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Another reminder that glitter doesn’t always lead to gold. FTX and its oh-so-scruffy whiz kid have tanked, and they’re bringing a lot of risk-takers down with them. But some of us can’t help but wonder if they were even tricked by actual glitter. If they had been paying attention to Rich Goldberg—host of our Cryptonite podcast—they might’ve seen it coming. If they tune in today, they might at least learn a lesson or two.
And while we’re on the subject of misguided expectations, we’ve invited back Charles McElwee of RealClearPennsylvania. He’s here to explain the demographic entanglements that make PA a hard state to call and the mistakes the GOP made that’ve made us blue these days.
And Elon Musk sure has a way of keeping us talking about his new tweet factory. Happy Thanksgiving! See you all in two weeks.
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Apparently Jeff Bezos wasn’t really all that prescient. Amazon has lots of “brick and mortar.”
Empathy can be a good thing, but it’s still stupid to think “Oh, you had a debilitating stroke and now have trouble speaking or understanding speech? No problem, go ahead and be our Senator!”
No Rob, Trump firing the occasional advisor etc, is nothing like what Musk-like house-cleaning would be: largely emptying out the DOJ, and the FBI, and…
Maybe just “a meditation” on firing people is in order.
Peter wonders, “What was it that Sam Bankman-Fried did or had or figured out that enabled him to become one of the leading figures in this new industry?”
Perhaps it was growing up in your neighborhood. It appears his parents have been Stanford professors for many years. Why not interview them for some insights that can be shared with your listeners?
Later, Mr Goldberg laments “missing the Amazon train.” I have had similar regrets, and although the company has enriched its founder and early investors, like Twitter it never manages to make much profit. Lately its shares are down by 50% from their pandemic boom highs and it still has a price earnings ratio of almost 90.
It’s shocking to compare Amazon’s and Apple’s June 2022 quarterly income figures:
. . . . . . Amazon Apple
Revenue 121.2B 83.0B
Gross Profit 54.8B 35.9B
Operating Profit 3.3B 23.1B
Net Profit – 2.0B +19.4B
One of these companies is not delivering!
Personally, I am skeptical that Amazon could have done what they did without the Federal Reserve creating so many bubbles and inflation.
They take their inflated stock, float debt based on that securitization off that stock, and then they go and raise hell with it one way or another. It’s not like that debt earns over it’s interest doing something productive, usually. It’s buying competitors and doing surveillance on their vendors and so forth. They threaten the post office and all of the logistics companies so they have to play ball with them. Then everybody is excited to buy into a monopoly. Bezos is totally in bed with the government every way you can be now. It’s not capitalism. It’s not adding value. Just look at the numbers above.
one edit
Just finished listening to the Ricochet podcast on my Saturday long work out (as I do every Saturday) . Let me be clear in my opinion: Charles McElwee is full of sh#t. All of his explanations as to why the Red Wave predictions didn’t pan out were true and known before the election. And yet they didn’t dissuade him from predicting the “Wave”. It’s appropriate that this podcast also featured the FTX crypto scam and Peter discussing his penny-ante losses in both crypto and the PA elections. Both were fueled by BS and BS spouted by opinionaters who really didn’t know but who get paid for their opinion not for relaying truth.
I didn’t hear Mr. McElwee apology and “yes” its due. Furthermore, even at the end of his time, he threw in one more excuse, the cable company fight that prevented some from watching the debate. C’mon Man!!
Even if he didn’t apologize I would have been far happier if he had taken the Otto route and simply declared to the listening audience , “You f’ed up, you trusted us!”
I have listened to a bunch of analysis about this. The Charlie Kirk show with SeanDavis from the
Federalist and who I assume is a TP USA employee, Andrew and a couple of interviews with Ryan Gidursky. The best Ryan Gidursky interview was with Howie Carr on about Thursday.
After listening to this guy, I think it comes down to three things.
Abortion worked.
Government institutionalized ballot harvesting.
And then listening to this guy, the suburbs don’t care about crime, because everything is set up so they don’t have to go into the city.
This ballot harvesting thing makes me sick to my stomach. Totally un-American. Think of all of the capital and government force that is going to be pushed around with this communist crap.
I forgot to mention Mr. McElwee’s Pauline Kael moment when spoke of all of the people he had spoken to who were sure of the Red Wave.
People need to get out of their bubbles.
Why is it so hard for some to recognize that the name Trump is toxic in an election. Trump is meth for the Republican Party. (And I voted for the guy in ‘20)
It was disappointing that y’all didn’t talk about the money laundering done with FTX through Ukraine for the benefit of the Democrat Party. I won’t go anywhere near cryptocurrency and am outraged that my tax money ended up funding the Democrat Party.
I’m only at the midpoint of the show, still in the discussion with @richardgoldberg about the FTX debacle. Enjoying it so far. (And, by the way, I recommend the Cryptonite show to everyone. It’s a fascinating window into a mysterious business.)
In a post I wrote here a few years ago I pointed out that if you aren’t the keeper of your own passwords to your own cryptocurrency wallet then you aren’t “disintermediated” in any meaningful sense. That is, if you’re using an exchange to manage your crytpo accounts, and if your passwords are passwords into the exchange rather than into an actual cryptocurrency, then you’re no better off than if you’re keeping your money in your Venmo account.
In fact, you’re worse off. Crypto is the wild west of money, the lawless fringe, and when people make the mistake of confusing the radically laissez-faire purity of crypto-mathematics with the saloon brawl that is the world of crypto-business, you’re going to get things like FTX. How did FTX happen? Rob got it exactly right: it happened because the sector attracts people who scoff at rules, and, unlike as with Bitcoin itself, there’s no air-tight encryption algorithm keeping creeps like Bankman-Fried from taking your money.
Crypto is a Ponzi scheme with basically criminal use cases, but the exchanges make it even worse, by suckering people too unknowledgeable to actually control their own money into trusting others to do it for them.
I’ll stick with S&P 500 index funds and Berkshire Hathaway B shares.
Doesn’t Berkshire Hathaway oppose fuel pipelines because he owns a railroad and wants oil and coal etc to be shipped by rail? Sounds like by supporting BH you’re against US energy security and independence etc.
Would you want to own stock in Joe/Dr Jill/Hunter Biden Inc, even if it was “profitable?”
His purchase of shares doesn’t force change in any of that.
Maybe not individually, but the same could be said about any socially-negative individual investments.
100% wrong. Absent communist left wing government force, people will buy equity based on its discounted future returns. i.e. cigarettes.
I have approximately three more hours for this.
Yes – my BH shares are the single best investment I’ve owned over the last 20 years.
My SECOND-best investment over the last 20-plus years was when I took a flyer on a thousand dollars or so worth of Phillip Morris stock in the late ’90s when there were rumors that all the tobacco companies were going to declare bankruptcy due to the second-hand-smoke lawsuits. I got in within a dollar or two of its low price. Wish I’d had the courage to buy a lot more than I did.
That type of thinking is insanely stupid, unless the government is going to throw you in jail or something.
?
Okay, good to have you on the record that at least as long as your investment isn’t “significant” it’s okay to invest for profit with Apartheid Forever Inc. of Capetown, and Kill All The Jews LLC of Tehran…
After all, such things have a long (ig)noble history, such as investments by DuPont in Nazi Germany, etc.
I worded that poorly. I am 100% agreeing with you.
Yeah, but I lost a bundle when Gulags-R-Us went under in 1991.
This is a bogus comparison and you know it. You were talking about pipelines and railroads.
LOL perfect.
https://www.influencewatch.org/person/warren-buffett/
Why would conservatives think it’s smart to invest for profit with people/businesses that put their investment and a lot more towards supporting their opposition?
The equity is going to move 100% regardless of all of this.
Furthermore, warren Buffett knows how to be parasitical on the government, which is the intelligent way to make money. It’s stupid to be idealistic about this.
A difference of degree, perhaps, but not of kind.
Yes, and which are actually better for the energy independence and security of the country? Also safety – fewer spills, etc.
Pipelines, as much as possible/feasible.
Which does Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffet oppose?
Pipelines. Because he owns a railroad. So his personal financial interests – and those who invest with him – do not align with the national interests.
Why invest for profit with the Obama and Biden Administrations, which Buffet has essentially done? Even if you “profit” from that too, is it more than you lose from the Biden Economy, etc? Sure, Buffet can profit. But can YOU? And even if your stock portfolio increases more than you lose by inflation and gas prices etc – which don’t bother Buffet at all – it’s still not what a conservative should do.
Might as well just vote for Obama and Biden while you’re at it. The funding you’re helping to create is much bigger than your vote and any individual political donations you might make.
Not everything in life is political.
If it was, I couldn’t listen to music, consume mass media, or do much of anything.
ESG investing is stoopid. Intentionally/purposely anti-ESG investing is stupid too.