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One Mafia Is Replaced By Another and Warren Buffet is Stepping Down...Sunday Reads and Listens

The Degenerate Economy is in The Vatican

Author

Howard Lindzon
May 04, 2025

Before I get started…

This meme made me laugh. The ‘degenerate economy’ is in The Vatican (from the great Finchat in - a fund 4 companyvesting n)…ewsletter

For Social Leverage followers/LP’s, here is our weekly update on portfolio companies making the news.

Congratulations to my friends Kass and Mike Lazerow whose Grass League Team (The New York Blue Birds) won this weekends Grass League $100,000 event (fund 4 company). This putt to end the winning teams round was great :

Our best Hat Tricks team finished 8th…

Max and I got to meet and chat with Wyndham Clark a US Open winner and owner of the San Diego franchise with Mark Wahlberg…

Onward…

The Apple Mafia rule via the app store is over. This is great news for companies, like Spotify, Netflix, Stocktwits really any company selling subscriptions in their app. Also great for payments platform Stripe which Stocktwits can use now to sell in app subscriptions. Apple has been taking a 30 percent commission/tax which now drops to THREE percent. It is another reason Spotify and Netflix ( $SPOT ( ▲ 2.52% ) and $NFLX ( ▲ 1.15% ) ) have surged of late.

That Mafia has been replaced with a mafia in the White House. I have been calling this ‘Softbank 2.0…but Oligarchier’. Silicon Valley billionaires have ‘partnered’ with the White House, the Trump family and bootlickers to put themselves on the cap tables of as many startups in software, energy and defense as they can while everyone seems to look the other way.

Here is Nellie Bowles of The Free Press on ‘The Gangster Government’ and one of the good riffs from same…

When Amazon reportedly considered displaying the added cost of tariffs on the price of items, Trump was furious. Here’s what an official anonymously told CNN: “Of course he was pissed. Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?” Fascinating. This is like when socialists, during the pandemic inflation, were talking about how greedy grocery store owners were to let prices go up. This is so phenomenally economically illiterate. Their argument is that Amazon should absorb the cost of the tariffs? What they really want is for Amazon not to point the tariffs out.

So Trump called Jeff Bezos, perhaps threatening to use the full weight of the U.S. government to make his life miserable (though Trump later described him as a “good guy” and said that Bezos “solved the problem very quickly.”). Amazon then told CNN “this was never approved and [was] not going to happen.” Right. . . so we’re in a gangster government now. The White House will personally target you if you don’t comply with their harebrained schemes. That’s a nice logistics and web services company you got there, Jeff, would be a real shame if the U.S. government went after it. Even Jeff Bezos—a man who is flying ladies to space for fun—caved. Our gangster government means conservative values are whatever Trumpo says they are, capisce? And Trumpo says it’s tariffs—or your other option is to buy $MELANIA coin, do you hear me? [Knee digs deeper into neck.] Am I not being clear, Jeff? Do I gotta enunciate more, Jeff?

Speaking of gangsters, a new private club for MAGA has launched in D.C. It’s called Executive Branch, and the membership fee is $500,000. Well, do you want your corporate merger approved or not?

Of course chief bootlicker and grifter Chamath needs to pay $500,000 for entry into the club. Nobody on main street would do a deal with him after his SPAC rug pulls. Here are Virgin Galactic, Opendoor and Metromile charts as just three examples of his SPAC’s and rug pulls…

Next up…

My interview with Vlad Tenev of Robinhood will go up here this week. In the meantime, Vlad sat down with Katie at Stocktwits to discuss last weeks earnings and a look ahead…

A bunch of my friends went to see Warren Buffett, age 94, speak at his Berkshire event this weekend. He announced he is retiring at the end of the year. We will all miss his simple and often spicy investment takes.

This was funny on warren’s retirement:

Venture investor Josh Kopelman is someone I look up to with an incredible track record. He sat down to offer his takes on the sector and it confirms a lot of how we think about investing at Social Leverage and the investment climate today. Have a watch/listen.

This was too funny. Dummy of the week…Pam Bondi who tees up the comedy…

Finally, I look forward to watching Conan’s ‘Kennedy Center Mark Twain Awards’ special on Netflix.

Have a great Sunday.

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