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Last updated Nov 29, 2025
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Sacks @ 00:45:27Wrong
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If, in late 2021 or early 2022, Senator Joe Manchin kills the Build Back Better bill and further large-scale fiscal stimulus is halted, then in calendar year 2022 the U.S. economy will experience a "massive relief rally" (substantial positive move in risk asset prices) and strong economic performance, and the Federal Reserve will not need to raise interest rates as aggressively as otherwise projected, resulting in a relatively soft economic landing rather than a sharp downturn.
Manchin would do Biden the biggest favor by just putting a bullet in this build back better plan, because I actually think there'd be a massive relief rally and the economy would take off like a rocket next year. If you just got government out of the way, they have printed enough. The best thing that could happen is they stop this pumping and stimulus, and then the fed doesn't have to raise rates as aggressively next year. And we could let things have more of a soft landing as opposed to the sudden austerity, which is whipsawing the economy.View on YouTube
Explanation

Key parts of Sacks’s conditional prediction did not match what actually happened in 2022, even though the main political precondition mostly did.

  1. Precondition: Manchin kills Build Back Better / no further large-scale stimulus.

    • On December 19, 2021, Sen. Joe Manchin publicly announced he could not support President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, effectively killing the bill in its then‑current $1.7–1.75 trillion form.(cnbc.com)
    • In 2022, Democrats and Manchin negotiated a much smaller, reworked package—what became the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—passed via reconciliation and signed on August 16, 2022. The IRA combined climate and health spending with tax increases and drug‑pricing reforms, and was scored as modestly reducing deficits (~$238–264 billion over 10 years), not as a huge net new stimulus.(en.wikipedia.org)
    • Separate analyses note that, even including other Biden‑era laws, the net effect by mid‑2022 was significant fiscal drag versus the earlier COVID‑era stimulus (e.g., Strategas and others cited 2022 as seeing the largest fiscal drag since 1947).(cnbc.com)
      Verdict on precondition: Largely satisfied in spirit: the original Build Back Better was killed, and there was no new multi‑trillion net stimulus, though some smaller, partially offset spending (IRA, etc.) still occurred.

  2. Claim: A “massive relief rally” and risk assets take off in 2022.
    Sacks expected killing BBB and halting stimulus to trigger a big positive move in markets and risk assets in calendar 2022. Instead, 2022 was a broad bear market:

    • The S&P 500 total return for 2022 was −18.1%, its worst year since 2008.(spglobal.com)
    • The Nasdaq Composite fell about −33% in 2022.(statmuse.com)
    • The NYSE Composite was down about −11.5%.(en.wikipedia.org)
    • Bonds also suffered a historic drawdown as rates spiked; 2022 is widely cited as a sharp downturn year for the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index.(wsj.com)
      Across major equity and fixed‑income benchmarks, 2022 produced large negative returns, not the “massive relief rally” he predicted.

  3. Claim: The economy would “take off like a rocket” with a soft landing in 2022.

    • BEA data show real U.S. GDP grew 2.1% in 2022 (annual average), down sharply from 5.9% in 2021.(bea.gov) Regional BEA data describe 2022 as a year of “much more moderate” growth of about 1.9% real GDP nationally.(apps-fd.bea.gov)
    • On a quarterly basis, real GDP fell at annualized rates in both Q1 (−1.6%) and Q2 (−0.9%) of 2022 before rebounding later in the year.(dallasfed.org) This produced a recession‑like pattern in early 2022, although the NBER did not declare an official recession.(en.wikipedia.org)
    • That pattern—two negative quarters followed by moderate growth—is inconsistent with “take off like a rocket,” though the economy did avoid a deep official recession in 2022.

  4. Claim: The Fed wouldn’t need to raise rates aggressively in 2022 if stimulus stopped, enabling a soft landing instead of a whipsaw.

    • Inflation surged, with CPI inflation peaking around 9.1% year‑over‑year in June 2022.(spglobal.com)
    • In response, the Federal Reserve launched an exceptionally aggressive tightening cycle beginning March 2022. By December 2022 the Fed funds target range was raised to 4.25–4.50%, via seven hikes totaling 425 basis points in one year—its most aggressive pace since the early 1980s.(cnbc.com)
    • Those hikes contributed to the sharp repricing in both stocks and bonds noted above. This outcome is the opposite of his expectation that the Fed would not have to raise rates “as aggressively” if fiscal pumping stopped.

Overall assessment:
The main political antecedent (Manchin blocking the original Build Back Better and no further huge net fiscal stimulus) substantially occurred. But Sacks’s core outcomes—a massive relief rally, rocket‑like economic takeoff in 2022, and a non‑aggressive Fed tightening path leading to a gentle soft landing that year—did not materialize. 2022 instead featured a bear market in risk assets, only modest and uneven real growth, and one of the most aggressive Fed hiking campaigns in decades.

Therefore, the prediction is wrong.