Brent W. Jackson

CEO & Founder @torpago

[Brent W. Jackson @bjackson24]

@elonmusk I’m sitting on a United flight equipped with @Starlink . I’m blown away at how well this works. Currently steaming World Cup while working. Streaming is flawless, everything loads at lighting speeds. I just made a phone call. Connection is better then than what I get from xfinity on the ground 🤯

[Brent W. Jackson @bjackson24]

@DavidBakhtiari Let her have this one, she’s usually on the losing end of these trades anyway.

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

The Kamala Paradox™️

@DavidSacks called it in August.

[Frank Fleming @NjTank99]

If anyone else did this

Its called Insider Trading

[Triple Net Investor @TripleNetInvest]

Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan recently said that he doesn't work past 6pm and that if anyone at Starbucks gets a minute of his time after 6 pm they "better be sure that it's important."

He was just fired today.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

One would think that a letter to the American people from the president announcing his decision to step aside would not be signed using a digital signature and would be accompanied by a photo op and a scheduled conference in the morning that followed.

Instead we have a digitally signed letter released on the president’s @X account, an account we know that is run by a staffer, no photo, and no live scheduled address to the American people.

If I were China, I would invade Taiwan tomorrow.

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

First leg down

[The🐰FOO @PolitiBunny]

Rumors of Hillary Clinton replacing Biden reminded me of this … one of the best moments in debate history. 🔥😂

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

Kamala Harris “The importance of community banks is they are, as they are called, they're in the community”

[Brent W. Jackson @bjackson24]

Thanks, @DavidBakhtiari would not be here without your support🚀🌗

[David Bakhtiari @DavidBakhtiari]

https://t.co/j9L1n2VJB8

Super proud of my buddy and what he’s done! Congrats @bjackson24 & @torpago

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Why I’m Backing President Trump

As many press accounts have reported, I’m hosting a fundraising event for President Donald J. Trump at my home in San Francisco this evening.

Over the last couple of years, I have hosted events for presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as several Congressional figures in both major parties. I give to many, but endorse few.

But today I am giving my endorsement to our 45th President, Donald J. Trump, to be our 47th President. My reasons rest on four main issues that I think are vital to American prosperity, security, and stability – issues where the Biden administration has veered badly off course and where I believe President Trump can lead us back.

1. The Economy

President Biden took over an economy that was already recovering strongly from the Covid-induced shock of Q2 2020. Demand had roared back, and employment had recovered. But he chose to keep priming the pump with unnecessary Covid stimulus – almost $2 trillion of it, passed on a straight party-line vote in March of 2021, with trillions more to follow for “infrastructure,” green energy, and “inflation reduction.”

Biden did this despite early warnings from former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers that it could lead to inflation. When the inflation came, the Biden administration dismissed it as “transitory.” In fact, inflation still remains persistently high even after the fastest interest-rate tightening cycle in memory.

As a result of Biden’s inflation, average Americans have lost roughly a fifth of their purchasing power over the last few years. Moreover, any American who needs a mortgage, car loan, or credit card debt faces much higher interest costs, which further constrain their purchasing power.

It’s no different for our federal government, which now must devote over a trillion dollars annually to interest on its $34 trillion debt, a massive sum that’s been growing by a trillion dollars every hundred days. This trajectory is unsustainable, yet Biden’s 2025 budget calls for even higher spending.

Growth has already slowed from 3.4 percent in the last quarter of 2023 to an anemic 1.3 percent in the first quarter of this year. We can’t afford another four years of Bidenomics.

2. Foreign Policy / Ukraine War

President Trump left office with ISIS defeated, the Abraham Accords signed, and no new wars raging on the global stage. Three and a half years later, the world is on fire. President Biden has made several strategic choices that have contributed to this situation.

In his first year in office, Biden unnecessarily alienated the Saudis before realizing that they are an indispensable partner in the Middle East. He also presided over a chaotic withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan (right policy, abysmal execution).

But his biggest blunder by far has been in Ukraine. His administration immediately began pushing for Ukraine’s admission to NATO, despite no unanimity among the existing NATO members that such a move was a good idea. When this predictably antagonized the Russians, the Biden administration doubled down at every turn, insisting that “NATO’s door is open, and will remain open” with respect to Ukraine. Biden himself baited Russia when he said he didn’t “accept anybody’s red lines.”

After the invasion, there was still a chance to stop the war in its early weeks before much loss of life and destruction had occurred. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had signed a draft agreement in Istanbul that would have seen Russia retreat to its pre-invasion borders in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. But the Biden administration rejected that deal as well as General Milley’s advice to seek a diplomatic solution in November 2022.

As the war of attrition grinds on, the Ukrainians face ever-mounting casualties and infrastructure damage. Still, President Biden keeps allowing the conflict to escalate and risk World War III. Every escalation that Biden initially resisted – Abrams tanks, F-16’s, ATACMs, allowing Ukraine to hit targets in Russia – he has eventually acquiesced to. There is just one more escalation to go: NATO troops on the ground fighting Russia directly. And our European allies like Emmanuel Macron are already spoiling for exactly this scenario.

With Biden, our choices are limited to fighting the proxy war to the last Ukrainian, or fighting Russia ourselves. President Trump has said he wants the dying in Ukraine to stop, and that he will seek to end the war through a negotiated settlement. Ukraine will no longer be able to get the deal we talked them out of in April 2022, but we can still save Ukraine as an independent nation and avert world war.

3. The Border

As an immigrant to the United States myself, I certainly believe in America’s history of strengthening its ranks by welcoming talented people from other nations seeking freedom and opportunity. But that promise requires an orderly process of legal immigration that emphasizes skills and the principles of American citizenship. This was the preferred policy under President Trump.

What Biden ushered in was a de facto open border policy. On his first day in office, he repealed President Trump’s executive orders restricting illegal immigration and stopped construction of a border wall, selling off parts of it for scrap metal. This quickly resulted in a massive spike in illegal border crossings and a chaotic and dangerous situation on our southern border.

President Biden (along with the hapless Kamala Harris and the malevolent Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas) responded to growing concerns by gaslighting the American public, saying there was no problem at the border despite constant videos of masses of people sprinting across it.

When the situation became too dire to ignore or deny, Biden claimed he didn’t have the executive authority to do anything about it and blamed Republicans for not sending him legislation. But this week, facing abysmal polling numbers on this issue, Biden suddenly discovered he has executive authority after all. The order he signed is a tepid, too little-too late effort to slow the tidal wave of illegal immigration in time for the election. But Biden has shown he is not serious on this issue. If he wins a second term, the open border policy will resume, and tens of millions more illegals will stream across the border.

4. Lawfare

A bedrock of the political stability we’ve enjoyed in America over the last 250 years is that we don’t accept attempts to jail political opponents in order to win an election. Yet Biden has pushed for selective and unprecedented prosecutions of his once and future opponent from the moment he assumed office.

Merrick Garland took a long look at the January 6 situation and didn’t see a path to prosecute Trump, even after a one-sided Congressional committee sent a highly-prejudiced referral to his Justice Department. Press stories then appeared describing Biden’s frustration with Garland’s reticence. The result was Jack Smith at the federal level and Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis at the state level. All have pursued cases based on novel legal theories heretofore unseen and designed to get Trump. In the NY case, Bragg resurrected a dead book-keeping misdemeanor into 34 felonies by claiming it was in the service of a second crime that he never defined and that the judge never insisted the jury unanimously agree on.

My immigration to this country as a young boy happened because my parents disagreed with the political system of their home country. That government sought to solve its political disagreements by imprisoning its political enemies. What a sad irony that the lawfare we escaped has now reared its ugly head in America of all places.

President Biden keeps insisting that a return of President Trump to the White House threatens democracy. But his administration is the one that has colluded with tech platforms to censor the Internet, used the intelligence community to cover up his son Hunter’s laptop, and pursued elective prosecutions against his political opponents.

Conclusion: The A/B Test

The voters have experienced four years of President Trump and four years of President Biden. In tech, we call this an A/B test. With respect to economic policy, foreign policy, border policy, and legal fairness, Trump performed better. He is the President who deserves a second term.

[Stuart Blitz @StuartBlitz]

The CEO, when the VC’s you’re pitching casually ask the CTO a quick question and he starts to ramble

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Putting aside whatever views one may have on transgenderism, why would you overshadow one of the holiest Christian days of the year to promote another ideology/movement of any kind?

Aren’t there already other days on the calendar acknowledging/celebrating transgenderism?

Why are our state and federal governments launching new holidays that overlap with major holidays of other religious organizations? Aren’t there other open days on the calendar?

Why isn’t this just going to lead to more divisiveness in our country?

[Jason Mikula @mikulaja]

Fintech Biz Weekly just dropped:

Out of 50 of @unit_co_'s deposit programs reviewed by FBW, 20 clients across 6 of its 8 bank partners may mislead on offering "banking" services, FDIC coverage

For example Stake, image below, a Unit/Blue Ridge client

You know where to find it

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

Thanks to everybody who donated. We raised 750k. With the matching of the funds that brings the total to 1.5 million that will go directly to the family.

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

Raising a seed round is not easy

[David Bakhtiari @DavidBakhtiari]

I was really wildin’ this game! Gotta say, it was fun time. 😤

[Torpago @torpago]

‼️Low-quality photo of a HIGH-QUALITY man sporting Torpago swag. ‼️

👀We love to see it @DavidBakhtiari! 💙

Watch the locker room interview 👉https://t.co/dc2W0LAV6D

[Brent W. Jackson @bjackson24]

Nothing will humble you more than trying to log in to an @Microsoft account

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

The gov’t has about 48 hours to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake. By allowing @SVB_Financial to fail without protecting all depositors, the world has woken up to what an uninsured deposit is — an unsecured illiquid claim on a failed bank. Absent @jpmorgan @citi or @BankofAmerica acquiring SVB before the open on Monday, a prospect I believe to be unlikely, or the gov’t guaranteeing all of SVB’s deposits, the giant sucking sound you will hear will be the withdrawal of substantially all uninsured deposits from all but the ‘systemically important banks’ (SIBs). These funds will be transferred to the SIBs, US Treasury (UST) money market funds and short-term UST. There is already pressure to transfer cash to short-term UST and UST money market accounts due to the substantially higher yields available on risk-free UST vs. bank deposits. These withdrawals will drain liquidity from community, regional and other banks and begin the destruction of these important institutions. The increased demand for short-term UST will drive short rates lower complicating the @federalreserve’s efforts to raise rates to slow the economy. Already thousands of the fastest growing, most innovative venture-backed companies in the U.S. will begin to fail to make payroll next week. Had the gov’t stepped in on Friday to guarantee SVB’s deposits (in exchange for penny warrants which would have wiped out the substantial majority of its equity value) this could have been avoided and SVB’s 40-year franchise value could have been preserved and transferred to a new owner in exchange for an equity injection. We would have been open to participating. This approach would have minimized the risk of any gov’t losses, and created the potential for substantial profits from the rescue. Instead, I think it is now unlikely any buyer will emerge to acquire the failed bank. The gov’t’s approach has guaranteed that more risk will be concentrated in the SIBs at the expense of other banks, which itself creates more systemic risk. For those who make the case that depositors be damned as it would create moral hazard to save them, consider the feasibility of a world where each depositor must do their own credit assessment of the bank they choose to bank with. I am a pretty sophisticated financial analyst and I find most banks to be a black box despite the 1,000s of pages of @SECGov filings available on each bank. SVB’s senior management made a basic mistake. They invested short-term deposits in longer-term, fixed-rate assets. Thereafter short-term rates went up and a bank run ensued. Senior management screwed up and they should lose their jobs. The @FDICgov and OCC also screwed up. It is their job to monitor our banking system for risk and SVB should have been high on their watch list with more than $200B of assets and $170B of deposits from business borrowers in effectively the same industry. The FDIC’s and OCC’s failure to do their jobs should not be allowed to cause the destruction of 1,000s of our nation’s highest potential and highest growth businesses (and the resulting losses of 10s of 1,000s of jobs for some of our most talented younger generation) while also permanently impairing our community and regional banks’ access to low-cost deposits. This administration is particularly opposed to concentrations of power. Ironically, its approach to SVB’s failure guarantees duopolistic banking risk concentration in a handful of SIBs. My back-of-the envelope review of SVB’s balance sheet suggests that even in a liquidation, depositors should eventually get back about 98% of their deposits, but eventually is too long when you have payroll to meet next week. So even without assigning any franchise value to SVB, the cost of a gov’t guarantee of SVB deposits would be minimal. On the other hand, the unintended consequences of the gov’t’s failure to guarantee SVB deposits are vast and profound and need to be considered and addressed before Monday. Otherwise, watch out below.