E148: McCarthy ousted, border chaos, Cruise's robotaxi "accident" & more

I mean, not today, but when they get there, which I don't think will be 10 years. I mean, it seems like Tesla is this way ahead of everybody else.

So the thing that GM and Cruise don't have, in my opinion, is a path to acquire enough data to be credible. Could they solve a limited set of streets in San Francisco? Yeah. ... I think Tesla is the only one because I think they've acquired and they are acquiring so much training data that for them, they're fine-tuning reasoning.

the point is there's over a million cars recording because when you buy a Tesla, you turn on self-driving. It's in every car and so every car is recording data all the time as opposed to GM. GM doesn't take the time to put the $10,000, $20,000 package.

So I think we're on track for another huge record in 2023 And the point is that the pace is accelerating.

so they're going to do the right thing, obviously, and build the wall, but they don't want to say it. So it's just ridiculous.

By the way, my prediction on the Sphere, I think there will be dozens of these things soon enough, because this can become a new form of live entertainment venue. It's not just a stage where someone stands on it and plays music. It's a new model, and more than musical artists, I think you'll see new kinds of art and new kinds of things happening in these things.

If it stops the CR process, it'll be effective to the tune of above $500 billion. It'll be half a trillion dollars effective.

There's a lot of regulatory capture and incumbency that wants to see these things not succeed. I think we're really denying ourselves, in many cases, the opportunity to realize progress because we're so concerned about any loss. Nuclear fission is a really great example of this. Three Mile Island accident and Fukushima.

And I think there is growing opposition to a blank check as long as it takes policy towards Ukraine. We've already appropriated over 100 billion. What's the return on investment of that? The counteroffensive failed.

You balloon the deficit, you balloon the debt, you have all kinds of pork barrel spending, there's zero accountability, the bullets cost $6,000, the umbrella holders cost $15,000. All of this nonsense that just brings us closer and closer to some sort of default or economic contagion.

National debt reported by the Treasury Department increased by $275 billion in a one-day report yesterday, $275 billion in a day. The entire TARP program during 2008 was $400 billion. That's how out of control our fiscal condition is. ... there's an arithmetic to this that at some point it becomes ever-escalating until you step in and do something dramatic about it.

Now, we're seeing a separate problem, which is long rates are going up, and the long rates are going up because of this concern that the federal government has too much debt. Bondholders are starting to demand a higher long-term premium to hold that debt. ... Unless the political system gets serious about reducing deficits, even if inflation comes down, and even if the Fed cuts short-term rates, you're going to have a problem with long-term rates remaining high, and that is going to keep the cost of capital high

the number of people that could have been pulled out of poverty if we made cheap, abundant energy available at an accelerated pace rather than at a decelerated pace, it could have had a much more significant effect. ... Meanwhile, you see China building 450 nuclear fission stations and the US building none. And I think that that's part of the story of where the US is today.

we had a segment a couple of weeks ago where we were talking about these high-priced, late-stage unicorn rounds needing to get revalued. The IPO of Instacart was a good example of this where, yes, the IPO did about $10 billion, but the last private round was at $39 billion. So there is a big wave of revaluations or down rounds coming.