E88: First principle politics, China chaos & outlook, state of private/public markets & more

The hosts argue Democrats have become a party of elite professionals and coastal donors, ceding crime, border, and cultural issues to Republicans who now position themselves as the working-class party.

They contend party leaders chose not to lock in rights when they had supermajorities, preferring to campaign and fundraise on the threat of their loss instead of resolving the issues legislatively.

Using Pelosi’s timely semiconductor trades as an example, they call for blind trusts, pre-announced trading plans, or annual trading windows for lawmakers and families to eliminate obvious conflicts of interest.

On the CHIPS Act, they argue that capex handouts to Intel/NVIDIA are inferior to sustained tax incentives or ultra-long-term, low-interest government loans that both align incentives and can return capital to taxpayers.

They highlight collapsing fertility, dependence on real estate and debt, zero-COVID rigidity, and a crackdown on entrepreneurship as factors that may slow China’s rise and shift its focus to domestic crisis management.

Using DALL·E 2 and future AI-generated films as examples, they argue technology is short-term deflationary and displacing, but historically leads to new creative and service roles that didn’t previously exist.

Series B–D rounds face pulled term sheets, repricings, and LPs telling funds to slow deployment, while early-stage deals still get done at lower valuations; many 2020–21 vintages must now absorb painful down rounds or cuts.