Transatlanticist | Deeptech investor | Would much rather be listening to jazz.
Paris...or hopefully on a boat
Joined September 2009
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Michael Jackson retweeted
Zucman is considered the most credentialed and elite academic supporting the notion of wealth taxes - the fact that he is outmatched intellectually by the average anon RW poster on here is telling; the socialists vainly try to establish an academic veneer for their schemes but at the end of the day it’s just about resentment and hatred of the successful and well turned out. There’s no genuine policy case for wealth taxes and Zucmans latest beclownment should show how thin the veil is
The key problem is this:
Why would billionaires permanently leave California in response to a one-time tax owed if they lived there on January 1, 2026?
It would only make sense for them to leave if the tax becomes annual.
But if the tax becomes annual, it would also generate revenue annually — by virtue of, well, being annual.
Michael Jackson retweeted
Right now, France has the riots that would accompany fiscal consolidation, but none of the benefits, because it is not actually doing any fiscal consolidation. So give the rioters the thing they think they are rioting against. What are they going to do about it? Riot?
Michael Jackson retweeted
French yields are blowing up European macro hedge fund carry trades
efinancialcareers.co.uk/news…
Michael Jackson retweeted
🧵In 2019, California billionaire tax crusader Gabriel Zucman made an astonishing claim to the NY Times: billionaires pay a lower avg tax rate than poor people in the US.
I noticed something fishy though: Zucman's NYT chart did not match his own published data from a 2018 paper
Michael Jackson retweeted
Google did this in 2014. Class C shares with no votes. Mark can keep paying stock comp, sell equity to pay for GPUs, acquire cos w shares, and not dilute his voting control.
New: Meta is creating a new stock class to help fund its AI spending spree
wsj.com/articles/metaplatfor…
Michael Jackson retweeted
American chattering classes love to hate our country’s financial services sector, but mark my words: the depth and versatility of U.S. capital markets will be our mightiest weapon in the singularity. Anti-finance sentiment, still fashionable on both left and right, is low IQ.
Michael Jackson retweeted
Nvidia: We're guiding to 70% revenue growth next year. There's incredible AI demand for 100% growth, but we can't supply it.
Google: Everyone wishes they had DOUBLE the compute capacity right now. There's so much AI demand.
Bloomberg/FT: There's a $500 million market-cap Korean neocloud no one has ever heard of and it traded poorly on its IPO first day. AI IS DEAD. EVERYONE FREAK OUT AND PANIC!
Michael Jackson retweeted
Buy land in this basin.
The year is 2050. The Great Lakes Megalopolis is the most valuable region on Earth.
Minneapolis – Milwaukee – Chicago – Indianapolis – Cincinnati – Detroit – Columbus – Cleveland – Pittsburgh – Toronto – Buffalo – Montreal
• 20% of the world's surface fresh water
• Urban centers with finance & tech hubs, and great universities
• Ontario runs one of the largest nuclear fleets in the world, generating up to 60% of its electricity, with grid-scale SMRs being built ahead of schedule. Illinois leads the US in nuclear power, and Michigan is bringing reactors back online.
• The region holds some of the largest untapped copper-nickel-cobalt-platinum-chromite deposits in the world, along with the gallium, indium, and graphite that China guards so jealously.
• The densest industrial base in the Western Hemisphere: heavy machinery, metal refineries, steel, auto, batteries, and aerospace backed by a deep pool of suppliers/engineers/skilled trades.
• Climate-resilient cities with municipal capacity that can absorb millions more.
Michael Jackson retweeted
UK is -54.5% btw
Remember when Germany was known for its cars? Not anymore, German vehicle production has fallen by 31% since 2015, the steepest drop among major producers, while China’s has risen by more than 40%. The same pattern appears elsewhere. Machinery and plant engineering remain well below earlier peaks as Chinese rivals close the technology gap and undercut on price. Chemicals, the classic early-warning sector, have seen multi-year output declines, with capacity utilization stuck around 70–75% amid rising pressure from Chinese overcapacity. Energy-intensive industry overall remains roughly 15% below 2018–2022 levels.
The old German model of high-quality engineering and reliable exports is under structural strain. High energy and labor costs, stagnant productivity, dense regulation, and years of complacency have eroded competitiveness, while adaptation to electrification and software has lagged.
What has expanded is the public sector. Employment in government, education, and health has grown even as manufacturing and private jobs have shrunk. Aggregate growth since 2020 has come almost entirely from higher public consumption and investment, financed by rising debt, private-sector contributions have been negative.
This is not sustainable. Without lower energy and regulatory costs and genuine pressure to innovate, the relative decline of Germany’s industrial core will continue. Higher debt masks the decline for now, but Germany without its industry won’t stay prosperous forever.
Michael Jackson retweeted
"Ursula von der Leyen is afraid to do anything except talk. She's useless."
@Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary tells #EuropeToday the EU Commission president is doing "nothing" to make Europe more competitive.
Michael Jackson retweeted
The below is from Norman Davies’ book Vanished Kingdoms. It is a declaration by Ataulf — “the Noble Wolf” –, the Visigoth leader who succeeded Alaric — the sacker of Rome.
Michael Jackson retweeted
German chancellor Merz asks Jensen Huang for advice on how Europe should regulate AI.
Jensen: “You can’t regulate if there’s no technology.”
“The technology industry must invent the technology for safety. […] Safety is not hopes and dreams. Safety is technology and engineering. Second, the companies need to have best practices. […] And then lastly there’s industrial and government regulations. […] Regulating the internet is hard, but regulating internet applications is not so hard. We should be regulating the applications right way. […] There’s nothing to regulate if the industry doesn’t thrive. You want the German AI industry to thrive as well as do it safely, responsibly. […] We know there’s technology we can invent and deploy in order to have AI safety. We know that there are best practices that we can adhere to as companies and industries. And then in addition to that, if necessary, we’ll make sure we regulate.”
Michael Jackson retweeted
The riots in France and the anti-Israel protests in the U.S. are part of the same movement. @WSJFreeEx:
Michael Jackson retweeted
Type of thing referenced in a 7th century manuscript by a guy named Theobald of Cremona that later scholars conclude is obviously made up
Priest gave sermon on spontaneity of death just before falling crucifix killed him during livestreamed mass trib.al/z1QhWvA
Michael Jackson retweeted
Amazingly, onions are the only American agricultural commodity explicitly banned from futures trading.
This is thanks to an overzealous federal reaction to Chicago-based market manipulation in the late 1950s.
Now these heroic UChicago students are campaigning to overturn the Onion Futures Act of 1958.
Michael Jackson retweeted
This echoes what Nebius and CoreWeave have been saying too
"With GPU paybacks of around two years on our recent 3-year contracts"
"There's more customer demand than we can build for."
"2026 is largely sold out, recent 3-year contracts are at more than double the prior year's pricing"
A lot of questions this week on funding, so here's how a GPU typically gets funded at $IREN.
First, the customer signs a multi-year take-or-pay contract and agrees to a prepayment. On our recent 3-year contracts, prepayments have been 45% to 55% of the associated GPU capex.
Second, financing is committed, secured by the contracted GPUs. On the Microsoft contract we secured an A-rated facility at around 6%, which together with prepayments covers 96% of GPU capex. More recently, for a non-investment grade counterparty at Mackenzie, we secured financing at 9% fixed, which together with prepayments covers more than the full cost of the GPUs.
That's the GPU side. The data centers are a separate, long-term asset base, and we own the ones our GPUs run in. Construction has been funded from cash to date, with no debt against these multi-billion dollar assets. As they come online with contracted customers, they can support financing in their own right.
The processes behind the next facilities are continuing, and new paper will cost what the market charges. With GPU paybacks of around two years on our recent 3-year contracts, a wider spread barely moves the economics.
There's more customer demand than we can build for. As we noted at our recent earnings, 2026 is largely sold out, recent 3-year contracts are at more than double the prior year's pricing, and demand for anything we can bring online in 2027 covers it several times over, with prepayments a focus in every negotiation. Conversations on 2028 capacity are already underway.
Meanwhile announced capacity keeps slipping across the industry, which is the point: signing deals isn't the bottleneck in this market, bringing GPUs online is, and that's our focus.