📉 Chamath 2.0

Plus: European reprieve | Thursday, October 27, 2022

Open in app View in browser   Presented By Aon   Axios Markets By Matt Phillips and Emily Peck · Oct 27, 2022 Mornin'! Let's get to it. Today's newsletter is 980 words, 4 minutes.     1 big thing: The new Chamath Chamath Palihapitiya at BFD. Photo: Beatrice Moritz   Chamath Palihapitiya is reinventing himself as a chastened elder statesman of the tech community, Axios' Felix Salmon writes. Why it matters: It's an A+ illustration of how humbling these times are for Silicon Valley. Between the lines: Chamath made his name as a boastful meme lord, leading a crowd of retail investor apes into SPACs and crypto. Now he's wearing a dark suit, talking about risk-adjusted returns and intellectual rigor, and remorsefully saying that he was blinded by zero interest rates. "I have evolved as a human being," Chamath told Axios' Dan Primack at the BFD conference in New York yesterday. "I've become a better, calmer, more focused person." "Silicon Valley desperately needs reasonably decent brand ambassadors," said Chamath, who as recently as last year was tweeting things like "Im about to really [f@#$] some shit up." Know thyself: "There are professional serious people there that understand how to interface in the rest of the world, and I think that that is part of my responsibility now," claims Chamath. Flashback: In December 2020 he tweeted that "when $BTC gets to $150K, I will buy The Hamptons and convert it to sleepaway camps for kids." The big picture: "I sort of blame Jay Powell," said Chamath, for slashing interest rates to zero and allowing him to reap the benefits of a broad speculative fervor. "The biggest thing that I learned was how much of my early success was probably not attributable to myself." "We have actually had a massive tailwind because we had a zero interest rate environment that allowed us to raise unbelievable amounts of money." "What it allowed us to do is crowd into companies. Many of those companies had unbelievable valuations. Eventually, these unprofitable businesses went public. Only now are we starting to sort out what are good and what are not-so-good businesses." The bottom line: Chamath is painting his excesses as being very much in the past. "That dog doesn't hunt when you're 46," he said. Fact-check: Elon Musk is 51. Watch Axios BFD interviews.     2. Catch up quick 📉 Revenue dips and metaverse losses swell at Facebook parent Meta. (WSJ) 🏦 Credit Suisse seeks to raise $4 billion, slash jobs and zero in on rich clients in revamp. (Reuters) 🚂 Second rail union rejects White House-brokered labor contract. (Axios) ✨ I bond investors try to lock in record 9.6% rate before Friday. (Barron's)     3. Nightmare averted (for now) Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Visuals Some good news for Europeans, heading into winter: Natural gas prices are plunging, as warm weather and growing stockpiles have massively alleviated pressure, Matt writes. Why it matters: It suggests the nightmare scenario of winter without heat for millions of Europeans — resulting from the cutoff of Russian energy to the West — has been averted, for now. State of play: Benchmark natural gas futures prices in Europe, priced on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (commonly referred to as TTF) closed below €100 per megawatt hour yesterday. Prices are down nearly 50% in just the last month and more than 70% from their August peak. The abrupt drop is a result of a few things ... European stockpiling of natural gas has pushed storage levels to over 90% of capacity. Warm weather on the continent has cut heating needs. European officials continue to move toward price caps on the TTF contract. What they're saying: "Europe has enough gas stored to survive this winter unless it gets very, very cold," wrote analysts with research firm Rystad Energy in a note yesterday. "But the continent is not out of the woods yet — with Russian flows continuing to decline, winter 2023 will be even tougher."     A message from Aon Prepared leaders value the counsel of an external adviser     Very prepared business leaders are nearly twice as likely to say they value the counsel of an external adviser to improve their decision-making abilities and manage risk than their less prepared counterparts, Aon's 2022 Executive Survey found. Learn more.     4. Inside the "White Wall" Credit: Simon & Schuster   Back in 2017 when finance reporters were scrambling to ferret out MeToo stories on Wall Street, New York Times reporter Emily Flitter went another way, Emily writes. Instead of sexual discrimination, she dug into the issue of racial bias in the industry for her new book "The White Wall." It's a perennially unaddressed and undercovered topic, she was told. "The racial discrimination is so bad," she recounts one prominent lawyer telling her. Why it matters: Flitter's book, out this week, lays out just how bad. Through a series of devastating anecdotes and solid reporting, she shows how the financial industry works at both the systemic and individual levels to perpetuate the racial wealth gap in the U.S. Quick take: One thing the book makes clear is how much the finance industry relies on trust and feelings to make assessments about customers: In the U.S., that's a huge problem for Black Americans trying to access capital, get their home appraised, or even access basic banking services. There are bank tellers making judgments, based on appearance, over whether or not customers' checks get cashed. Flitter tells the stories of Black bank customers who try to cash checks and instead wind up getting security called in. She describes how insurance adjusters rely on feelings to decide if homeowners' claims get played out. Zoom in: Her examination of the insurance industry, typically undercovered in the business press, is eye-opening. We meet Darryl Williams, an apartment building owner in Chicago, who filed suit against State Farm in 2019 after it refused to pay for damages after a frozen pipe burst and flooded his building. " 'We have a lot of fraud in your area,' Williams said the adjuster told him," Flitter recounts. "When asked what she meant by that, she said; 'South Side of Chicago and you-all's neighborhoods.' " This wasn't a one-off issue. Flitter cites data that found insurers consistently paid more claims in white neighborhoods than in Black neighborhoods in Chicago. But nationwide data on the industry is hard to come by, she explains, the result of concerted efforts to avoid that kind of tracking. Meanwhile, even when financial institutions try to take human sentiment out of the picture, they run aground. Algorithms, Flitter writes, are built by humans after all. The bias gets baked right in.     A message from Aon How business leaders are preparing for an economic downturn     COVID-19 has fundamentally altered how business leaders prepare for emerging risks, including a global recession. What you need to know: Aon's Executive Risk Survey analyzed what makes confident and prepared leaders across the world make better decisions in this new era of volatility.   Today's newsletter was edited by Kate Marino and copy edited by Mickey Meece. Why stop here? Let's go Pro. Join the thousands of professionals using Axios Pro to keep up with the companies, deals and trends changing their industries.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Axios, 3100 Clarendon B‌lvd, Arlington VA 22201   You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from Axios. Change your preferences or unsubscribe here.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up now to get Axios in your inbox.   Follow Axios on social media: