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Talking Points: Quotations from people in the news
- July 1, 2022: Vol. 9, Number 7

Talking Points: Quotations from people in the news

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Bruce Schnier, Harvard lecturer: “The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true. It’s not secure, it’s not decentralized. Any system where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system.”

Robin Harding, Asia editor of the Financial Times: “China exported half a million electric vehicles in 2021, and its market share in Europe was second only to Germany’s. As the car market goes electric, Europe could quickly find itself running a trade deficit with China in automobiles. … The arrival of Japanese cars on global markets caused something close to a trade war in the 1980s. If China starts to absorb the global auto industry, however, the trade tensions of the 2020s will be a whole lot worse.”

Tsedal Neely, Harvard Business School professor: “To force people into the office is to reject the digital revolution that is here and is here forcefully. … We have 30 years of empirical data that shows remote work and hybrid work actually increases performance, it does not decrease it.”

Tom Gimbel, CEO of LaSalle Network: “I run a recruiting and staffing firm, and can tell you there is less turnover in the non-virtual world.”

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla: “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week. If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned.”

Sara Fischer, media reporter from Axios on Sheryl Sandberg’s legacy as COO of Facebook: “Sheryl is leaving on top. This company has grown its business 43,000 percent since she joined in 2008, and it’s continued to impress Wall Street.”

Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, on the prospects for a coming recession: “I said they’re storm clouds, they’re big storm clouds here. It’s a hurricane. That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way. We just don’t know if it’s a minor one or Superstorm Sandy. … And you better brace yourself.”

 

Nathan Anderson of Hindenburg Research: “The quality of SPAC deals was never high to begin with. And now it has the potential to get substantially worse.”

Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management: “I started investing before the development of numerical criteria for bull and bear markets, and I consider such yardsticks meaningless.”

Gene Munster, founder of Loup: “The elephant is still in the room when it comes to Netflix. We are investors in Netflix, and we’re growing progressively nervous about our investment based on how they’re going to monetize from this ad model. It’s clear Netflix is not growing their subs. They ultimately need to get this ad model to work for the stock to work.”

Robin Hayes, CEO of JetBlue on his proposed merger with Spirit Airlines: “I’ve been in this business 31 years, and we did a lot of work on this before we made the offer to Spirit. Secondly, we made unprecedented divestiture commitments. We know what it takes to get this deal done. We’re going to divest every Spirit slot and gate in the four Northeast airports to enable ultra-low-cost carrier competition to continue to thrive, so, really, it’s going to be where it was before this transaction.”

Angie Lau, founder and CEO of Forkast, “We’re in a crypto contraction, to be sure, a crypto correction. There’s two things we should never forget about crypto: It never ceases to surprise us, and crypto will always find a way. Crypto also never sleeps.”

Ron Coombes, CEO of Providence Gold Mines, on his plans to reactivate a historic California goldmine: “It’s not a question of if there is gold on the property. This isn't just a lonely little property in the middle of nowhere. It’s in the mother lode belt. … If you look at all the data we’ve compiled so far, this could be one of the highest-grade deposits on the planet.”

Facebook leadership, in a message released about its efforts to keep users safe: “We have over 40,000 people working on safety and security across our platforms. That’s more than the size of the FBI.”

Tom Burke, director of E3G at Third Generation Environmentalism: “You are going to see a massive shift in investment by mutual funds and industry into electric vehicles, grid enhancements, transmission lines and long-duration storage that could tip the whole market away from reliance on fossil fuels toward renewables. The Ukraine war is already forcing every country and company to dramatically advance their plans for decarbonization.”

Dave Kimbell, CEO of Ulta Beauty: “I’ve been with Ulta Beauty a little over eight years, and I’ve seen the transformation of how brands are built across all categories, and the role that social media and influencers have played has really transformed the industry. It is a great time to launch brands.”

Matt Blank, CEO of AMC: “The belief that there was unlimited growth in the streaming space was just unrealistic. These are businesses, they’re like other subscriber and membership businesses in a lot of ways. … It's amazing how fast everybody has run away from Netflix. It is still probably the most amazing story in history of the business.”

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