E64: Antitrust standards & enforcement, tech repricing, lab leak obfuscation, E63 reaction

But David is saying something really important. The risk, in my opinion, is not of runaway inflation anymore. And the reason was what happened this weekend was incredibly important.

We're in the eighth, in my opinion, I think we're in the eighth inning of the tech drawdown. So if you're a high growth tech company, you've been smashed for three months in a row. ... When you see this thing really get cracked is when those folks trade down another 10% or 15%. And then I think we're kind of through most of the pain.

if it's not about consumer harm and it's about decreasing competition in this broadly, I would argue, subjective sense, then what's scary is that there are going to be decisions made by interpreters of what is and isn't competitive. And ultimately, if they're not trying to keep in mind the best interest of the consumer, then it is, in fact, going to cause consumer harm at some point. ... And so I would be nervous about that subjectivity and the slippery slope it enables.

In 2019, I wrote in my annual letter, there's a section called the tightening of the regulatory noose, meaning it was a framework for how to basically dismantle big tech. And element number one of that was a changing regulatory landscape. And it's really incredible to see it in front of our eyes. ... We got a bill that just left judiciary, right? That was effectively voted across the aisle. That's now going to go to the floor of the Senate ... So I think some version of that is going to pass. She's going to go and scrutinize these companies.

I think this administration is creating tremendous business uncertainty. I think the reaction of a lot of big tech companies is going to be to stop doing M&A until the situation gets clarified because they just don't know. You know, targets or target companies are going to want to have huge breakup fees. And it's just going to have a chilling effect on the market for M&A.

you had the Fed and the federal government pump a 10 trillion of liquidity into the market over the past two years because of Covid. Now they're starting to pull that back. And there was, I think, a general asset inflation across asset classes. Certain types of assets clearly got more inflated than others.

you're right that we pumped in $10 trillion, but over the last three weeks, and really over the last two and a half months, we have actually eviscerated $10 trillion of value as well. So if you want to measure it, we put $10 trillion of excess capital in, but we've now destroyed $10 trillion of equity.

the reality is, over the last couple of years, we've had trillions of dollars that have flowed into these markets for free. And those trillions of dollars have created lots of mini asset bubbles. ... And regardless, the money is coming out of the markets. The money is going to come out one way or another. And as it starts to come out, these little bubbles are the first that are going to pop.

These archives are going to be super valuable. And I don't think we even know how to value these archives yet because if you look at the Marvel archive or the Star Wars archive, these things just keep printing money year after year.

When you own the franchise, it has value. Disney has shown that. You own the best franchise.

We could live with this variant of Covid, Omicron. ... But in large swaths of the country, we're not choosing to live with it. We're at each other's throats about these vaccine mandates, these other restrictions and school closures.

the economy underlying, there are lots of great businesses that are growing and doing well, and there's stability that's emerging

So this weekend, China cut interest rates. ... Well, if you are cutting rates, it is because you are worried about the other problem, which is that the economy is basically turned over and you need to become more accommodating.

these big tech companies, the FAANGs, they have way too much power in the marketplace. They are now gatekeepers over the internet. They control all these powerful platforms. And broadly speaking, it is time, I think, to basically have some limits on those powers, make sure they don't abuse it. I think she's also right that the traditional standard of consumer harm doesn't really capture that sort of concept of market power for these free ad-based services

I still think this Microsoft Activision deal on balance gets done, because if you take the absolute values away from it, the reality is that it's an adjacent part of Microsoft's core business, and there's nothing fundamentally monopolistic about what would happen if you let Microsoft and Activision come together.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that the economy is at risk. It means that there are valuation bubbles that are going to burst. They're going to decline. And no interest rate policy is going to change that

So we are in a really complicated moment. And I think the risk is that there is an overreaction to incomplete data and we plunge the US economy into a recession. And I just think that that has to be really thoughtfully measured. And guys, we've seen this in 2018-19.

we are dealing with balancing the risks of inflation against the risk of recession. I think that is fundamental. And right now, all the statements have been so hawkish that the markets have been just flowing red now for months. And I think the balance of risk is starting to make recession possible in a way that didn't seem possible two, three months ago.

when you have more competition, the consumer does win. It contains prices. It just doesn't contain asset inflation, which does impact the shareholders of these companies.

look, I invest in B2B subscription businesses. I hate B2C subscription businesses. And the reason is just the churn rates. ... your cohorts are growing 20% every year instead of shrinking 50%

If you're in other areas like value, you've had a pretty good rally. If you're in crypto, you're just starting to get smoked now.

the leading indicators all around the world tell us that their economies are weak, then inflation may have actually been much more transitory than we thought

We've seen a huge correction in growth stocks. We've seen a huge correction in crypto. Basically, anything long dated as the fear of interest rates increasing has gone up, they've massively corrected.

Lots of little new markets have emerged. NFTs, random cryptocurrencies that don't actually do anything. The collectibles market, the art market. Peloton.