Carson Block, short seller and CIO of Muddy Waters: “It’s not hard to find companies that have problems, but the environment is somewhat toxic toward short sellers. Ever since COVID, the level of vitriol that gets directed toward the short side is … I mean I’ve gotten death threats since day one, but I get a lot more now, and they’re on Twitter in many cases.”
Ann Lipton, Tulane law professor, on the text battle between Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey: “The thing about texts and emails is that people tend to be really casual and perhaps say things impulsively that are sloppy and not carefully worded. This is how people talk now, except that when people talk that way, they tend to forget that someone else can see this.”
Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square: “It’s very hard to build a culture and maintain a culture if people work virtually from home. You just need to change your email address and you can switch to a new employer, so the frictional cost of switching is so low that I wouldn't have that much confidence in a virtual employee.”
Jay Clayton, former SEC chairman: “If you can do your job remotely without interacting with other people, somebody can do it from somewhere else in the world where you don’t have all the benefits that you have being here in America. You’ve got to think about that.”
Barry Sternlicht, CEO of Starwood Capital Group: “At the ports in Los Angeles there’s only eight ships off Long Beach that haven't reached port. In January of this year there was 122. So, everything is here, there’s too much inventory, prices are going to fall. If the Fed keeps this up, they’re going to have a serious recession and people will lose their jobs.”
Judi Greenwald, executive director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance: “Swapping out retiring coal-fired power plants with advanced nuclear reactors reduces carbon emissions, improves air quality, and provides economic benefits to communities. It also minimizes siting challenges, reduces or eliminates community and economic impacts due to asset retirement while producing clean and reliable energy.”
Darren Hulst, vice president, commercial marketing for Boeing Co.: “Ecommerce grew three to five times faster during the pandemic, and ecommerce centers were developed across the world. These centers need a fleet of aircraft to provide same-day or second-day delivery services.”
Abbie Durkin, owner of Palmer & Purchase, a women’s clothing and accessories boutique: “You can’t rely only on ships anymore. I’m flying in our entire winter collection to make sure it arrives before Christmas.”
Minxin Pei, Chinese scholar, on Xi Jinping’s move back to traditional communism: “The neo-Stalinist model bottles up all the forces of change, leaving only one door open — revolution. By 2035, China will have about 300 million college graduates. Will they be content to live quietly under Xi’s reign of repression?”
Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, on the magazine’s decision to pursue film and TV projects: “One of our objectives is to build out a third substantial revenue stream beyond subscriptions and advertising. Affiliate IP is obviously one place you could get that, so it’s a significant focus.”
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, on Ukraine’s battlefield outperformance of Russia: “This is going to change the way war is fought because you have a tiny country with very few assets and it, with the use of software and heroism, can win against a goliath.”
Abigail Disney, Disney family heiress, on inequality within the company: “There has been an overemphasis on shareholders and management. I may get the number wrong, but I think it was $8 billion in share buybacks in the years leading into the pandemic. First of all, did the shareholders need all $8 billion, or did some of it belong to the people who produce those profits through the sweat of their daily work? There’s so much cash floating around in American businesses today, they’re so profitable and we’re not using that cash to reward workers. Why should they live at the very bottom of what is tolerable or acceptable?”
Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Ellevest: “What I sometimes remind myself over my glass of wine at night after a tough day in the markets is, absent this market, we’ve recovered from 100 percent of bear markets, we’ve recovered from 100 percent of recessions, and you don’t want to bet against the U.S.”
Jennifer Granholm, U.S. secretary of energy: “DOE is all in on making floating offshore wind a real part of our energy mix.”
Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Investment Management: “Inflation certainly will come down, but I think the big surprise is the number of months we will see actual deflation — negative prices. What’s going on in China is highly deflationary … Energy prices are coming down, against all expectations.”
Erin Plante, vice president at Chainalysis: “DeFi has introduced a whole other level for hackers to be able to access a platform. It’s putting a lot of pressure on the space and restricting the innovation that’s possible.”
Xi Jinping, president of China: “Housing is for living in, not for speculation.”