Latest / The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast / AI, Tech, Industrial Policy and Baby Equities with Brad Gerstner (Altimeter Capital Founder and CEO)

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AI, Tech, Industrial Policy and Baby Equities with Brad Gerstner (Altimeter Capital Founder and CEO) · The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast

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>> Jon Hartley: This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century podcast,
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an official podcast of the Hoover Institution Economic Policy Working Group
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where we talk about economics, markets and public policy.
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I'm Jon Hartley, your host.
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Today my guest is Brad Gerstner, who is the founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital,
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the Silicon Valley tech investing firm with over 10 billion in assets under
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management.
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Welcome, Brad.
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>> Brad Gerstner: Hey, Jon.
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It's great to be here.
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Huge fan of the pod, huge fan of Hoover, so thanks for having me.
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>> Jon Hartley: Well, thanks so much, Brad, for joining us.
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Before we get into technology, industrial policy, and
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all these related concepts to your expertise, I want to first get
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into your origins before you became a Silicon Valley investor.
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You're a Midwest guy in terms of where you grew up.
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You were born in Indiana, you did your BA at Wabash College, you spent some time at
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Oxford, you did your J.D at IU's law school, you worked in Washington D.C.
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you served some time as Indiana's Deputy Secretary of State.
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Then you did your MBA at Harvard Business School.
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I mean, how did you first get interested in economics, technology and investing?
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And who were some of your early heroes in that process of discovery?
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>> Brad Gerstner: Well, maybe a little bit of context because I think we're
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all byproducts of, of where we grew up and how we grew up.
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So I grew up in a small rural town in northwest Indiana.
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You know, I was coming of age in the late 70s and early 1980s.
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My dad, who was one of my early heroes, was first generation college and
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he was the general manager of a company that made auto parts and
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employed a lot of the men in this small town.
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And like was happening across America, a big corporate came to town,
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bought the company and laid off a lot of his men in 1977.
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And my dad felt this obligation to start his own company, hire them back and
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compete on making parts for the auto industry.
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But unfortunately, despite him working heroically,
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the combination of Japanese low priced cars, 13% interest rates,
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13% inflation, he just couldn't keep the credit in the business to
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keep the business going and eventually shut down.
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And so they started calling the part of the world that I was in the Rust Belt.
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It was pretty depressing.
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It all started kind of under Carter and you know, and
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the big changes came with Reagan and Volcker in 1981.
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So you have to understand that that's what I was growing.
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That's what was really going on around me.
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When I was in middle school, I started to pay attention to how the world works.
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I started to ask questions and then as I started high school,
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I found my way to the stock pages, into Adam Smith and to Milton Friedman and
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to Warren Buffett, which would start this real long journey, decade long journey.
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Really, into kind of classic liberal thinking around free market capitalism,
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around limited government, you know, and at the same time,
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my mom was working two jobs and she was sacrificing everything for our family.
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And I'll Never forget, in 1985, she shows up with this IBM 5170, right?
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Like one of the first personal computers.
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And I knew we didn't have the money to buy this computer, but
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it turns out she bought it on a payment plan that was deducted from her paycheck
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every week because my mom was just hell bent on helping, you know, the kids have
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a better journey than the one they were they were on at that point in time.
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My school newspaper in middle school that I was helping to
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edit bought its first Macintosh PC in 1985.
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And so I got introduced to these early PCs and
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then this early email network called CompuServe.
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And I realized this technology thing could be my ticket out of the Rust Belt.
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And so I just started getting really, really excited about both learning why
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the world was operating the way it did, why this happened to my dad, why
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the Reagan policies seemed to be working, and also just fascinated by technology.
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>> Jon Hartley: That's fascinating.
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And yeah, certainly Hoover.
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Milton Friedman is a big part of Hoover transformation in terms of building
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out a public policy think tank.
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And Freeman came to Hoover after he won the Nobel Prize in the late 70s.
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And then while he was here, he started really becoming more of a public
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intellectual and doing producing the Free to Choose series.
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And it's amazing to see just how many people that's influenced over the decades.
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It's awesome.
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I mean, it's very interesting how, or
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I guess just how influential that that's really been.
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So you founded altimeter capital in 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession.
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You know, Altimeter does lots of VC investing.
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It does lots of investing in public equities,
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a lot of public technology names.
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I'm just curious, like,
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what compelled you to start an investment firm in the middle of a financial crisis?
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I mean, who does that?
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And who does that so successfully?
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>> Brad Gerstner: Well, first, before, before we go there, I have to go back to
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Milton Friedman and, you know, kind of this formative period because it
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really informs the decisions I make, like with Altimeter down the line, you know.
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Of course, of course,
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the first thing I read of Milton Friedman's Was free to choose, right?
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This idea, you know, because remember in the early 1980s,
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it just felt like government was oppressive.
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Like it felt like the thing that took my dad down was, you know,
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50% tax burdens, you know, these super high interest rates.
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And so you read Free to Choose, it was all about.free markets allow for
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innovation and efficiency and personal freedom.
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And that really spoke to me, right?
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And this idea that government tends to distort incentives and
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create all these unintended consequences.
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And so that was really important to me.
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But then I kind of went backwards in order to go forwards.
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You and I have talked about your own journey and your own study, and so
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I think unpacking a little bit of that, you know, Adam Smith,
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in this wealth of nations, you know, this idea that free markets and
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competition, you know, the individual is generally pursuing, pursuing
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what's in their own economic best interest leads to the best public good, right.
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And I mean, if you think about the political machinations going on today,
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all of these things is this tension between, you know,
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kind of freedom and allowing this thing we have in the United States, right.
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What makes the United States great is not government, right?
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It's government sets the creation, the conditions for
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all of this incredible innovation that comes from our system of risk takers and
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risk capital, the very DNA of the country.
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And so, you know, and I remember the first time I read, you know,
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John Stuart Mills on Liberty, same thing, it was like this idea of,
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you know, limited government that was so appealing to me.
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And of course, when I looked at the world around me, you couldn't help but
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to pick up a newspaper again in the early 80s and you were reading about Volcker and
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what he was doing to, you know, really smash and change monetary policy and,
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you know, and bring an end to this hyperinflation.
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And of course then the debate over supply side economics, Laffer and
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the fact that, we could actually lower taxes and get higher tax revenues, right.
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And so that to me was fascinating.
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I went off to college, you mentioned at Wabash College.
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And I was lucky, you know, the reason I went to Wabash College,
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I couldn't afford college.
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I was terrified of debt.
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And they were lucky enough to give me a full ride scholarship to come study.
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They were going to pay for me to study at Oxford.
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And so I thought, I can't pass up this deal.
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And I was lucky that their economics department had a partnership with
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the University of Chicago, right?
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So that like, really unpacked.
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So when I started.
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Started studying economics there I was introduced to the likes of Gary Becker and
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applying these economic theories to better explain what was happening in society,
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which appealed to me much more than the stuff I was reading in political science
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or the stuff I was reading in philosophy or Stigler.
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I was particularly interested in the law, so Richard Posner, and this idea that,
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all the law can be explained through the lens of economic reasoning,
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and it should aim to allocate resources efficiently.
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And so then when I went off to study at Oxford, I studied PPE, right?
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Politics, philosophy, and economics.
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And there it was, just a lucky time, right?
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I dove into the works of HLA Hart, which really expanded on John Stuart Mills,
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Ronald Dworkin, who was not of the liberal economic school,
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but was exploring some really interesting things about abortion,
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euthanasia, the meaning of life, and applying economic theories to that.
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But I'll tell you what really made Oxford such an interesting time,
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Jon, was that you gonna think about the moment.
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The war had just come down, right?
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So the Cold War was ending.
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I'm in Europe.
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I had never traveled outside the country before in my life, and I'm out at Oxford.
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And the big debate at the time in England is whether or
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not they should join a single monetary union, right?
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This was leading up to the Maastricht Summit, which was going to occur in 1991.
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And so that debate, I remember, I was a member of the Oxford Union,
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which is the debating chamber, and
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I remember the debates between Edward Heath, the former prime minister,
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and Norman Tebbit about whether or not they should join the single union.
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And think about this, right?
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This has really foreshadowed what we've now seen.
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The conservatives were saying, this could lead to fiscal irresponsibility, right?
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You had a monetary union, but you didn't have a fiscal union.
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And so it's just going to lead to a bunch of bailouts of countries that
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weren't going to be financially sound.
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And so it led to all these moral hazards and
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potential bailouts that we've come to see, frankly, across Europe.
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And I would argue as part of the reason that Europe now, for
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decades, has underperformed the United States, and
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the national advantage of the United States has only increased.
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And so those were absolutely formative things for
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me leading up to this period.
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And then on the technology side,
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I mentioned that I saw some of the early email servers,
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but then you get Netscape Navigator in 1994.
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And I remember, first reading,
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some of Joseph Schumpeter's work on creative destruction.
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And to me, this became an important thing that drove me into technology,
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which is not only was it a way out of the Rust Belt for me in the 80s,
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but this idea that capitalism is not just about companies staying around forever.
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But there would actually be technology that would come along,
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it would disrupt what came before it, and
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it would be the source of our innovation and efficiency and economic growth.
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And that we ought to as a government society,
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we ought to embrace creative destruction, not be fearful of creative destruction.
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And so that was it.
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I went to law school, graduated in 1996, and
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I made my way out to Silicon Valley to see what this place was all about.
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And so when I think about that part of this is just getting lucky, right?
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It's being, I think, the adversity that I had trying to understand
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what happened to my family, why dad's business didn't work.
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And that led me to the excitement about what leads to human prosperity.
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And so I went to law school, graduated, and I started at this big
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law firm in Indianapolis, and I was the only one who knew how to build.
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I built our first webpage for this law firm.
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I was the only one who knew about the Internet.
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And so as a young associate,
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I was getting all of the Internet assignments and technology assignments.
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And I got appointed Deputy Secretary of State, as you mentioned,
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by our former Senator Dick Lugar, who really pushed me to do that.
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And I got behind this fledgling work in Indianapolis around venture capital.
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But I realized pretty early on, I grew up on a small lake in northern Indiana, and I
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realized if you wanna catch big fish, you got to go to the lake with the big fish.
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And Indianapolis was not going to be the hotbed of startups or
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the hotbed of venture capital.
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And so going back to business school in 1999 was really my off-ramp
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out of Indianapolis to get to eventually get to Silicon Valley.
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So, I give you that as a predicate for what was really kind of the framework and
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motivation for me ultimately to start Altimeter.
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And so I'm happy to jump into that, but maybe explore a little bit more.
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What?
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Some of that journey.
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>> Jon Hartley: Yeah, well, I mean, it's amazing,
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just I think your story that I think you're very curious in
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terms of these key questions of why are countries rich and
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poor and what drives innovation.
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I think it's amazing to hear your story saying contrast to others,
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who have lived in some way through the call, the decline of the Rust Belt or
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the decline of manufacturing in the United States.
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And a lot of the response to a lot of that I often find is very different,
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in the sense that people are very upset about being left behind and
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very upset about this sort of technological displacement.
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Whereas I feel like your drive and curiosity sort of led
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you to a very different place and different conclusion.
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>> Brad Gerstner: Yeah.
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>> Jon Hartley: Do you still keep in touch with a family in Indiana?
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And I mean, what's your thinking around, I guess, where they.
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Obviously, it's been fast-forward a couple decades later.
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Those states are one critical in terms of determining
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electoral outcomes of presidential elections in the US, and
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obviously the China shock has become very front and center and
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also is an economic policy issue in terms of what to do in response to it.
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And we have a lot of discussion about trade policy,
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terrorists, industrial policy.
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Do you have any thoughts on any of that in terms of what works and what doesn't?
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I mean, we could talk a little bit about.
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>> Brad Gerstner: For sure.
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>> Jon Hartley: We'll talk about that in a little bit.
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>> Brad Gerstner: Yeah. No, I mean, I think there's this
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assumption that just because these people are being disaffected in that part of
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the world, that therefore they must want to have a lot more government.
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But I find just the opposite generally in that part of the world.
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If you go to those places that frankly just shifted back into the Trump column,
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you know, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, generally,
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they find government to be burdensome.
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They find taxes to be high, and they're not looking for more help.
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They're just looking to keep more of what they make.
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These are hardworking folk like my dad.
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And they wanna have stable interest rates.
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They want to have stable inflation.
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They wanna have an economy that.
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Generally is growing.
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They're not looking to get bailed out.
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And so, again, I think we're all formed in those early years.
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For me, I saw the solution was not more government.
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The solution was less government, right?
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The reduction in tax rates, the reduction in interest rates, the reduction in
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inflation that occurred in the early 80s unleashed decades of expansion.
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And the more I watched, the more I got convinced that when government
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got out of the way and allowed individuals to innovate, right?
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And allowed the private market to provide the risk capitals to those
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individuals who were innovative.
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Remember, 200 years earlier,
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the entire American experiment was an entrepreneurial experiment, right?
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It was not a centrally planned experiment.
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And if you look at, I know you and I were pretty mesmerized
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by the speech that Milei gave at Davos now a year ago.
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And if you look at the economic growth, I've shown some charts on Twitter, right?
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100% of the economic prosperity and GDP growth the world has ever seen.
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We have 2,000 years, you have no GDP growth.
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And it all happens to magically line up with the founding of America,
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the Wealth of nations, limited government, entrepreneurialism, et cetera.
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Government is important to create the conditions, but
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government did not manufacture that GDP growth.
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That was manufactured on the back of hardworking people who had the incentives
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to do it.
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They got to keep the products of that labor and innovation.
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And the interesting thing is, if you look at the last 200 years, right?
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The number of years it takes GDP to double, and GDP, right?
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We have a fixed amount of labor and capital, and so
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what's the productive output of that fixed amount of labor and capital?
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Well, it's gone up at an accelerating rate.
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So the number of years it takes GDP to double has shrunk.
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Said in other words,
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the number of years it takes to improve the human condition has shrunk, right?
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And so whether we're talking about literacy rates, whether we're talking
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about life expectancy, whether we're talking about GDP per capita,
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whether we're talking about conveniences and modern luxuries, education,
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healthcare, et cetera, it's gotten unequivocally better.
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And I think that is not by coincidence.
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The United States advantage is not a coincidence.
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I think the US's advantage is inherently because we have a government
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that's in balance with allowing individuals,
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particularly in places like Silicon Valley, to create.
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And I've gotten worried, frankly, over the last decade, watching
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particularly in the state of California, people turn against entrepreneurs,
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people turn against capitalism, people turn against, right?
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The productivity that, frankly,
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is the golden goose that creates the prosperity for these places.
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And so part of my mission, both as an investor, I mean, I benefit and
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entrepreneurs benefit, and the country benefits from providing risk capital,
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building the next great things.
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All the new AI companies, Jon, are coming out of Silicon Valley.
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That's not by accident, but there is a concern that the natural drift can
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be away from capitalism if people feel disaffected, right?
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And so, that's been something that I've studied, I've talked a lot about, and
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I think a lot of that was informed by what I observed over those decades and
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the people that I studied.
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But I'm more convinced of it now than I ever been.
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Not that markets are perfect, not that the government has no role to play, but
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in the balance between government and the invisible hand of the markets,
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the United States has benefited for 200 years by erring on the side of markets,
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by erring on the side of innovators.
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By erring on the side of this limited government, that is in stark
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opposition to what Europe's done over the course of the last 20 years.
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And look at the dramatic differential, we have left Europe in the dust.
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And our advantages are compounding the next,
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people talk about the last century being the American century.
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I hate to tell Europe and
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everybody else, this century is also going to be the American century.
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>> Jon Hartley: Absolutely.
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And no, I totally agree.
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I mean, in the sense that, one, I think you're absolutely right.
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I mean, what I would call liberal economic institutions are a huge part
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of why growth started in the 1700s, 1800s, and is a huge,
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I think, part of what makes the US different from rest of the world.
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It's not a coincidence that Silicon Valley just popped up in the US, and
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I think, not a coincidence that the US continues to grow on a GDP per capita
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basis coming out of the global financial crisis.
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Whereas all these other Western European countries, Canada and Japan, even
21:11
part of the global financial crisis, have stopped growing on a per capita basis.
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And it's very interesting.
21:17
I mean, you do have some technology stories of Spotify in Sweden or Shopify in
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Canada or a blip like BlackBerry in Canada or something like that.
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But it's very clear that the US has a massive advantage in technology, and
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that's a big part of that growth differential.
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I think you're absolutely right in the sense that technology isn't something
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that just comes out of nowhere exogenously and that the incentives matter.
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Incentives to innovate matter.
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And that really sort of goes back to ease of doing business and
21:48
liberal economic institutions.
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And right now, like for example, Canada is raising its capital gains tax rate,
21:56
and you know, the CEO of and founder of Shopify is saying,
22:00
why would I want to stick around in Canada, if you're making it so
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inhospitable for a founder like that to keep the firm there.
22:08
So speaking of starting firms, so
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you started Altimeter in 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession.
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>> Brad Gerstner: Yeah, so let's talk about that.
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>> Jon Hartley: Yeah, what compelled you to start an investment firm
22:18
in the middle of a financial crisis at that time?
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And how hard was it?
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>> Brad Gerstner: Yeah, I mean, so with the backdrop that we just talked
22:27
about now, perhaps it makes a little more sense.
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If you think about it, the financial crisis in 2008 was in many
22:36
ways just that a crisis of the financial institutions of the United States.
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I was paying attention to the technology companies, right?
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And there's nothing about 2008 that slowed down
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the success of those technology companies.
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We were in the middle of my first super cycle.
22:57
So Altimeter tends.
22:58
My investment theory going way back had been to know and understand something
23:03
particularly well to gain a competitive advantage, to build a moat.
23:08
In terms of my understanding of how the world worked.
23:11
And if I understood it better than other people,
23:14
then I could invest at a price today that would compound for a longer period.
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And the reason I was getting that price today is because I understood it better.
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So going back to that first personal computer and those email networks and
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all the things that got me excited about technology,
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I had studied technology as an anthropologist, right?
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As a researcher,
23:34
as an analyst from when I helped start General Catalyst back in 1999 and 2000.
23:39
So we were still right in the middle of the compounding that came
23:44
from the Internet.
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And it unleashed massive benefits for individuals.
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Just think, anybody could Google anything in the world and discover any information.
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And again, it wasn't the government that provided that innovation.
23:59
To humanity it was a private company, you know, in Google.
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And it was still compounding at super high rates,
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as were other vertical search companies, companies like Zillow and
24:09
companies like booking.com that I was an investor in.
24:12
And so I was really excited.
24:14
And some of my heroes of investing, right,
24:17
guys I had grown up with in Boston as Seth Klarman, the founder of Balpost,
24:22
he founded BalPost in 1981 in the teeth of the 1981 recession, right?
24:27
We're just talking about that when Volcker was trying to imagine founding bauposts in
24:32
the teeth of that recession.
24:34
Or Paul Reeder, who became a dear friend and my mentor in the business,
24:38
who founded PAR Capital, he founded it in 1991 in the depths of the SNL crisis.
24:44
Or my good friend Chase Coleman,
24:46
who founded Tiger right after the Internet bubble burst in 2001.
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So I knew it could be done I understood the path to do it.
24:54
And so I wasn't afraid of the events of 2008.
24:58
Of course.
24:59
I remember talking to investment banks.
25:01
I had to set up a prime brokerage to get the business started.
25:05
And several of them said to me, I don't know if my bank's going to exist
25:08
in six months, but I'm happy to sign you up as a customer.
25:11
That's how bad it was.
25:13
And so I knew that it was incredible moment in terms of price of entry.
25:17
And my enthusiasm for technology had not been diminished at all, right?
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If anything, I was buying companies that were, you know,
25:25
as Warren Buffett says, I mean, these were deep, deep discounts in sales.
25:30
I bought my first stock that I bought in the public fund in 2008.
25:34
October 1, 2008, was Priceline at $45 a share, today it's over $4,000 a share.
25:42
That is a venture capital return in the public markets.
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Okay, and that was the opportunity that was presented at the time.
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And I knew I wanted to build a firm that looked different than the other firms
25:54
that I saw.
25:54
I wanted a firm that would benefit from understanding all the way from early stage
25:58
venture capital all the way through the public markets.
26:01
I had a belief that if you, if you could take advantage of and
26:05
combine these networks, you would.
26:08
The work on the public side would give me advantages on the venture side, and
26:12
the work on the venture side would give me advantages on the public side.
26:15
And I promise you, back in 2005, when I started doing that at PAR Capital and
26:20
then in 2008 at altimeter, that was not a common belief.
26:24
In fact, most allocators of capital said Brad, we don't want you to do both.
26:28
Pick one, we want you to be great at one.
26:30
And I said, you don't understand there are inherent advantages, right?
26:35
Network effects by doing them together.
26:37
And so we launched what was one of, you know,
26:40
the first crossover funds is what they call them now.
26:43
At the time they weren't calling them that.
26:46
I moved to Silicon Valley and
26:48
we've had great success in both the public fund as well as the venture fund.
26:53
And I attribute that really to two things.
26:55
Number one, I just bet on America and I bet on the future of technology.
26:59
And Jon, if you look at the last 15 years of technology,
27:03
technology companies have compounded earnings at 15% and
27:07
their stocks have compounded at 17% for 15 years.
27:12
Non tech companies in the S&P 500 have compounded earnings at 4% and
27:17
their and their stocks are compounded at 6%.
27:20
Technology as a percentage of global GDP has gone from 5% to 15%.
27:26
So it seems to me that, you know, if you're going to invest,
27:30
pick a boat that you know is rowing downstream like this is the best
27:34
advantage, you know, that we have in this country.
27:38
And so I figured if I was planted in the heart of Silicon Valley investing in
27:42
technology, public and
27:43
venture, not only did I have the tailwinds of just a great industry sector, you know,
27:48
that was going to continue to compound at higher rates than non tech,
27:52
that was going to continue to become a bigger percentage of global gdp,
27:56
but that I would be able to find the best of tech.
27:59
So if I could pick the best 25% of tech and
28:01
avoid the 25% that was being disrupted, that we could provide a lot of alpha on
28:06
top of the decision just to invest in tech.
28:09
And so that was really the motivating principle behind it.
28:12
But I have to tell you, those early days, basically I had no money, I was passing
28:17
a hat and I started with very little and you know, but I'm certainly happy I did.
28:23
>> Jon Hartley: That's amazing and I think very unique in the sense that you're
28:27
investing in both public equities and vc, you know,
28:31
with this focus on technology and you know, obviously, you know,
28:36
you've had some big VC winners like Snowflake and
28:39
being very early to Nvidia, that's a publicly traded company,
28:43
I mean, it's had a very big recent run up which you were ahead of.
28:48
And just the explosion in interest in generative AI which has driven
28:53
a lot of that.
28:54
You've also really influenced some of the more established firms out there, like
28:59
you compelled United Continental to change its board directors of report performance.
29:04
And in 2022, you wrote an influential letter to Facebook recommending that
29:09
they reduce their headcount and shift their focus away from the Metaverse.
29:14
Remember, Facebook changed its name to the Metaverse, or sorry to Meta,
29:19
just because it wanted to sort of signal that it was all in on the Metaverse.
29:24
And this is something that they subsequently did.
29:28
They listened to your letter and they were responsive and they reduced their head
29:31
Cambridge significantly and pivoted away from the Metaverse.
29:34
I mean, tell us, you know, what is your overall, you know, approach to investing?
29:38
What's your investment philosophy?
29:40
>> Brad Gerstner: Well, first it's, I think to be successful at anything,
29:43
you have to be deeply passionate about it.
29:46
I'm two things, I'm a researcher and an analyst, and
29:48
I'm deeply passionate about technology.
29:51
Right.
29:51
And I think the byproduct of what we do is great for the country because I think it
29:55
provides economic productivity and growth, which drives our economy.
29:58
So that's what the animating feature of what I get up and do every day.
30:04
If I had to say, what defines our approach?
30:08
Number one, I'm a thematic investor in technology.
30:11
We have super cycles, the Internet, mobile, cloud, and
30:15
now artificial intelligence.
30:17
And so it's identifying the super cycle, identifying what you think
30:22
will be the biggest winners and the biggest losers in the super cycle.
30:27
A lot of that is established in the first three to four years of the super cycle.
30:31
And then those companies will compound for a long period of time.
30:34
Right?
30:34
And so it's following that passion, investing thematically.
30:38
And then we think like owners, we tend to hold things for a long time.
30:42
In the venture capital world, that means owning things for 10, 15 years, right?
30:46
Our holding period on the public side also is much longer, you mentioned Meta.
30:51
We owned that company for over a decade.
30:53
And so we compound in these companies for a long time.
30:56
So long as they continue to benefit from the super cycle and so long as they're
31:01
benefiting from what's going on in terms of their management and leadership.
31:05
I love the fact that Meta, you know, is led by just an incredible founder.
31:10
But when you think like owners, you know, like,
31:13
it also leads you to some other conclusions.
31:16
Number one, I don't want to buy cigar butts, you know, like, like Ben Graham
31:21
used to talk about, I want to buy fantastic businesses at fair prices.
31:25
Now what's a fair price?
31:27
Okay, because in technology, everything always looks expensive.
31:31
But in my, in my world, I look out 10 years and say,
31:34
what can possibly happen here?
31:36
And then I discount that.
31:37
Back.
31:38
So in the case of booking.com I talked about that company.
31:41
I teach a class at the old Graham and Dodd securities analysis class as
31:46
a visitor maybe now for 12 or 13 years at Columbia Business School.
31:52
And I used to feature this case as a case study because every sell side
31:57
analyst on Wall Street had the opportunity in 2005 to figure this out.
32:02
But most of them were so focused on the next quarter or two quarters ahead,
32:06
they couldn't possibly imagine what could happen over a period of 10 years.
32:09
And that, that longevity, that ability to see where this was going, that is your
32:14
alpha, that is your competitive advantage, and that's what allowed us to
32:18
buy it at a time that other people might have thought it was expensive,
32:22
but if you looked out three or four years, it was actually really cheap.
32:26
Or in the case of Meta, [COUGH] I remember in the summer of 22,
32:30
I couldn't have been more excited for Meta, right?
32:34
People said to me, you didn't believe in what Mark was doing?
32:40
Totally different.
32:40
Like, I love the fact that he had total control over the company.
32:43
I think he's one of the most gifted founders of our time.
32:46
But I thought that the world was changing under our feet.
32:50
I thought artificial intelligence was going to be the next big wave.
32:54
And I was worried that Covid had led all companies into this age of excess.
32:59
We hired too many people.
33:01
We had these negative interest rates, this ZIRP period that just led to gross
33:06
excesses across the economy, misallocation of resources.
33:09
And so my conversation in the letter, ultimately I said,
33:13
was an open letter to all of Silicon Valley.
33:15
We all had gotten lazy, out of shape, and we needed to get more efficient.
33:20
And, you know, my rallying cry to Mark was he was the type of leader that could lead
33:25
all of Silicon Valley, not just Meta, to be more efficient, and he did.
33:29
When he launched the Year of Efficiency and all the credit, by the way,
33:33
100% of the credit goes to Mark and his team.
33:36
But when he wrote the Year of Efficiency, a few months after I had written
33:40
the letter, Time To Get Fit, he said, flatter is faster, leaner is better.
33:45
And this is really important because he didn't say, I went from 87,000
33:50
employees to 62,000 employees just because I wanted to expand my margins.
33:55
He actually said, by getting in shape, you become a better company.
34:01
Less layers in the decision making process.
34:03
You become faster, you become better.
34:06
And that really, you know, and I could tell you because all of these CEOs
34:11
were texting and calling, they all wanted to follow his lead, right?
34:16
And so that was, you know, a super important move.
34:19
And remember, his stock was at $90 a share.
34:21
The headline in the Wall Street Journal was Meta is dead.
34:25
And it couldn't be further from the truth.
34:27
He doubled down on artificial intelligence before ChatGPT was launched,
34:31
which wouldn't be launched until five months after we were having those,
34:35
those interactions and that letter was written, he doubled down on AI.
34:39
They continued to focus on the metaverse, just didn't grow it as much, and
34:43
they reduced their headcount, they got flatter and faster, and
34:46
they've been a huge beneficiary of AI.
34:49
And we still own Meta.
34:50
So now I've owned it since 2011, 2012, shortly after the IPO.
34:56
And so we think like owners and ultimately building a trusted brand where we partner
35:03
with the world's most iconic founders from sometimes the earliest stage, right?
35:09
Snowflake, you mentioned it was before they had their first client,
35:13
before they had any revenue.
35:14
You know, we were one of the largest shareholders in that company.
35:19
And then we invest along the cycle.
35:21
We continue to invest in them.
35:23
When Sequoia came in, one Iconic came into that round.
35:26
We did the same thing with Mongo, [COUGH] we did the same thing with so
35:30
many other companies along the way, Zillow, etc.
35:34
But we also, sometimes we don't,
35:36
we don't see it until they come into the public markets.
35:39
Remember, a lot of these companies have grown 100x in the public markets.
35:43
Finally, I would just say that companies tend today to stay private longer.
35:49
So there are two features, two things that have happened.
35:53
Number one, we've imposed a lot of regulatory burden on going public.
35:57
Jon, and remember, follow the incentives.
36:01
What happens when you impose a lot of regulatory burden?
36:04
Well, the private markets respond.
36:06
So the private capital markets have gotten much deeper, and they said,
36:10
just like on private credit, on the private equity, on the growth equity side
36:15
of things, we said, fine, if you don't want to go public,
36:19
we'll provide IPO like capital to you in the private markets.
36:23
I think this is a shame because now because of a lot of this regulation,
36:29
small retail investors don't get a shot on goal on investing in OpenAI early.
36:35
They don't get a shot on goal in investing in Uber early.
36:38
They don't get a shot on goal, investing in amazing companies like Stripe or
36:41
Databricks early, because they stay private much longer.
36:44
So Altimeter invests in those companies just as though they were public, but
36:48
we're investing out of private capital.
36:51
I think that needs to change, by the way.
36:53
I think we need to tackle those regulatory burdens.
36:55
I think we're better off as a country when these companies are coming public sooner,
37:00
but that's in fact what's happened.
37:02
So we invest early, we invest along the way as they become very big companies,
37:07
many of these valued at 20-60 billion, 100 billion in the private markets or
37:12
in the case of OpenAI recently at 150 billion.
37:15
And then, oftentimes, we lead their IPOs.
37:18
We're one of the major buyers in the IPO, and we continue to invest.
37:22
Why?
37:23
Because market leaders in super cycles tend to compound for
37:28
a very long period of time.
37:30
>> Jon Hartley: And absolutely, I mean, it's fascinating just how fewer public
37:34
companies are today than it's a decade or two ago.
37:37
And I agree, I think the regulation is definitely a part of it, going public.
37:41
Also, I think there's just a lot of companies that don't wanna be publicly
37:46
traded, and they don't want mark-to-market valuations all the time.
37:51
Whereas, if you can be owned by private equity,
37:54
your marks are a little bit more infrequent.
37:58
And there's this whole concept of volatility, laundering and so forth.
38:02
And so public markets, or sorry, private markets offer this
38:07
sort of ability to hide a public scrutiny in a certain way.
38:11
So it's interesting how it's evolved a little bit over time.
38:15
I wanna talk a little bit more about generative AI and chips.
38:19
It's obviously a very front and center topic right now.
38:23
And I wanna in particular talk a little bit about tech industrial policy and
38:27
really how you see it.
38:29
As an investor, you actually understand these companies that are being
38:33
subsidized and there's this whole challenge.
38:36
So let's talk about like the Chips and Science Act, for example.
38:39
So it was passed in 2022, and
38:41
they had this partial goal of re-shoring chip supply chains to the US,
38:46
obviously chips are a big component of generative AI GPUs in particular.
38:52
And I'm just curious how is that re-shoring going in your mind?
38:58
Is Intel kind of a dead company?
39:02
That industrial policy is just propping up?
39:05
Did the struggles to build TSMC chip fabs, facilities,
39:10
production facilities in places like Arizona?
39:15
There's been a lot of discussion about that.
39:17
Does that suggest that we should maybe be instead like encouraging to build,
39:21
fabs in, in sort of friendly, cheap labor places like, like Mexico, you know,
39:25
so-called friends.
39:26
>> Brad Gerstner: Really, you're really trying to get me going here.
39:30
Let me first just say, we've been working on
39:34
artificial intelligence for decades now.
39:39
I made my first kind of AI investments, if you will, all the way back in 2005.
39:45
Backing one of the heads of AI out of the University of Washington at the time.
39:49
We invest in Cerebras, another chip company.
39:52
Yeah, some period of time ago, well before ChatGPT, so.
39:59
So like ChatGPT brought AI to the public consciousness.
40:03
But think about this at a big level.
40:05
The Internet was laying down the rails.
40:09
Mobile created ubiquity, the cloud created data ubiquity in the cloud.
40:14
But really artificial intelligence brings it all together, right?
40:18
I was at a dinner once maybe in 2015 or 16, where Bill Gates was asked,
40:22
haven't all the interesting things been done?
40:24
And he said, we haven't even started.
40:26
And somebody said, well, what do you mean?
40:28
He said, we won't even start until computers go from
40:32
calculators to actually helping us think, right?
40:36
We are at the dawn of the moment where computers went from 10 blue links to
40:40
giving us answers, right?
40:42
To becoming agents, to becoming assistants,
40:45
to helping us think, to solving problems on our behalf,
40:48
harnessing all of the information humans have ever seen.
40:52
Okay, I think this super cycle is gonna be bigger than all the other super cycles put
40:57
together.
40:57
Like, I think this is what we're going to be investing again against for
41:01
decades to come.
41:02
It doesn't mean that we won't have bubbly valuations and
41:06
lots of companies won't work.
41:08
And that's part of the creative destruction with Schumpeter that we
41:12
talked about.
41:13
That's good. That's not a sign of failure,
41:15
that's a sign of success that we actually allow companies to fail in this country.
41:19
And this is one of my problems, frankly, with the CHIPS Act.
41:23
So let's talk about the goal, right?
41:26
It's a noble.
41:27
I have a concern about our national security dependency on a single country
41:33
that is in dispute, ie Taiwan, as the source of all of our advanced chips.
41:38
So I think everybody can agree on this, right?
41:41
That having 90% of the advanced chip supply chain in the world in Taiwan and
41:48
an adversary in China makes us very uneasy that we have this big dependency.
41:55
Whether you're Nvidia having the dependency for the manufacturer of all
41:59
those chips or any other chip manufacturer having that dependency.
42:02
And so it's in the US national security interests to reduce its dependency,
42:08
a single threaded dependency on Taiwan for advanced chips.
42:12
But there are a lot of ways to achieve this goal.
42:14
And what I concerns me, I have a podcast, BG2 pod with my good buddy Bill Gurley.
42:21
And one of Bill Gurley, you know, things he and I just resolutely agree on,
42:26
going all the way back to Stigler and regulatory capture is the problem is when
42:30
we start picking winners and losers, when the central government starts
42:35
picking winners and losers, it generally Always ends bad, right.
42:39
Markets allocate resources actually quite well.
42:42
And so I think the government has a role to play to say, listen,
42:47
we need to incentivize businesses, lots of ways to incentivize them to build fabs
42:52
in other parts of the world other than the United States or other than Taiwan.
42:58
Now it's nice that they build them in the United States.
43:01
So TSMC building fabs in Arizona may be a very good thing.
43:06
Maybe we wanna give them tax breaks and
43:08
other things to get the best companies in the world.
43:10
And TSMC is the best fab in the world to get them to do it here.
43:14
So we reduce our dependency on Taiwan.
43:17
I think that again is in our national security interest.
43:20
But the idea that we should prop up a bad dying US
43:24
manufacturer because we have some nostalgia about intel,
43:30
I think is a really bad idea, right?
43:33
I don't think that the government should be involved in that sort of industrial
43:38
policy.
43:39
I don't think, you know, the company is too complex today,
43:42
has too many different areas of focus.
43:45
Right.
43:45
This is the process of creative destruction.
43:47
Intel's in the situation it is because of choices intel made, right?
43:54
And so I think in that situation I would rather see us figuring out ways
43:59
to get TSMC to multi source its manufacturing in places like Mexico and
44:05
Japan and Southeast Asia and India and other places,
44:09
much like Apple is moving a lot of its production to India
44:13
to reduce its single threaded dependency on China.
44:18
I think that is all smart national security interest decisions,
44:22
but I think you have to be very, very careful as, as you know,
44:27
Gurley likes to warn about regulatory capture.
44:30
I think this is another area.
44:32
So when government is handing out all this money, right,
44:35
when they're picking the winners and losers,
44:37
I think more often than not it leads us to a worse place, not a better place.
44:41
>> Jon Hartley: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that.
44:43
And I do think that there is, I mean, some rationale for
44:48
non economic objectives in construction policy.
44:52
You think about sanctions, it's like, I think it certainly makes
44:57
sense to use sanctions as a geopolitical tool, particularly when
45:02
you're dealing with threats, people that threaten U.S. interests.
45:07
And there have often been libertarians that have harshly criticized sanctions,
45:13
say on Iran.
45:14
But at some level if these are nuclear countries or
45:18
potentially a nuclear threat to the United States or their allies,
45:23
taking a sort of even a short term economic hit from those sanctions or
45:28
industrial policies.
45:29
Say to, I guess subsidized chip manufacturing either in the US or
45:34
in allied countries might be kind of a second best option if you're sort
45:39
of dealing with this potentially hugely disruptive event that could occur,
45:45
like the Chinese party of China invading Taiwan or something like that.
45:50
So I want to shift just a little bit to, you know, your.
45:55
Your advocacy of baby equities.
45:59
It's a concept that's similar to baby bonds,
46:02
where every child receives at birth, a publicly funded trust account,
46:07
which is invested, in the case of baby equities, invest in stocks.
46:12
And you spent a lot of time on this as part of your nonprofit that
46:17
you run called Invest America.
46:20
I mean, tell us a little bit more about that.
46:22
I mean, I'm curious what some of the main obstacles are.
46:26
I mean, your Democrats, like Cory Booker have long championed this cause.
46:30
It was once part of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign platform.
46:34
I mean, why should free market Republicans or Democrats be interested in.
46:38
And I know you're a limited government kind of guy.
46:41
How do you square that with being in favor of baby equities?
46:46
>> Brad Gerstner: Well, first,
46:47
it's radically different than what they were proposing with baby bonds.
46:51
And I'll get to that.
46:52
But it's the right question to ask, right?
46:55
I am a limited government proponent all the way.
47:00
But the thing that scares me the most is seeing the misalignment we have in
47:04
America and the attacks that are going on on capitalism that I think.
47:09
So if we just think about the natural hand of the market here,
47:12
all this prosperity is terrific.
47:14
But it's undeniable that it's also led to a lot of wealth concentration,
47:19
because that's the natural byproduct.
47:21
Today, a single founder of a company can service 3
47:25
billion customers like Mark Zuckerberg, okay?
47:29
And so I fear the attack on capitalism is coming.
47:33
And Ray Dalio talks about this being the greatest threat to America.
47:38
And so, ironically, I believe Invest America,
47:42
making every child a capitalist participant from birth,
47:46
is by far the greatest and cheapest insurance policy in
47:51
defense of free market capitalism that we could ever create.
47:56
3.7 million individual accounts created every year,
48:00
a 401k from birth where it's, each of those families has control and title.
48:06
And then the private market flywheel can turn, right?
48:11
Those families can save and compound in the upside of the American economy.
48:16
We have all sorts of companies from Dell to Uber who say they'll contribute to
48:20
the accounts of the kids of their employees, so
48:23
it will compound in that way as well.
48:25
So, there's no government program and there's zero government account.
48:28
That is a radical difference from the concept of baby bonds,
48:33
but why do we need this?
48:35
Right, and I think it comes down too few people are participating in
48:41
the upside of the American economy today, and this is a very simple way.
48:47
Okay, let's talk about the cost here because I'm really excited about DOGE and
48:52
the Department of Government Efficiency and know and
48:56
what we're gonna to do to bring our budget into balance.
48:59
So, if you give a thousand bucks in a seed capital count to each of
49:04
the newborns in this country, every year, it costs $3.7 billion.
49:09
Okay, $3.7 billion, to put that in perspective,
49:12
that's about the cost of a single Patriot missile system.
49:16
To put it in further perspective, the $175 billion that we poured into Ukraine,
49:22
that many of us think is a misguided adventure that has not made Ukraine Safer.
49:28
Okay, that $175 billion would pay for this for
49:33
45 years, and 170 million American children.
49:38
It's time that we start making trade offs.
49:41
So, you and I both would agree markets aren't perfect.
49:45
There are places that the government can coordinate
49:49
private market participation to unlock human potential.
49:54
So, this is a massively NPV positive investment, how do we know that?
49:59
We have controlled studies, right, by our friend Kevin Hassett,
50:04
who was Trump's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers,
50:08
by economists on, on, on the left like Rob Shapiro, and what do we know?
50:13
We know that kids who have an investment account for birth, they're more likely to
50:17
graduate from high school, they're more likely to be financially literate, they're
50:21
more likely to graduate from college, they're more likely to buy a home,
50:25
they're more likely to start a business, they're less likely to be imprisoned.
50:28
We know those facts, okay?
50:31
Think about all the wasteful programs we have in this country,
50:35
that is redistributing wealth right after the problem occurs, right?
50:40
Trying to help kids graduate from high school,
50:44
trying to help kids graduate from college.
50:47
The problem is we don't have the incentives for
50:50
enough of these kids from early on.
50:52
So, I know a little something about this.
50:54
I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, I was born with nothing,
50:58
I was born poor.
50:59
Trust me, I understand, pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
51:03
But the reality is, if we just give a little nudge, a tiny little nudge,
51:06
doesn't even have to be a thousand, if we think that's too much money,
51:10
make it 500 bucks, it only cost us 1.8 billion a year.
51:13
Here's what we have, the behavioral economics economists know two things.
51:18
Number one, we have a cold start problem, okay?
51:22
We know that savers save more, once they get that little snowball rolling down
51:27
the hill, and they see the compounding, it incentivizes them to save more.
51:33
Even if you study the cohorts of the poorest people in this country, if they
51:38
have a savings account, those cohorts act just the same way that rich folks do.
51:43
They will save money, obviously a lesser amount, but they will save money.
51:47
And so for me, the market failure here is that we have a cold start problem.
51:53
It's very difficult to set up a custodial account that compounds in the stock
51:57
market from births, government can help us there.
52:00
And the second thing, you know,
52:02
beyond that cold start problem is we don't have an infrastructure, right,
52:07
that is universal, so it's super simple, everybody a kid when they're born.
52:12
I have two children, when they were born,
52:15
we had to fill out paperwork that got them a Social Security number.
52:18
All I'm saying is they should also be able to check, everybody has a box check and
52:23
they get an Invest America account.
52:25
Now, the Invest America account will be administered by
52:28
private market participants, right?
52:31
A private label to the U.S. Government, every kid can open their phone,
52:35
they see their Invest America account, their name, the amount they have in it.
52:40
And that they own a little slice of Berkshire Hathaway, of Apple, of Nvidia,
52:45
of United Healthcare, of the upside, of America, right?
52:48
This isn't about creating millionaires there,
52:51
these concepts around universal basic income, et cetera.
52:54
This is the problem, this is what we're going to get if we don't get more people
52:59
in the game from the start.
53:00
So, I want to harness the power of the private markets.
53:03
I wanna empower individuals and families, and
53:06
start them on a journey that by the age of 18 they'll have $40,000 in
53:11
these accounts because the American economy is the most powerful in the world.
53:16
>> Jon Hartley: You know, it's a fascinating idea, I think,
53:19
in the sense that, like there is this I guess behavioral challenger,
53:23
I think you call it, cold start problem, which is like one, you know, only,
53:28
I think 40, like less than 50% of Americans own stocks to begin with.
53:33
And very, I think a very suboptimal number of individuals own,
53:37
even if it's, you know, say, through a public pension plan or so forth.
53:42
So I think, you know, how do you develop those habits?
53:46
And I think part of this idea is, you know,
53:49
trying to expose people to those, you know, good habits and
53:53
kind of endowing them with a tool that would allow them to do that.
53:57
And I guess, part of it's like, you know, tracking, your performance,
54:01
the performance of the stocks over time, I mean, so.
54:03
Exactly, like, how would it work in the sense that, like, so you get it at birth.
54:07
I mean, you can't, I guess your parents or the child that receives the accounts
54:11
can't really sell this until like age 18 or something like that.
54:16
Or how does it work in terms of when can they first sort of begin to liquidate,
54:20
or draw down some of that account?
54:22
>> Brad Gerstner: Yeah, no, it's a great question and
54:24
of course it will ultimately be determined by the legislative process.
54:28
But we have a great list of champions on the right,
54:33
from folks like Senator Hagerty and Ted Cruz to the left,
54:38
and you mentioned folks like, Mark Warner and folks like Cory Booker.
54:45
But ultimately they'll have to, hash that out,
54:49
I'll tell you from my own perspective, right?
54:52
Imagine this, your parents will be able to opt in just like they would if they
54:57
set up a custodial account for you at birth.
55:00
They get to see, you know, this compound, but
55:02
by the time you're in the fifth grade or in middle school, every kid has a phone.
55:07
They'll open it up on their phone, and they'll see and button and trust me,
55:11
you know, you talk to Fidelity or Schwab or Franklin or, you know,
55:15
JP Morgan, the number one page everybody looks at who owns stocks is what they call
55:19
that money page.
55:20
What's my net worth, and what do I have?
55:22
It's gamification, it gets people excited.
55:25
It gives them a reason to learn, we have financial literacy courses now in school,
55:29
demanded in curriculum in 30 states.
55:32
Here's the problem, if none of these folks own anything, if their parents have never
55:37
participated in compounding or savings, then it's really hard to learn about it.
55:41
But if instead, I'm the seventh grade teacher, I say, pull out your phones,
55:45
open up your Invest America account, whether I'm in rural Indiana or
55:48
rural Mississippi, right?
55:49
Whether I'm in urban Trenton or urban la,
55:53
kids who would not otherwise participate are now in the game.
55:57
And I'll tell you that unlocks Massive human potential.
56:00
And it's going to save us a lot of money down the line by getting these folks into
56:05
the game early.
56:06
But here's what, here's what kind of the going rate is.
56:09
At 18, they can take up to 25% of this dollars to buy a house or
56:14
to start a business or to go to College.
56:17
At age 30, a certain amount more would come unlocked.
56:20
At age 40, it's all yours, right?
56:22
And by age 40, if you start with $1,000 and just add $750 a year.
56:29
So this could be your birthday money, bar mitzvah money,
56:32
a little summer mowing money.
56:34
Or it could be that your parents work at a company that matches, right,
56:37
puts money into the accounts of the kids.
56:40
And we have dozens and dozens of companies that have already committed to doing that.
56:44
Or it can be philanthropically.
56:45
We know across the country there are ready people
56:49
from Maine to Texas who will contribute philanthropically to this.
56:54
So imagine we're going to have 14 trillion of wealth transfer that
56:58
comes up over the course of the next 15 years.
57:02
Jon. imagine if folks like Michael Dell or
57:04
Warren Buffett said, hey,
57:06
I want to create a trust account with $10 billion in it, and it will match for
57:10
every kid in the state of Texas whose family earns under $150,000.
57:15
Now, that's an efficient way, right, to get more people into the game.
57:21
And so that is the current thinking, you know, that they will have control over
57:25
these accounts starting at age 18, but it's going to lead to a lot
57:29
more economic productivity, a lot more people in the game.
57:33
And here's the number one thing it's going to.
57:35
And our good friend Joe Lonsdale, I was doing the American Optimist Podcast with
57:40
Joe, and Joe is also a limited government guy.
57:43
And so he's, I think starts off suspicious at this.
57:47
And then he became a big supporter because he said, brad,
57:51
my biggest fear is that we're losing alignment with America's kids.
57:56
Less than half of people under the age of 40 believe in capitalism, okay?
58:00
He said, the Marxists are gonna hate this because every child from birth is going to
58:04
be aligned with capitalism, right?
58:07
We help them understand what America is all about.
58:09
It reengages them both civically and economically.
58:12
Jon, in the upside of America.
58:14
And doesn't create a big government program to do it right.
58:17
It does it on the back of the growing American economy.
58:20
It's simply a 401K from birth,
58:21
and it's a tiny little seed from the federal government.
58:25
That is an absolute rounding error,
58:27
less than one-tenth of 1% of our federal revenues.
58:30
So let's stop spending all this needless money, right, helping these kids later
58:35
down the line when they're incarcerated or not graduated, and let's just redeploy
58:39
a tiny amount of that money, right, to see them and then get out of the way.
58:43
Government. Get out of the way.
58:45
No government administrative agency just let the Treasury Department administer it.
58:49
And let's get that snowball growing for every child in America.
58:52
And I'll tell you, there'll be a hell of a lot more aligned with American capitalism.
58:56
>> Jon Hartley: Well, it's a fascinating, I think, financial education kind of idea.
59:00
And, you know, could, I think teach a lot of people potentially
59:04
about obviously diversification, time value of money, compound growth,
59:09
I think is a really, really fascinating idea.
59:12
And certainly, you know, someone who's actually.
59:15
It's was my 35th birthday the other day and I was.
59:18
>> Brad Gerstner: Happy birthday.
59:19
>> Jon Hartley: Born, thank you,
59:20
I was actually born when the Berlin Wall was falling.
59:23
It's amazing how many people born after me kinda have no memory of the USSR or
59:28
socialism and kinda the negativity or
59:31
that some of the negative effects of that on the economy.
59:35
And I think how do we develop tools in a post Soviet, post USSR kind of world to
59:40
teach people about the benefits of free market capitalism, even if there's some
59:44
small cost of government, I think is a very interesting idea.
59:48
A real honor to have you on, Brad, and hear about your career and ideas.
59:51
Thank you so much for joining us.
59:53
>> Brad Gerstner: It was a lot of fun, Jon, I look forward to a little walk
59:56
around Stanford here soon and continue the conversation.
1:00:00
>> Jon Hartley: Thanks so much, Brad.
1:00:02
This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century podcast,
1:00:04
an official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group where we talk about
1:00:08
economic economics, markets, and public policy.
1:00:10
I'm Jon Hartley, your host.
1:00:11
Thanks so much for joining us.
1:00:12
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