neri Oxman: Biology, Art, and Science of Design & Engineering with Natur... youtu.be/XbPHojL_61U?si… via @YouTube

@steviegpro So sad

RIP Jimmy Buffett. Even before all the “Margaritavile” -style songs he’s known for came his beautiful 1974 hit Come Monday. Here’s his music video for that song—his first ever, made on a shoestring budget—complete with commentary from Jimmy. youtu.be/XKGw_hrlaOY?si…

@NeriOxman @lexfridman A great podcast! Really.

Thank you so much, @lexfridman, for elevating the art of conversation to the power of connection. I loved our time together and am grateful for the meaning we found. And thank you—X friends—for your patience in hearing me out and taking me in, one insight at a time. @lexfridman, you are to me the very embodiment of E. E. Cummings’ “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question” and I am honored to call you a friend.

Amazing set by ⁦@AJRBrothers⁩ in Tel Aviv last night, playing in front of a crowd of 60,000 on a bill with ⁦@Imaginedragons⁩

@quantycs @BillAckman @politico Bill ak

The mystery of Vivek Ramaswamy’s rapid rise in the polls politi.co/3OOOG9z via @politico

Their spirit will win the war.

A must watch if you are interested in the risks of AI

Today we’re releasing “The A.I. Dilemma” – a new talk @aza and I gave on 3/9, a week before GPT4 launched. *Pls share it widely.* It's critical for institutions to understand how the race between AI labs is accelerating the likelihood of catastrophe: youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj…

@BillAckman @SRuhle You have been nothing but open and helpful in this circumstance. Twitter can be so ugly but thank you for helping it get to a good conclusion.

I am an investor. I am long America. I am just trying to be helpful. It is disappointing that @SRuhle and others assume that I must have a hidden agenda where I would personally benefit. Would it be better for me to say nothing, or instead, is it more helpful for me to give my best advice to the regulators who oversee our banks? I have assumed the latter, but perhaps I am wrong. Would it better for our country when I see a disaster looming to say nothing, put on a massive short and quietly collect the profits? I care about our country, its competitive position, and the successful functioning of our capital markets and banking system. If that means I am conflicted then so be it. If you don’t think my advice or commentary is helpful or interesting, then you are free to ignore it and not follow me. Let’s see what happens on Monday if and when my advice is ignored.

Not being mentioned here... Correlated Portfolio Risk. Perhaps @BillAckman is raising the alarms for the good of markets & depositors... or maybe he's talking his own book.

What should the FDIC do? @FDICgov to guarantee all bank deposits by Sunday night before Asia open and call a time out. Run a process to recapitalize @SVB_Financial while managing liquidation of UST and MBS portfolios to be reinvested in short term UST. Determine the capital hole and raise a ‘fortress’ amount of capital from investors co-led by @generalatlantic @sequoia etc. and smart financial investors to recap bank. Need a balance between sophisticated VCs and risk-adverse financial investors. Replace senior management and board. Equity holders pre-recap are wiped out, bond holders are protected. @FDICgov to receive penny warrants on recapped bank as compensation for its backstop guarantee. FDIC develops a new guarantee regime where large dollar deposit insurance is made available up to sensible limits per account to accommodate business borrowers while 100% guarantee remains in place. Once new deposit insurance regime is employed, 100% guarantee is removed.

Great example of the risks the current versions of LLM-based search has when providing information on current events.

@williamtp Wow!! So wrong!

@BillAckman @SVB_Financial @jpmorgan @Citi And the risk to venture is real. public.flourish.studio/visualisation/…

The gov’t has about 48 hours to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake. By allowing @SVB_Financial to fail without protecting all depositors, the world has woken up to what an uninsured deposit is — an unsecured illiquid claim on a failed bank. Absent @jpmorgan @citi or @BankofAmerica acquiring SVB before the open on Monday, a prospect I believe to be unlikely, or the gov’t guaranteeing all of SVB’s deposits, the giant sucking sound you will hear will be the withdrawal of substantially all uninsured deposits from all but the ‘systemically important banks’ (SIBs). These funds will be transferred to the SIBs, US Treasury (UST) money market funds and short-term UST. There is already pressure to transfer cash to short-term UST and UST money market accounts due to the substantially higher yields available on risk-free UST vs. bank deposits. These withdrawals will drain liquidity from community, regional and other banks and begin the destruction of these important institutions. The increased demand for short-term UST will drive short rates lower complicating the @federalreserve’s efforts to raise rates to slow the economy. Already thousands of the fastest growing, most innovative venture-backed companies in the U.S. will begin to fail to make payroll next week. Had the gov’t stepped in on Friday to guarantee SVB’s deposits (in exchange for penny warrants which would have wiped out the substantial majority of its equity value) this could have been avoided and SVB’s 40-year franchise value could have been preserved and transferred to a new owner in exchange for an equity injection. We would have been open to participating. This approach would have minimized the risk of any gov’t losses, and created the potential for substantial profits from the rescue. Instead, I think it is now unlikely any buyer will emerge to acquire the failed bank. The gov’t’s approach has guaranteed that more risk will be concentrated in the SIBs at the expense of other banks, which itself creates more systemic risk. For those who make the case that depositors be damned as it would create moral hazard to save them, consider the feasibility of a world where each depositor must do their own credit assessment of the bank they choose to bank with. I am a pretty sophisticated financial analyst and I find most banks to be a black box despite the 1,000s of pages of @SECGov filings available on each bank. SVB’s senior management made a basic mistake. They invested short-term deposits in longer-term, fixed-rate assets. Thereafter short-term rates went up and a bank run ensued. Senior management screwed up and they should lose their jobs. The @FDICgov and OCC also screwed up. It is their job to monitor our banking system for risk and SVB should have been high on their watch list with more than $200B of assets and $170B of deposits from business borrowers in effectively the same industry. The FDIC’s and OCC’s failure to do their jobs should not be allowed to cause the destruction of 1,000s of our nation’s highest potential and highest growth businesses (and the resulting losses of 10s of 1,000s of jobs for some of our most talented younger generation) while also permanently impairing our community and regional banks’ access to low-cost deposits. This administration is particularly opposed to concentrations of power. Ironically, its approach to SVB’s failure guarantees duopolistic banking risk concentration in a handful of SIBs. My back-of-the envelope review of SVB’s balance sheet suggests that even in a liquidation, depositors should eventually get back about 98% of their deposits, but eventually is too long when you have payroll to meet next week. So even without assigning any franchise value to SVB, the cost of a gov’t guarantee of SVB deposits would be minimal. On the other hand, the unintended consequences of the gov’t’s failure to guarantee SVB deposits are vast and profound and need to be considered and addressed before Monday. Otherwise, watch out below.

@BillAckman @SVB_Financial @jpmorgan @Citi 💯💯