Jeff

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@nathancanilao I would have liked to see Amihere get some minutes. She has played really well against Malonga in the past.
As for Jocyte, I try to remember she just came off a European season and playoffs. Still, I have not seen much defense or rebounding against this WNBA competition.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@TOOTTHEBARBER South Street by the Orlons.

"The hippest street in town"

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@KevinKileyCA Do you love inflation like Trump does?

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@Hot_Pepper76 Miles Davis Quintet - take your pick

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@valkyriesreport I see that number 4.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@valkyriesreport I think this matchup dictated more physical players get more minutes. She did not look strong vs Minnesota.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@BeschlossDC They had a busy schedule that day. I saw them at Buchanan Airport in Concord that afternoon.

[Bull Theory @BullTheoryio]

🚨Michael Burry just said Elon Musk and Nvidia's deal is built on fake numbers.

Burry published a detailed breakdown calling the entire structure "Fugazi", his word for fake.

He is alleging that billions of dollars in Nvidia chips are being hidden off balance sheets, and that American retirees are unknowingly funding the whole thing.

Nvidia, the world's largest AI chip company sold $5.4 billion worth of its most advanced GPUs, the GB200, to a company called Valor.

Valor is not a real operating business. It is a special purpose vehicle, a shell company created specifically to hold these chips and nothing else. Nvidia also invested $1.9 billion of its own money directly into Valor on top of the sale.

Those 100,000+ chips are now physically inside xAI's data center. xAI is Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, the one that builds Grok. xAI is using every single one of those chips right now to run its AI models.

But here is what Burry is flagging.

Neither Nvidia nor xAI owns those chips on paper. Valor, the shell company holds legal title. That means $5.4 billion in GPU assets do not show up on Nvidia's balance sheet as inventory.

They do not show up on xAI's balance sheet as assets. They are legally invisible to both companies.

Nvidia gets to book the $5.4 billion as a completed sale and record it as revenue. xAI gets full use of the chips without owning them. And the risk disappears into a shell company in the middle.

Now here is where American retirees enter the picture.

Valor needed $3.5 billion in debt to fund this structure. Apollo provided it. Apollo is one of the largest asset managers on earth with $1.03 trillion under management and $834 billion specifically in private credit.

Apollo raised the $3.5 billion, packaged it into debt securities, and sold those securities to Athene.

Athene is Apollo's own insurance company. It sells fixed and indexed annuities, retirement savings products, to ordinary Americans.

When a retiree buys an Athene annuity, they believe their money is sitting in safe, stable investments. That money is now inside a structure funding Elon Musk's AI data center.

The numbers inside Athene are most alarming.

Athene holds $74.2 billion in reserves. It has moved $217 billion in assets into a captive insurer based in Bermuda, meaning those assets sit outside normal US insurance regulation and oversight.

Of the entire portfolio, 34.7%, equal to $103 billion, is classified as Level 3 assets.

Level 3 is an accounting classification that means there is no observable market price for these assets. No outside party can independently verify what they are actually worth.

The leverage sitting on top of those unpriced assets is 16 times.

Burry's says:
Every step of this structure is technically legal and publicly disclosed. But the entire thing was deliberately engineered across 8 to 12 steps to move credit risk off balance sheets and away from any market pricing.

- Nvidia books the revenue.
- Apollo collects the fees.
- xAI gets the computing power.
- And retirees sitting at the bottom of a 16x leveraged Bermuda insurance structure, holding $103 billion in assets with no market price carry the risk without knowing it exists.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@GustafsonMeg10 I need a picture of Pancake on a paddle like the fans in Portland were waving tonight. Nice win! Will be at the game in SF on Tuesday!

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@valkyriesreport @cc22report I am loving this developing Valkyries/Fever rivalry. Would love to see that as the finals matchup. My take from Thursday's game: Both of these teams are going to get even better. Raven Johnson will get more minutes as will Juste Jocyte. Both of them can make a difference.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@kenzofuku Thinking of this quote last night when she executed that perfect pick-and-roll to Prechtel. Sweet!

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@mattblively Double-Double with grilled onions is the only way to go. Pass it on.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@valkyriesreport Driving down from Placerville. Psyched!!

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@KevinKileyCA Are you getting a cut of the $1.776 billion slush fund?

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@amandacarpenter Do you really think he cares about the polls? Or about upcoming "elections". He thinks he has taken over the country and there is nothing that can be done about it. Isn't the $1.776 billion fund a vehicle to pay his militia?

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@anthon7yandrews @ricky_martin @NaomiBiden You still have Naomi Biden in this response.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@LASparks Kate and Kelsey Plum back on the same team and the Aces come to town today. Nice scenario. Two Shots!! (IYKYK)

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@BScovile @AllisonS219 @UnderdogWNBA I don't see that happening either, especially with the Valkyries, but wanted to lay out all of the options. She may be interested if she likes her chances better with another team but a developmental spot is the only place they can stash her at this late hour.

[Jeff @haaspavilion]

@AllisonS219 @BScovile @UnderdogWNBA We will know if she got claimed by anybody. If not, she can sign with any team, including coming back to GS. I think she is still eligible for a developmental spot due to less than 3 years of WNBA service, for what that is worth.