Transcription
Elon Musk has been the winner of this game. Right. By a mile. And he keeps finding new ways to make money when people think it's impossible. Yes.
The lesson of Warren Buffett is it's have humility. You know, the phrase FOMO did not exist in 1929, but boy do we have it now. I think we're getting closer to the end of the story than the beginning, but I don't know how the end of the story really plays itself out just yet.
Ultimately, you need guardrails to make to make a free market actually free cuz what ends up happening is it's not free. It becomes about crony capitalism. The US, despite all of the hand-wringing, I think is the best economy in the world.
There's the line lunches for wimps. Do you get a lunch? I just don't know what the power lunch is anymore.
Elon Musk is officially the world's first trillionaire, at least on paper. The record-breaking stock market debut of his company, SpaceX, makes him as rich as the poorer half of the world's entire population combined. If Musk was an autonomous country, and sometimes it seems he would quite like to be one, he'd have the 20th biggest economy in the world. He could spend a million dollars every day for 3,000 years before emptying his bank account, and that's without accounting for interest.
There's a big moral debate to be had about whether anybody should have that much money. But for today's show, we're looking at it slightly differently. Despite the unstoppable rise of Musk and a handful of major tech and AI companies, many experts currently think the economy is on the brink of disaster. In fact, a lot like the moments before the Great Depression of 1929. A booming economy built on shaky foundations, ordinary people saddled with debt, a stock market buoyed by overhyped stocks, a small group of major companies with massive power, and an even smaller group of extremely rich industrialists who got ever richer whilst workers' wages stagnated.
So, is history repeating itself? Well, the broadcaster Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book, 1929, tackles exactly this subject. And he joined me in my London studio at the end of last week to discuss it. Welcome to London. I'm thrilled to see you, sir. Welcome to Uncensored. Please. Uh I can't think of anyone bigger to ask. Are we too big as a as a world to fail? Oh goodness, we are now officially too big to fail. There's no question we are too big to fail. Really? The whole thing couldn't collapse. Oh no. It could collapse. I'm just suggesting we now have a problem that is of a different magnitude if we were to fail. Do I think we're going to fail tomorrow? I don't know. I know there's been a lot of doomsday predictions and I obviously just wrote about the Great Depression. Yeah. I think we're getting closer to the end of the story than the beginning, but I don't know how the end of the story really plays itself out just yet.
All there obvious parallels with '29. I mean, one that struck me was when that last big depression occurred, the stock market was an all-time high of 341 points, for example. Today, the stock market is also at an all-time high 50 500,000 whatever it is. Should that be a red flag? I mean, are we Oh. Is that one of the factors flags, red flags, all the flags. There's no When I was writing this book, I thought I was writing about 1929. Really? And as I was working on it were writing about '29. You mean you're writing about now? But as I was working on it, it became so clear to me that so many of the things that were happening then new technology, automobiles, radio, everybody was excited. People thought a company RCA was the Nvidia of its time. And as I'm writing this book, and I'm seeing AI play out, the excitement we have around that technology. By the way, tariffs happened in 1930, Smoot-Hawley, happens now. The phrase democratization of finance, we want to let everybody in, give everyone access to the lottery ticket. What phrase do we hear now? I mean, so there these parallels. Are they the exact same? No. Uh the biggest thing that I think we have to watch for, the match that lights the fire every time is debt. It's loans. Mhm. Back then, you could walk into a brokerage house. By the way, you could walk at the old Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel. That was an EF Hutton. You could walk in, you give them a dollar, they would literally loan you $10 for every dollar you gave them. By the way, EF Hutton lived in Mar-a-Lago. Really? In 1929. Another parallel. Another parallel.
You say in the book, um to the nation experiencing the implosion of the stock market felt like watching a heavyweight champion getting knocked out by an untested, unheralded amateur. It wasn't the way the world was supposed to work. It was destabilizing. A state of shock set in accompanied by paralysis of spirit and loss of confidence. People started questing all the things they have taken for granted. Did a capitalist society make sense anymore? Could it depend upon going forward or had everyone been duped by the glorious markets of the '20s? And there've been lots of, you know, gold rushes and equivalents. Uh and obviously in 2008-9 we had a massive global crash. I could have written that sentence about 2008. Yes, you could. And I guess the I guess the big gold rush right now is AI. Totally. There's a belief that the top seven tech companies they're spending gazillions on AI and that this may all blow up, that it may not be the great thing that everyone thinks it's going to be. And if they if they were to fail collectively, then the whole market disintegrates. Right. So, is is that even a possibility?
Well, look, I actually think it's it's maybe more complicated and potentially worse than that cuz I see it as a double-edged sword. On one end, I worry about an AI bubble, meaning overspending on AI and ultimately it just doesn't catch up the way we want it to. Bubble of 2000. Exactly. But then think about the other side. In success, what does success with AI actually look like? Well, to justify these prices of these companies, you have to create extraordinary amount of productivity. Productivity means you have to grow at less cost. What is the cost? The humans. We are the cost. Right. Now, if we are the cost, who's going to have the money to pay for these things? So, to me there's a very tiny sliver. We have to land the plane to make this work out properly.
And we are reliant on AI not learning how to self-design, which is the key warning that Professor Stephen Hawking gave to me shortly before he died, which is if that happens, that's the end of our world. Because if it can think for itself, it doesn't need us anymore. I think we're still some ways from that. Uh Sergey Brin, who founded Google, recently came out and said he thinks there needs to be another sort of major transformational sort of invention, if you will, to get to the full But I saw an anthropic saying I think only yesterday warning, we've got to slow down here because the rate the rate the rate of change is so quick that it can be like the genie getting out of the bottle. It's It's trying to get out and it may be that we just make a mistake and boom, it's gone. I don't know. I've talked to a lot of people in the industry to try to understand when we could get to a point where it's truly dangerous. I don't think we're there now. I don't even think we'd be there in two or three years from now. The question is, what does AI do on its own that that genuinely injures us? Uh and that may be once we get to robots. You know, Elon with with humanoid robots. If you think about them building factories on their own and then deciding to build a new factory on their own. Right.
Cuz I'm thinking if he can do that with people. Then control your brain. Right. So, the moment it's all for the good intention of people who've lost the ability to, you know, to function properly having this addition to their brain which helps them function properly again. But if you start to roll that out logically, if you can start to mess with the human brain in a way that makes us I guess robotic, well, we're becoming effectively robots, aren't we? Well, I think one of the things that I fear, I don't know how much time you spend on, you know, with my friend my new friend Claude uh or or ChatGPT. Even before we get to that, just the loss of agency over your I mean, how often I don't I find myself asking it questions um and then if I don't think about it long enough, sometimes I'll realize that that the answer's not right. Mhm. But think about it if you're a younger person, you don't have the experience. You've lost agency. I ask I see people ask it questions about me, right? Whether it's Grok or whatever whichever one of us particularly Grok's uh I use X a lot. And most of the time Grok is pretty accurate, but sometimes it's completely wrong. And people are taking this as a kind of biblical stress. Like a like a you know, it's like the like the draft of the constitution, but it's not. It's flawed at the moment, deeply flawed I would say. And if you identify and I sometimes I'll say, "Hey, I don't think you have this right." And then it'll say, "Oh, I apologize. I did make a mistake." But unless you know to push back, and that's that's going to be a much broader societal problem I imagine over the next couple of years.
Is Elon Musk a force for good or not? In totality? I I think ultimately he is a a demonstrable force for good. Genius. That is unquestionable. I think what he's done with automobiles is extraordinary. What he's done with SpaceX is extraordinary. What he's doing with AI I I I admire so much about what he has created. Can I uh critique certain things that he said or done along the way? Absolutely. But I I think if I look at the totality of this man, I mean, I think 100, 200 years from now, he's the person we'll be writing the history books about. Right.
You've interviewed him, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos. If you had to put all your life savings Oh god. Not inconsiderable, Andrew. Congratulations. I don't know about that. Your books and movies and television work. All Um Who am I going with? Who are you going with to invest in just one of them?
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Oh, wow. And we'll we'll assume all at their peak, right? So So here's the complicated part. The thing is on a on a The question is it quote risk-adjusted? Elon Musk has been the winner of this game. Right. By a mile, and he keeps finding new ways to make money when people think it's impossible. Yes. Right? When the original investors in Tesla, people thought it was insane what he was doing. Is he the greatest businessman of all time? I think it's hard to It's hard to come up with another one. Only because he keeps finding these new opportunities. Think about what he's just done, by the way, with SpaceX. Yeah. He builds uh these data centers in the kind. Nobody's focused on the data centers, and now he's selling access to Google and to Anthropic. He's coming up with new I mean, even when things are not working for him, X, by the way, originally wasn't working for him as an economic animal, if you will. He then merges it with his AI company, and all of a sudden the data stream now has value, and he makes that work for the investors. So, I kind of think I'd probably give him the money.
My only issue with X, for example, there's no doubt that he's leveled the playing field politically, I think, in a much fairer way. There's also no doubt, if you talk to any public figure that's been using it regularly, the amount of abuse you get. Oh, sure. It's become real wild west. I mean, I had one troll calling me a satanic pedophile. So, obviously, for the record, I'm neither of those things, but I actually formally complained to X, just to see what would happen. And they rejected the complaint. It didn't cross It didn't cross any of their boundaries for any kind of action to be taken. And that that was like, "Well, if that's happening to me, Oh, it happens to me. It happens to every It happens to all of us. Isn't right, is it? That is not right. That is not right, but then the question Then we get back to the First Amendment question, free speech question, Yes. About what we want to allow, what we don't want to allow. Do we want to set up systems so that certain things can't be said? I don't know what the right I I I have What is the answer? I have I have gone from one end of the pendulum to the other, and I I I don't have a good one for you.
Lewis Hamilton, the Formula 1 star, Sir Lewis, as he now is, made news this week by saying billionaires shouldn't exist. This is despite the fact he's nearly one himself, and his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, is one. Um but you can believe something whilst also being that person. Do you You that Does he have a point? I mean, there's a lot of very very rich people who dominate the 1% of the world and that gap between them as a collective force and those with absolutely nothing has never been bigger. Can a society survive with that disparity?
Well, so what I worry about is the the political polarization that happens as a result of inequality more than anything else. Um do I think billionaires should exist? I'm not here to tell you the billionaires shouldn't exist. I think the question is um if if we have uh this kind of inequality, how do we pay for the services that people, the ordinary person ultimately needs, who's paying it, what's what's the tax structure look like, and those are some bigger issues. And and this goes to the tax question, which is if you believe that the tax system is a manifestation of democracy, is it a fair system? Do people look and say it's fair how people are being taxed? And I would say right now people look and think it's not fair. And worse, the people with money are able to lobby some people call it bribing the system to keep either policies in places or to change policies to make it more attractive for them and less attractive for everybody else. And so that's the piece of it that I ultimately think needs to get solved uh before I would say we need to get rid of billionaires as as a class.
The current debt in America is how much? We are on our way towards 40 trillion dollars with a T by the end of this year. But I mean the average person hears that and goes how does this make any sense? How can America, the great superpower of the world, be that in debt and still be functioning, let alone having what appears to be a still pretty thriving economy? This is the thing singularly that I worry about more than anything else. People worry about AI, they worry about bubbles. I worry about the sovereign debt of the United States. And if there's going to be a moment, if we do have by the way a bubble that bursts in the United States, the playbook we've learned from 2008, from the pandemic, is what do we do? We write a check. Right. Write a check to everybody. Bail everybody out. Out adding to the debt. Adding to the debt. And so what I worry about is the next time we write that check, and it could be trillions of dollars, whatever that check is, that whatever invisible line you think exists in the bond market, that the investors say, "No mas, we're not doing this anymore like this. We cannot do it like this."
Well, what happens then? Well, what happens is the bond the bond investors say, "We're only going to buy your bonds if there's double or triple the interest you're going to pay me for the risk that I'm taking on." Well, if that happens, all of a sudden it completely re-scrambles the budget of the United States, meaning what what the government services are offered. And that's what can lead to I think real both civil unrest potentially, but a devolution both in services and the economic implications.
You say in the book uh you quote President Hoover, yeah, who in response to the '29 crash said, "The only problem with capitalism is capitalists. They're just too damn greedy." That hasn't changed. That part hasn't changed. Look, capitalism is is is the best program that I've uh found over the years as it as it relates to socialism, but you do need some guardrails. Ultimately, you need guardrails to make to make a free market actually free. Cuz what ends up happening is it's not free. It becomes about crony capitalism. It becomes about all of these weird incentives that screw up the system. And that I think is ultimately the thing we got to watch for.
Let's talk about Donald Trump before the war in Iran and now. Okay. Cuz there's a reason why I'm going to separate the two things. Obviously, a year ago he launched the tariff war. Um many people predicted total financial Armageddon. It would be a total disaster, but that didn't happen. It wasn't a disaster, but was it by any qualitative assessment a success? What is the reality of where we are with tariffs?
Okay, so there's two elements to it cuz by the way, I was in the category of this could be a real problem. I was in that category though and I think most people who were were really sort of worried at the moment were in that category on what was called liberation day. When he first came out with with the tariff program. People freaked but they freaked because the levels of the tariffs were extraordinarily higher than they ultimately were. Right. So part of it was that the plan changed. Is is tariff war a good strategy if you are the biggest beast in the room? I genuinely believe tariff war is not good for consumers in America and I believe it's not good for them. Why? Cuz ultimately Because it's ultimately a tax that at least is partly borne by the consumer back in the United States. And not just that, I think there's a broader question which is to the degree that you are a nation that wants to have relationships with others that are long-term and loyal. You talk We talk about here we are in the UK, the special relationship between the US and the UK. There was no problem between the US and the UK prior to this. Mhm. Do you believe that tariffs were warranted on the UK? I No, the trouble is I could see the merit some of it. Now, he's always had a thing about China for example, ripping America off. He's always believed in the power of tariffs. So it's not None of it was a surprise to me. Oh, by the way, I think you can use tariffs and the president by the way has authority to use tariffs and they can be used properly. There's you know, you if you there's a country that that demonstrably is doing something like China is and was, you can use tariffs against them. We have laws that allow for that. The idea of a cross-the-board tariffs just as a toll, that creates its own problems.
What was the state of the economy right before the war in Iran started, particularly in the US? What was What was the reality? I I the reality were was that things were getting better on the whole. Uh Um Still the best economy in the world? I think we were I think look, that's the that the funny part about this is the US despite all the hand-wringing, I think is the best economy in the world. Um I think it was the best economy in the world uh during the beginning of the Trump term. I think it was the best economy in the world by the way uh even at the end of the Biden term. So I and I say that hopefully just empirically on the data. You know, as we as we move into the war, I think there was by the way, I think there were some underlying questions underneath the economy, what was going on. By the way, this AI boom I I pointed the book but the the AI boom has inflated everything and To an unhealthy degree? Well, to a concentrated degree. Well, people would say concentration's unhealthy. If you take out the success of AI and remove it uh you know, from uh GDP, you basically have a flat GDP. And and then that raises the question of that how healthy this really is.
This Iran war I felt from day one was a strategic mistake that Trump got talked into. Um Peter doesn't he won't accept that but I think he did. And it the longer it goes on clearly the more economic damage is being done not just to obviously the Iranians but also to everybody, right? Because of the power of the Strait of Hormuz which most people probably weren't even aware of before this happened. The longer it goes on, what is the real damage to the economy do you think? Look, I've been surprised at how resilient it is. The markets don't seem to have even noticed it. It it is head-scratching to me every day. How is that possible? Investors in the stock market are professional optimists. You And by the way, you have to be. Or are they just I mean, I'll say this respectfully cuz I know you have to No, no, no. Are they not just a bunch of lemmings? You look at the oil price. Right. Graph, right? Since the start of the war. Every time Every time Trump breaks wind, Yes. One way or another, what what what what? No actual longer-term thinking, no assessment of what he's saying, whether it bears any relation to the reality on the ground or anything. They just burp up and down, and I'm like, that's not That's not a sensible way of reacting to this news. The complication. There's two things going on. One is the stock market is supposed to be looking out 12 to 18 months from now. That is supposed to be the bet. So, the bet that's taking place today is that in 12 months or 18 months from now, call it, that there is no war, that the strait is open. That is what they're gambling on. Um is that a good gamble? I don't know. I I I hope so. The other thing I just say, having studied 1929 and 2008, it has actually paid to be a professional optimist. Um I'm a professional skeptic. I'm a journalist. That's Both of us are We're in the skeptical business. Our first instinct is who's lying to me and why. Right. Exactly. Um so, it's a little There is a little bit of a disconnect there, but if you look over the last 100 years, even with the 1929 crash, even with the 2008 or a dot-com or, you know, go down the list, you have been better off being invested in the market than not being in the market. And in fact, there's been a number of studies that have shown if you look at wars, anytime a war has broken out, in the past, by the way, you used to see big movements in the stock market. I think people started clocking what was happening. Oftentimes, if you put money into the market when a war broke out, a year later, you were doing better. That This is not investment advice. It's just Historically, I think that's what this investor class today is looking at.
In terms of getting rich, people look at someone like you, and they go, "Well, come on. You You know. You're like an expert in this stuff. What is the best, safest way to get rich?" It's the way that Warren Buffett has told people to get rich, which is to buy an index fund early on in your life, uh to compound your money. Uh it is not sexy. It is not fast. Uh but if you have some patience and you are consistent about it, uh you can get you can get rich.
Warren, I interviewed him on CNN, and he was certainly, I would say, the most impressive business person I've ever met. I thought his world view about it all, even down to he sent one email ever, which ended up in a lawsuit, so he never emailed anybody again. He just uses a a normal phone. He has a he had a Nokia flip phone, which he just took calls on. Um and if you It was a massive book called Snowball, wasn't it, about him? Uh-huh. Incredibly dense, but brilliant, I thought. And um By Alice Schroeder. Right. And incredibly well done, but it basically the sort of philosophy was to invest in great ball run companies that generate lots of cash and so on. But also, following the habits of human beings. So, when times were tough, people tended to stay at home. They'd order in pizza. They'd eat more they'd chew more gum cuz they were worried. They'd eat more confectionery and so on. And he would buy accordingly. And similarly, when times were great, he'd be into airlines and restaurants because that's what people are doing. In other words, he's chasing behavioral patterns and habits. I thought that was just incredibly simple, but fascinating. He has the strongest sort of emotional core. Yes. Most people, when the stock market falls, freak out. He says to himself, "Oh my goodness, everything's on sale." Well, he says, "When others when others are fearful, be greedy. When others are greedy, be fearful." It's very hard, I think, for most people to be able to follow that path. I I think it's the right path, but emotionally, it's You've got to have balls of steel, right? A natural act for most.
Your Your book is called 1929. We're heading towards 2029. So, 100 years later. What is it going to look like, the world, if you were a betting man? Mhm. And things are looking pretty unpredictable right now, but your job is to try and predict these things. What are we going to look like, in particular, that relationship between AI and jobs? Because it seems to me to be the crucial fulcrum, as as forgetting about war and whatever else, stuff you can't control. The thing we can control is that balance between artificial intelligence, where it goes by 2029, and where what that does to the human jobs market.
Okay, so I Is this next 3 years? Is that That's That's the prediction? Next 3 years, actually, I don't think it necessarily takes all the jobs that actually we've been expecting. I don't know if you've been following what's happening with mammograms. You'll talk about mammograms because they always thought that radiologists for mammograms were going to lose their jobs first because AI can read a mammogram better than a the person. There are more people who are radiologists doing mammograms than ever before. Why? Because the price of mammograms has come down and more people are getting mammograms than ever, and somebody still has to read them and still has to talk to the patient personally. So, I think there's going to be an opportunity About, say, I guess about legal clerks, right? But their job is to just go and find old case studies. If you Yes. Those people are not going to have jobs. Right. So, then what happens to the ladder in industries like that? Because you have to Right. So, what happens to those people? Because if you can't get on the ladder, then surely the whole ladder eventually just falls. So, this this is to me the issue. And what I don't know is is that over the next 2 or 3 years, or is that over the next 5 or 10 years? It's going to be incredibly quick. So, I think it's going to be slow and then incredibly quick. See companies like Facebook and others, you know, getting rid of thousands of people, the moment that starts to happen and and they're citing AI as the reason. Right. I'm not that surely has to accelerate. A little worried that there's a little bit of theater going on in some of these announcements. Right now, I think people are using AI as an excuse for firing people and I'm not sure that's the actual case. By the way, one of the things that's happened in the last 2 weeks, the cost of using AI is so incredibly high, companies like Uber are saying that the ROI, the return on investment, doesn't make sense. They'd actually prefer to use engineers. So I think this going to play itself out for some time. Then I think they'll probably be a cliff and there's going to be a big question about that what that transition looks like. I think that's when it becomes a political and policy story, but I think it's probably a a 2029 story.
What's the number one lesson we should learn from this from the '29 crash? The lesson of Warren Buffett is it's have humility. It's it's not to chase the next thing. You know, the phrase FOMO did not exist in 1929, but boy do we have it now and when we see folks making a fortune, everybody wants a lottery ticket. Everybody wants the ticket. The problem is the most people who buy the ticket lose.
Talking of people potentially winning or losing after your highly entertaining interview on CNBC Squawk Box, you pressed Ryan Cohen on how GameStop could possibly finance its 56 billion-dollar bid to acquire eBay saying the math just didn't work. So he came on on Squawk Box to respond. He said this. I was surprised by their lack of understanding um of uh of the structure cuz it's very simple. It's half cash, it's half stock. Uh we have the ability to issue stock. Uh essentially, the eBay shareholders are going to continue owning eBay, except it's going to be run by an owner-operator as opposed to an entrenched management team um that has zero invested and zero skin in the game. And the other half of the structure, we've got 9 billion of cash on our balance sheet and our bankers have advised us that they feel confident in our ability to raise 20 billion. Uh so, it's a straightforward deal, but um you know, it was it was too complicated for them on CNBC.
Now, the reason I wanted to play that to you is because it was way too complicated for me to understand. But is there anything that he said there was actually credible? You've now heard it. He says it's too complicated for you to understand. No. Let me I can ex- I would beg to differ. But from what you just heard there, which was his kind of clarifying explanation, what would your response be? So, look, I think what he is trying to do is slightly different than what is a classic acquisition. Um and I just for the record, I did understand exactly what the transaction was. I was desperately trying to get him to explain it to the public in a way that they could understand it. Um and but in terms of what the deal is, typically when you buy a company, you have more money than the company that you're buying and you're buying out their shares. In fact, he said that he was buying it at a premium. That's not exactly what this deal is. He's paying some money to the company, but he's effectively telling eBay shareholders, "You are going to roll in with me." Meaning, you're going to a big portion of your shares are still coming here. So, I'm not really buying you out at all. I'm just you're going to roll in with me and if you like me as the manager um and think that what I've done with Chewy he he had a great success with Chewy. If you think that what he's doing with GameStop was great, then you'll you'll follow down this path. And that that's what the deal is. The question is he needs to ultimately persuade those eBay shareholders, and those eBay shareholders are big Wall Street institutions, by the way. It's not retail investors necessarily. A lot, you know, there are a lot of retail investors in GameStop, got them very excited about GameStop. He's got to persuade BlackRock and you know, T. Rowe Price and all the big funds that he's the guy to run this and that they need to trust him. That's what that's doing.
Poly market, when asked will GameStop acquire eBay by the end of the year, 15% are saying yes in the prediction market, down from 22%. Where would you put the percentage? Look, I think it's a I think it's going to be a challenge for Ryan. I think he's done a By the way, he did a great job with Chewy. I think he's doing a good job with GameStop. Pull it off? In the next in the this year? I think it would be very, very challenging. Like almost impossible challenging. But that's because he effectively would have to get the board which doesn't want to hand over the reins, and he'd have to get all the big institutional investors behind him. Could he ultimately do it? Like over time? Maybe. But um it's not an easy one.
Is an easier one what's going to happen to SpaceX when it floats in a couple of weeks? Is that going to be the rocket that we all expect? So, it's interesting. It's a rocket that almost invariably has to be a rocket uh for the first couple of weeks because the Nasdaq, uh the stock exchange where it's going to go public, has an index fund called the QQQ. Anyone who buys the Nasdaq index fund is automatically within the first 5 days going to be buying shares of SpaceX. So, there is a effectively an automated buyer of SpaceX shares. And by the way, there's other investment funds out there that try to mimic the Nasdaq fund. So, they have to automatically buy shares, too. So, I think in the immediate aftermath, there will be uh lots of shares moving higher. Having said that, Elon's done something very interesting. Talking about the democratization of finance. He's allowing a lot more retail investors to buy in than historically. Why is he doing that? He believes in this idea of democratizing finance and believes there's a big audience for his shares. The question and it's going to be a big test. Most companies don't put the shares in retail investors' hands immediately because they're not considered diamond hands. They're considered quick uh quick quick hands that they may sell if the stock moves too high. So, it's going to be a very interesting one to watch.
I sat with three billionaires about 3 4 years ago over lunch and I just said to them, "Come on then. If you could invest in one stock, what would it be?" And they all they all said SpaceX. And you I thought it was very interesting. So, it's going to be it's going to be a fantastically exciting. And watch for the next move. Elon's next move. SpaceX I think is going to ultimately buy Tesla. I think that's inevitable. And they're going to rename the company X for the whole enterprise. The whole thing? That's my That's my call. That's a it's a big call, but you're usually right.
I want to weigh in with one simple question. In Wall Street, perhaps the most iconic movie about Wall Street obviously, but about the financial world. The classic Oliver Stone film. There's the line, "Lunch is for wimps." Do you go to lunch? I go I used to go to lunch. These days I don't really go to lunch that much. Concluded lunch is for wimps? I just don't know what the power lunch is anymore. Maybe when we go to lunch. No, it's Michael's as in Midtown Manhattan with our mutual friend Jonathan Wald. Absolutely. Isn't that the epicenter of power lunches of of power in New York. Andrew, great to see you. Great to see you. Inside the crash as you've got here a quote here from David Grann, "riveting and illuminating." It certainly is and a massive wake-up call for all of us right now, I would argue. Great to see you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks very much. Thanks.
Well, joining us now to react to that interview is Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop. So, Ryan, you were listening there to Andrew. Uh there was a little glimmer of hope. He didn't think it was impossible, just very difficult. What's your reaction? Um it reminds me of uh the movie Dumb and Dumber, where the girl tells Jim Carrey, "What are my He asked, "What are my chances?" And uh she says like one in a million or something, and he says, "So, you're saying there's a chance." I mean, look, Andrew is, notwithstanding your little dig, uh which I played to him, um that he does He didn't understand it. I think he does understand it, and he outlined just now the reasons for his concern and wanting you to really articulate how you thought this would work. Uh I mean, do you understand his concerns? Do you do you do you do you accept that he, you know, is pretty expert in this, and the the concerns are valid? Yeah, I mean, uh it's tough. Everything that I've done has always been tough. I I um if you would have looked at what the chances of Chewy to succeed against Amazon, the odds, you know, were very very low, and turning around GameStop, if you asked all of Wall Street what they thought uh the business was going to be doing in 2026, when I joined the board, they would have said that the company would have been bankrupt a few times over. So, uh yeah, this is uh it's tough.
There have been reports today saying that you've not given up on this uh project, and you may now take your proposal directly to shareholders for an attempted hostile takeover. Is that true? I'm definitely not going to give up. It's uh I'm not going to stop. So, You're not denying the the report which includes the the proposal potentially direct to shareholders for a an attempted hostile takeover. Is that been true? Ultimately, the owners of the business are the shareholders and the fate of the business is going to be decided by the owners of the business and the vote is going to come down to who they want running the business. Do you want an entrenched management team that's collecting tens of millions of dollars in risk-free compensation running the business or do you want someone that's putting all his chips on the table both through GameStop and me personally. And but ultimately, you know, the the management team and the board has all kinds of perverse incentives uh but I'm going to do everything to make sure that ultimately the owners of the business get to make that decision. That doesn't sound like a denial. Wow, okay. So, that is news. So, you are seriously considering uh a hostile takeover. Going to do whatever we need to do in order to maximize shareholder value for for GameStop and um we've made a a big investment. We're one of the largest active shareholders of the business and I love eBay and the business is highly complimentary to GameStop's business and it's a business that I personally understand very well and is within my circle of competence. So, we'll uh we'll see what happens.
Well, it forward greatly to your next move on that. Just very quickly, Space X, you know, we just heard Andrew talking about it that it's going to be a rocket launch launch, but it's going to have to reach rocket levels uh to justify, I guess, all the hype. What's your view about it? I wouldn't bet against that. I wouldn't uh I wouldn't be arrogant enough to to bet against uh to bet against Elon. And um what I find interesting um on all the skeptics on Wall Street is how quickly they are to take the side of the establishment. I don't know what it is. Maybe they play by the rules, they go on the show, they answer all their questions, they bow down to them, they get together in the Hamptons. I don't know what it is, but there's nothing that is more American than risking your own money. And if you end up making money, great. And if you end up losing money, then you lose money. And yet, you look at the mainstream media like with uh with GameStop as an example, and it's almost like everyone is rooting and wants wants to see our demise. And yeah, it's the same thing in this situation, too. They want to see us fail. They hope we fail, and doesn't really make sense to me. It's anti-American. What we're doing is tough, but we're taking on risk. And if you look at the current management team and the board, you've got a board of directors that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for attending a few board meetings. You've got a management team. You've got a CEO in particular that's making tens of millions of dollars, have never bought a single share of stock on the open market with his own money. And yet, why are they so quick to protect and want them to succeed? Like, you know, you talk about like I I watch what you you know, wealth inequality and all of these systemic risks. And then you have someone that's taking on a lot of risk and putting a lot of skin in the game. It's like, why do they want us to fail? I don't understand.
You know, I love entrepreneurs. I think they make the world go around. I think that most people are risk averse and play safe in their lives and their business. And actually, if it wasn't for people like you and Elon Musk and others, the world would be a very dull place. And sometimes you got to speculate to accumulate, and you may crash and burn, but as we learned in uh in Top Gun, sometimes you will crash and burn, but other times you you're going to you're going to win. Uh and I I wouldn't bet against you either, Ryan. I've enjoyed talking to you the few times we've done it. I hope we continue to do it. And if you pull it off, it'll be amazing. And if you don't, well, you had a go. I appreciate it, Piers. We're on the same page. We are. And we will talk again. Ryan, thank you very much. Nice seeing you.
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