401(k) From Birth? Inside the “Trump Accounts” With Brad Gerstner

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1:14Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Today's number? Five. That's how many hours it took to rescue a large bull moose that recently got trapped in a well in Maine.

2:04Authorities say the animal is now safe and sound, but they did not reveal his identity as he wished to remain anonymous. Money market's mad. If money is evil, then that building is hell. Show goes on! The folks in there are ones that show, show! Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is December 4th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices climbed after ADP jobs data fueled bets on a rate cut next week. Private sector jobs fell the most since 2023 in November. That data also sent treasury yields falling. Meanwhile, the dollar had its worst days since September. Bitcoin continued its rebound, reaching a two-week high.

2:53Microsoft also fell 2.5 % on reports of lowered AI tool demand. And finally, Apple fell 1 % after Meta poached its most prominent design executive. Okay, what else is happening? Amazon just introduced a new chip to the AI wars, Tranium 3. AWS announced this new chip at its reInvent developer conference on Tuesday. According to the company, Tranium 3 is four times faster than the previous version. It also has four times greater energy efficiency, and it can train AI models for half the cost of the previous generation. So here to tell us more about this Tranium 3 chip and also what we learned at Amazon's conference, we're speaking with someone who is at the conference right now.

3:42We're speaking with Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst of Moor Insights and Strategy. Patrick, good to see you again. Yeah, great to see you too. You know, another week, more chip talk. More chip talk. It never gets old. And you're there. How is it? How's the conference? It's really big. And I mean, it seems to take over two or three hotels. And AWS is in so many things. They're a full stack company. And so they're basically doing everything. And there are a lot of people here who are interested to hear what they have to say. and how to get involved and how to do comparisons to other tech vendors.

4:22Yeah. So the big news coming out of the conference is this Tranium 3 chip, which is better, faster, stronger, all of the above. Tell us about the Tranium 3 chip. Why is this important? Is it important? What does it mean for the chip race? So the simple way to think about Tranium is if you've done, I think we talked about the TPU before from Google. This is Amazon's version of an ASIC. And like Google, they use GPUs as well. But when it comes to AWS's very close-knit development network and the software that they run for AI, it's really the standard for that. And the other fun fact here is that Tranium is the chip that powers Anthropic, who we can debate whether it's, you know, OpenAI is number one or number two to Anthropic.

5:21But those are the, you know, the two big platforms. You've got Microsoft with OpenAI. You have AWS with Anthropic. And you've got Google. And now everybody is working with pretty much everybody now because they just need capacity and they want choice. Right. Some of the stats I've seen in Tranium 3 is four times faster than the previous models. It can also train models at half of the cost. Sounds good, but I'm almost more interested in how does it compare to other chips? Do we know anything about how Tranium would compare to, say, NVIDIA's blue chip, GPU chip, or Google's? How does it compare?

6:03Yeah, so again, I'm going to just simplify this. A lot of details that go along with this, but think of NVIDIA Blackwell. If you want the highest raw performance and the broadest software ecosystem, you go with Blackwell, right? It's expensive hardware, very strong performance per watt, and it's everywhere. It's in every cloud. Tranium 3 is the best TCO inside AWS for their workloads that you're willing to port to. and it's not necessarily a raw performance leader. And then you've got Google TPUs, Trillium and Irewood, cost-efficient, high-performance training inside of GCP, particularly if you're tied to what's called JAX.

6:54That's kind of like the Cougar equivalent. And then AMD, right, competitive to slightly better compute and memory footprint versus Blackwell, lower levels of vendor lock-in, software is still catching up. So one of the things that I keep on seeing online is these benchmarks, trying to measure which one is the best, which is better than the other. And I can never tell whether to take it seriously because it seems like it's changing all of the time or whether I should not. And I'm starting to think that maybe just the best benchmark is just the market. that whoever sells the most is the best. Is this an impossible game to figure out which one is the best?

7:37So the short answer is yes. And I've served on benchmarking committees before. I was an ex-executive at AMD where we did benchmarks. And having benchmarks are better than not having benchmarks. They're only good at a certain point in time, a snapshot. and what matters is the type of workload, right? Is it an FP4, FP8? Is it written in CUDA? Is it JAX? Is it something different? So there's a lot of variables, but you nailed it, Ed. The market does speak. And what happens before any of these companies make a giant investment is they go through the architecture, they run their code. But right now, because OpenAI and Anthropic are all running on everybody's hardware, right, that shows you their certainty, which is they're uncertain.

8:37And they want to support everything to see, in the end, which one has the best total cost of ownership. Okay. Patrick Moorhead, CEO and Chief Analyst of More Insights and Strategy. Patrick, always good to hear about chips from you. I hope you are enjoying your time at the hotel, at reInvent. Where is it? It's in Las Vegas, right? The only city big enough to hold a conference this up. It's kind of my second home, you know, as an analyst, kind of this professional event attender. That's my second job. I love it. I love it. Good to see you, Patrick. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. After the break, a look at the new Trump accounts.

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12:06We're back with Prof G Markets. The White House has officially launched the long-awaited Trump account program. The federal government will be granting$1 ,000 to every child born between 2025 and 2028. The money will be housed in a tax-deferred account and invested in low-cost index funds, only accessible once the child turns 18. Additionally, 25 million children under the age of 10 will be eligible for an extra$250, And that is thanks to a$6 billion donation from Michael Dell and Susan Dell. So for more on this new program, we are speaking with the man who played a crucial part in making it happen.

12:48We're speaking with Brad Gerstner, founder, chairman and CEO of Altimeter Capital. Brad, good to see you. Thank you for joining us. Good to see you too. So I first wanted to say congratulations. Your idea that you actually came on the podcast and discussed, it's now a reality. You founded the nonprofit group Invest America, which was really the force that made this happen. Let's just start with that. How did this all come about? What does this mean for America? Well, I think it's transformed. First, thanks for having me on, Ed. It's great to be back. And, you know, I know how much, you know, you and Scott, you know, worry about and think about the fact that too many Americans are left out and left behind, not in the game of capitalism.

13:36And when I was on before, I said, this will be transformational if we get it done. You know, this is a platform that literally creates universal private ownership from birth, a 401k from birth that gets every child, 3.7 million kids born a year, gets every one of those kids into the game. Now, think about this, Ed. Under the age of 18, that's 65 million kids. And of those 65 million, 50 million would never own an account that compounds. And now they will all own an account that compounds that's aligned with the upside of capitalism. And we know, unless you have a compounding asset in this country, there's no chance that you can keep up with the cost of living increases, etc.

14:17And so I think in that regard, it's a game changer. How did it come about? Well, you know, I've been working on this idea to first get it passed into law for four years. And we were working with both sides of the aisle. You probably saw the letter out today with Cory Booker and Ted Cruz that went out to a thousand chief executives asking them all to contribute money into the accounts of our kids. And, you know, I've been working with both of those senators and many other people on Capitol Hill across the political spectrum. And we were prepared. We tried to get this done with Biden. As I explained to you guys, we didn't make a ton of progress there, even though we had a lot of support.

14:54And we had an opening with this president. You know, Michael Dell, who's a good friend, played a key role in brokering the final relationship. He and I went and saw the president and the president loved the idea. He made the final call to the speaker that got it included in the reconciliation bill. That occurred in April of this year. Now, fortunately, we already had the beach softened in the House and the Senate. So when the president made the call that he wanted to see it in the reconciliation bill, we had already the draft of the Invest America Act on the Senate side. We dropped in the language.

15:26So it's pretty easy from there to get it included. And then, of course, the bill passed, which, you know, let's just stop there for a second. this is a change to our social contract on the order of magnitude of social security itself the the federal government's going to launch the largest consumer project in the history of the federal government 60 million accounts for every kid under the age of 18 and so i think it was extraordinary that we were able to get that accomplished in the law as a is a fact to celebrate but as you know that was never what this was about it wasn't just you know getting it passed into law, it was then executing it and making sure that we turned it into a platform for change.

16:08Yeah. Just to put it out there, I think most people know this, but I think it's an incredible idea. I'm really excited about it. Just the idea that, you know, so many people are losing their faith in the system. And a lot of that is because they've been left out of the system. So what are we doing here? We're automatically buying you into the system by investing you in the stock market, in just low-cost index funds, which we should really all be invested in. But I want to play devil's advocate and just throw out criticisms that I've been seeing online. One criticism I've seen is, this just makes rich people richer because rich people already own stocks.

16:50And so now we're putting more capital into the market, so they're going to get richer. I've also seen people say, oh, if everyone gets an investment account, then that's like no one getting an investment account because you're not actually getting ahead. And I've also seen another criticism, which is, this is billionaires appeasing the president. This has been a big concern with this administration. Michael Dell gives$6 billion and gets in good with Trump. I just want to hear what you would say to those criticisms. Yeah, let's first start with this idea of, the rich getting richer somehow. Because I think this is the biggest fallacy, Ed.

17:30Listen, the rich already have a lot of money. Rich kids already have a lot of money. So the fact that they have an account is somewhat irrelevant to those kids. Because remember, in this country, we have something called 529 accounts, right? There's 16.1 million 529 accounts. These are accounts for college savings. 15.8 million of those are owned by people in the top 10 % of income. Okay, they already have all their kids already. My kids have these accounts. That's how, in fact, the motivation, the story with my kids, how Invest America started was my older son Lincoln said, Dad, this is great that we have an account, but what about all the kids that don't?

18:10That was really the inspiration that drove this. So those kids are doing fine. This takes the 50 million kids who would never, not only as children, but never in their lifetime, have an account that compounded with a stock market and getting them in the game from birth. So by definition, they disproportionately benefit because the alternative is zero, Ed. Right. Right? And now these kids, if they start with$1 ,000 and an employer or mom and dad or a philanthropist adds just$750 a year, that's$50 ,000 at the age of 18. That's$150 ,000 at age 30. And it's$1 million at age 50 or 55 using the 75-year track record of the S &P 500.

18:53So, undisputably, this will disproportionately benefit those who have less. And let's talk about the Dell contribution. A key component of their announcement, Ed, was that their$6.25 billion is only going to families that live in zip codes where the average income is less than$150 ,000. So they're targeting, they're excluding the highest earning zip codes in the country. And so I think you're going to see a lot of that as people start announcing additions to these programs, the philanthropic contributions, the corporate contributions. I think a lot of those will be income based. And so that will also help to ameliorate that.

19:36Secondly, let's talk about this question of billionaires appeasing the president. Right. There's no doubt. Right. That I think in all administrations, you have people who are currying favor with administrations, doing things that administrations might like. And, you know, when when it comes to this president, certainly he's closer to the business community than Biden was. But I'll tell you, if you look at the people who are in the White House, it's Democrat and Republican CEOs across the board. Even if you just look at the day that we announced, had the Invest America Roundtable, Dara Khashoggi, who's been a critic.

20:13And I think if you follow his Twitter feed, pretty clear he's on the left of a lot of issues. You know, he was there and he praised this program. Cory Booker and Mark Warner, lots of people on the left. The Clintons have been big supporters of this idea. And so like this is a big bipartisan tent. And so the fact that Michael Dell, who nobody views as a diehard or super conservative, you know, raging Republican steps forward and says, listen, I'm going to do this because my foundation has been investing in kids. And you know, the number one thing they like about it, Ed, if you want to give away six billion dollars, okay?

20:50And you have to give it away today. How do you do it? You give it to a charity and then the charity somehow gives it to kids, but how much actually makes it to the kids, Ed? Right. And how do you track what makes it to the kids? And as entrepreneurs, a lot of people want to give away a lot of money, but they want it to be performance-based. They want to know that it makes it to the kids. They don't want some charity apparatus in the middle to take half of it. So for the first time, we have a direct giving platform where these folks can give away billions and billions of dollars at scale. They know it goes directly into the kids' accounts.

21:26Nobody's taking a scrape in the middle, and it's going to compound according to the rules that have been promulgated, which means that the kids can't take their money out until they're 18. And then at 18, they can only use it, a part of it, to buy a home, start a business, go to school, or it rolls into the IRA retirement rules. And so now we've set up a platform. I think of it a lot like, you know, iOS. And now these are the applications that are getting built on top of it. We now have a universal operating system for kids. It's universal ownership, private accounts from birth. Yeah, it certainly seems as though this is perhaps the infrastructure through which the ultra wealthy can start giving away money back and investing it back into America.

22:13Michael gave away around 6 % of his net worth. I'm waiting for someone to match him. I'm waiting for someone like a Zuckerberg to get out there and match him. Do you think that that's going to happen? Are we going to see more mega billionaires or just wealthy people in general contributing to this program? We know Michael and I are leading the Invest America Giving Council. We're calling everybody who signed on to the giving pledge. These are a lot of our friends. And I can tell you, our phones were blowing up yesterday with people who wanted to sponsor states, right? The state of Texas or California or Indiana or Wisconsin or Ohio to give to all the kids who are born in those states, who wanted to adopt cities, who wanted to follow Michael's lead.

22:56And you're going to see major announcements in this regard. And by the way, those were with people, CEOs, entrepreneurs and billionaires on both sides of the political aisle. Yeah. And so Michael and Susan were bold in entrepreneurial in going first. Yeah. Right. They were going to take the shrapnel to the extent there was any. And I think now it's made it safe for other wealthy people to follow. But let's not just focus on the ultra wealthy. We have a long tail of extraordinary philanthropy in this country. Right. And so there are going to be people who adopt their school. Right. It may be or maybe adopt a grade in their school.

23:34say for all the kids in this grade, and they'll work with their school to make sure that they contribute to every one of those accounts. There are gonna be churches who raise money to make sure that all the kids of the church get money added to their accounts, right? There are gonna be moms and dads that just say all the friends of ours who have kids. I will tell you this, Ed, the number of children that have been born into my life, I did this with all my nieces and nephews when they were born, but it was hard. I had to set up custodial accounts for them, right? This will be the best baby gift or birthday gift or bar mitzvah gift you can possibly give to anybody, right?

24:07None of us really have good creative gift ideas. Now we can just give them$1 ,000 worth of stocks and let it grow and compound. And so I think, yes, the head end of philanthropy is gonna be potent. It's gonna be great. I myself am looking at adding to the accounts in the state of Indiana where I'm born. You know, in the state of Indiana, there are 87 ,000 kids born a year. And so I'm talking with the senators, the governor and others in the state. How can we add money to the states of every kid born in the state of Indiana. The state of Texas just announced today. They're gonna add$1 ,000 to every account in the state of Texas, all the kids born in the state of Texas.

24:43I'll tell you, I've heard from many states now, governors or aspiring governors who wanna add to those accounts. So we're gonna set off a little competition in the country. And God bless, man. This is what this country needs. It's gonna unify people. It's gonna get people back in the game. There's a reason less than half of people under the age of 40 believe in capitalism. Zamed. It doesn't work for them. They're left out. They're left behind. They don't own anything. And if you don't own anything, it's hard to get them excited about it. So why not burn the system down and say, let's start with a new system?

25:15But you get people into the game. You get them winning with America. And they don't have to win at the same level as everybody else. We're not guaranteeing everybody they're going to be a millionaire. But going from nothing to something, going from zero and the prospect of zero your whole life to one, that is a far bigger move than going from one to five. I will tell you, this comes from a guy who had zero. I know what it feels like to be on the outside looking in. I know how it felt to go from nothing to something. So that is the promise we're going to make to all of America's kids. We're going to get you from nothing to something.

25:56And then it's on you to get out there, to hustle to add to the accounts. 100%. My final question before we let you go here, again, you know I love the idea. They're called Trump accounts. Yeah. Did we have to call them Trump accounts? I mean, it seems like that's the easiest way to politicize the thing if we want to get everyone on both sides. Yeah. Can we call them Dell accounts? Can we call them Brad accounts? Well, I will say this. You know, it's, when you look at the history in the Senate, We call Roth IRAs Roths after Senator Roth. We call Pell Grants Pell Grants after Senator Pell. There actually is precedence for this.

26:39I know for some people it's polarizing, but I will tell you, they would not exist without the efforts of this president. And Roth IRAs would not exist without the efforts of Senator Roth. And so for the time being that he's president, they're gonna be called Trump accounts and they'd be called Trump accounts forever. but history is ultimately the judge yeah right and history will call these what history will call them but i for one think due to his efforts um you know i look at it and by the way i can tell you he's talked to people on both sides of the aisle he's he's out there talking to corporations he's out there talking to philanthropists um he really believes in this he said to me it's the whole meaning of my presidency to get everybody else in the game right um and so i know a lot of There are a lot of things people don't like about President Trump or do like about President Trump.