E74: Market update, inverted yield curve, immigration, new SPAC rules, $FB smears TikTok and more

Available evidence strongly supports that this prediction largely came true.

Key parts of the prediction:

1. Timing – Q1 2022 earnings season (reports mainly in Apr–May 2022) would be a major “reset” quarter.
2. Bifurcation – Companies showing strong control of their business and credible forward plans would be “rewarded.”
3. Punishment for weakness – Firms with “a whiff of indecision” or structurally weak businesses, or that leaned on macro excuses, would be “completely whacked,” and conditions would not get easier for them later in 2022.

Evidence from Q1 2022 earnings and subsequent 2022 quarters:

• Broad tech / growth selloff, with clear differentiation:

  • Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft reported relatively resilient Q1 2022 earnings in late April 2022. Despite some volatility, they were viewed as higher‑quality, cash‑generative businesses and held up better than unprofitable growth names, which had already started to be heavily sold off since late 2021 and continued under pressure through 2022.
  • In contrast, many high‑growth, less profitable tech companies (e.g., assorted SaaS and pandemic beneficiaries) experienced large drawdowns through and after Q1 2022 earnings as investors rotated away from businesses that lacked clear paths to profitability or were seen as too dependent on favorable macro/low rates. Market commentary at the time repeatedly described a flight to quality and a “reset” in valuations for weaker or more speculative companies.

• Concrete examples of the bifurcation during Q1 2022 earnings season:

  • Meta (Facebook) reported Q1 2022 earnings on April 27, 2022. Even though Meta had already been hit hard after its Q4 2021 report, its Q1 print—showing user growth stabilization and revenue roughly in line with expectations—led to a sharp positive reaction: the stock jumped over 15% the next day as investors viewed the results as better than feared and evidence that the core business was still strong.
  • Netflix, by contrast, had already reported Q1 2022 in April with its first subscriber loss in a decade and weak guidance. The stock dropped more than 35% in a single day after that report, and the company spent the rest of 2022 under severe pressure, restructuring and shifting strategy (ad‑supported tier, password‑sharing crackdown) amid a large multiple compression.
  • This pattern—stronger, better‑managed companies being relatively rewarded or at least spared, while companies that surprised negatively or revealed business‑model issues were punished very hard—was a widely noted feature of the Q1 2022 earnings season.

• Q1 2022 as a key reset quarter, with no easy recovery for weak names:

  • Multiple market commentaries in mid‑2022 describe Q1 2022 as a turning point where the combination of Fed tightening, inflation concerns, and earnings guidance cuts forced a repricing of risk, especially for unprofitable growth and companies with weaker fundamentals. Many such stocks did not recover in subsequent quarters of 2022; instead, they continued to suffer as rates rose further and investors demanded profitability/clear cash‑flow visibility.
  • By the end of 2022, a clear gap had opened between large, profitable “quality” names and a long tail of speculative or structurally challenged companies whose share prices were down 60–80% or more from their peaks and still under pressure. This aligns with Chamath’s claim that “it doesn’t get any better from here” for weak or indecisive companies.

Taken together, the timing (Q1 2022 earnings season as a major reset), the pattern of bifurcation (quality/controlled companies vs. weak/indecisive ones), and the fact that conditions remained difficult for weak companies through the rest of 2022 all match what he described. While not every individual stock fits neatly, the broad market behavior in 2022 lines up well enough that the prediction should be judged right.

Using current (revised) data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real U.S. GDP growth by quarter (percent change from preceding period, SAAR) is:

• Q1 2022: −1.0%
• Q2 2022: +0.6%
• Q3 2022: +2.9%
• Q4 2022: +2.8%
• Q1 2023: +2.9% (fred.stlouisfed.org)

So, in the period “following this April 1, 2022 discussion” and through early 2023, there is only one negative quarter (Q1 2022). All subsequent quarters in 2022 and early 2023 are positive, meaning there are no two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth in the realized (latest revised) data. (fred.stlouisfed.org)

The confusion in 2022 arose because earlier BEA releases showed Q1 2022 at −1.6% and Q2 2022 at −0.6%, leading many contemporaneous commentators to talk about a “technical recession” based on two initially reported negative quarters. (apps.bea.gov) Subsequent comprehensive revisions, reflected in the BEA/FRED series A191RL1Q225SBEA, changed Q2 2022 from mildly negative to +0.6%, eliminating the back‑to‑back negative prints. (fred.stlouisfed.org)

Separately, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which is the standard arbiter of “official” U.S. recessions, shows the most recent recession as February–April 2020; its expansions-and-contractions table and business-cycle-dating page list no new recession after April 2020, so there was no officially dated recession in 2022 or early 2023 either. (nber.org)

Given that (a) updated GDP data do not contain two consecutive negative quarters after his April 1, 2022 remark, and (b) no official recession was dated in that period, Jason’s prediction that such a two‑quarter negative‑GDP recession was implausible in the near term turned out to be correct in hindsight, even though early 2022 data vintages temporarily suggested otherwise.

Evidence from official data shows that the U.S. did not enter a recession or clear “near‑recession” conditions in the 12–24 months after April 2022 (i.e., by April 2024):

• The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee still lists the most recent U.S. recession as running from a February 2020 peak to an April 2020 trough, with no new recession dated after that as of 2025. This means there was no officially recognized recession in 2023 or early 2024. (nber.org)
• Real GDP did contract in Q1 and Q2 2022 (−1.6% and −0.6% annualized in the final estimates), but this “technical recession” episode occurred essentially immediately around the time of the April 2022 podcast, not mainly 12–24 months later. (bea.gov)
• After mid‑2022, growth resumed and stayed positive. For full‑year 2022 and 2023, real GDP grew 2.1% and 2.5% respectively, and quarterly growth in 2023 was solid—about 2.1% in Q2, then accelerating to 4.9% in Q3 and 3.4% in Q4. This is inconsistent with an economy hovering “very close” to recession. (apps.bea.gov)
• Labor‑market data likewise do not show near‑recession conditions by April 2024. The unemployment rate was very low by historical standards, rising only modestly from around 3.5–3.7% in 2022 to 3.8% in Q4 2023 and about 4.1–4.2% in 2024—still typical of a strong labor market, not a deep slowdown. (bls.gov)
• Contemporaneous economic commentary widely noted that the U.S. avoided the widely predicted recession in 2023, describing the outcome instead as a “soft landing” where growth slowed from the post‑pandemic boom but remained positive and inflation fell. (cnbc.com)

So while there was some cooling from the very rapid 2021 rebound and an earlier, brief GDP contraction in early 2022, the specific normalized prediction—that within 12–24 months of April 2022 the U.S. would be in a significant slowdown that was a recession or very close to one—did not materialize. The economy instead stayed in expansion with moderate growth and low unemployment through April 2024. Therefore, the prediction is best judged wrong.

By late 2025, the U.S. has not entered anything resembling a 1970s‑style stagflation regime.

Growth vs. stagnation: Real U.S. GDP grew 2.1–2.9% annually in 2022–2024, with 2024 growth at about 2.8%—solidly positive rather than stagnant. Aside from a one‑quarter dip of –0.3% in Q1 2025, the broader 2021–2024 period averaged roughly 3.2% real growth, and forecasts for 2025–2026 still show positive growth around 2–2.5%. This is inconsistent with the prolonged weak or zero growth that defined 1970s stagflation.

Inflation level and persistence: Inflation did spike in 2021–2022, but it has trended back toward the Fed’s target. Core PCE inflation fell from over 5% in 2022 to roughly 2–3% by 2023–2025, while headline CPI growth slowed from the 2022 peak to the low‑to‑mid‑3% range in 2023–2024 and around that level in 2025. That’s above 2% but far below the sustained high single‑digit inflation of the 1970s.

Labor market: Unemployment remained historically low—around 3.5–4.0% through 2023–2024, rising only modestly to about 4.0% on average in 2024 and roughly 4.4% by late 2025. The 1970s, by contrast, involved both elevated inflation and significantly higher, persistent unemployment.

Policy and consensus outlook: While some analysts in 2024–2025 warned about risks of stagflation, mainstream forecasts envision moderate growth with inflation in the mid‑2% to high‑2% range, not an entrenched stagflationary regime, and they expect the Fed to continue easing gradually rather than being cornered without tools.

Because the U.S. economy has not exhibited the combination of persistent high inflation and prolonged stagnation characteristic of 1970s stagflation within the few years after April 2022, Sacks’s implied scenario that the U.S. would "end up with something like a 1970s style stagflation" in that window has, as of November 2025, not occurred.

Chamath’s claim was that in the years after April 2022 the U.S. would not muster domestic political support for large‑scale, pro‑immigration policies sufficient to offset low birth rates and labor‑force shrinkage.

From 2022 through late 2025, Congress has not enacted any broad, expansionary immigration reform that significantly increases overall legal immigration numbers or creates large new permanent pathways. The main immigration‑related laws that have actually passed in this period, such as the Laken Riley Act and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are enforcement‑heavy measures focused on detention, deportation capacity, and border security rather than on expanding admissions or regularizing large numbers of workers. (en.wikipedia.org)

By contrast, bills that would be considered more pro‑immigration and economically oriented—like the American Families United Act, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, and renewed efforts to reform per‑country green‑card caps for high‑skilled workers—remain proposals that have been introduced repeatedly but not enacted into law, indicating persistent lack of sufficient political sponsorship for major pro‑immigration reforms. (en.wikipedia.org)

Demographically, the Congressional Budget Office projects that U.S. deaths will exceed births around 2033 and assumes net immigration of roughly 1.1 million people per year—insufficient to prevent marked population aging and only modest overall population growth—under current law. (wsj.com) Although the Census Bureau reported that 2024 population growth was the highest in over two decades, driven largely by a one‑time surge in net international migration (~2.8 million), that spike was tied in part to temporary or humanitarian programs rather than a durable legislative shift. (apnews.com) In 2025, the Trump administration has moved in a more restrictive direction, revoking parole status for over 530,000 CHNV beneficiaries and sharply cracking down on immigration overall, with analyses warning that the U.S. could even see its first population decline as immigration drops and fertility stays low. (theguardian.com)

Taken together, these facts support Chamath’s contention: as of late 2025 the United States has not adopted major, durable pro‑immigration domestic policies at the scale demographers say would be needed to fully offset low birth rates and workforce shrinkage; if anything, the legislative center of gravity has remained either status‑quo or more restrictive. Therefore, his prediction is best judged as right.

Using the standard U.S. benchmark for recessions—the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee—there has been no recession in the United States since the brief COVID-19 downturn that ended with a trough in April 2020. The NBER’s official chronology lists the most recent peak as February 2020 and the most recent trough as April 2020, with no subsequent peaks or troughs announced through 2025, implying continuous expansion from May 2020 onward.citeturn0search2turn0search3 This means no NBER‑defined recession occurred between March 2022 and March 2023 or between March 2022 and March 2024, the one‑year and two‑year windows implied by Sacks’s statement.

Contemporary analysis also notes that while real GDP was negative in the first two quarters of 2022 (often called a "technical recession"), multiple sources emphasized that this did not meet the NBER’s broader recession criteria and that the NBER did not declare a recession for 2022.citeturn1search1turn1search4turn1search9 Moreover, later commentary on the prolonged 2022–early‑2025 yield‑curve inversion explicitly observes that no recession actually followed despite the inversion, calling into question the yield curve’s traditional reliability as a recession predictor in this episode.citeturn0news14

Sacks invoked historical statistics that an inverted yield curve implies “>2/3” odds of recession within a year and “~98%” odds within two years, and was clearly using those statistics to assert that a recession was extremely likely in the then‑future period. Since, under the standard NBER definition, no recession had occurred by March 2023 or March 2024, the specific event he treated as overwhelmingly probable did not happen in time. On an event‑level evaluation ("did the predicted recession occur by the stated horizons?"), this makes the prediction wrong.

Evidence from 2022 shows that the macroeconomic backdrop going into the November midterms matched Chamath’s description:

• Prices were high: U.S. CPI inflation averaged ~8% in 2022, the highest since the early 1980s, peaking at 9.1% in June. It was still 7.7% year‑over‑year in October 2022, just before the midterms. (theworlddata.com)
• Interest rates were high (relative to recent history): By November 2, 2022, the Federal Reserve had raised the federal funds target range to 3.75–4.00%, up from near‑zero at the start of the year—the highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. (federalreserve.gov)
• The economy was slowing: Real GDP growth cooled from 5.9% in 2021 to 2.1% in 2022, with slightly negative real GDP in the first half of 2022 that raised recession fears, and much lower year‑over‑year growth by late 2022. (bea.gov)
• Unfavorable for the incumbent party: Coverage of the 2022 elections notes that voters were dealing with historically high consumer prices, gas prices, and interest rates, with inflation the top issue and broad disapproval of Biden’s handling of the economy and cost of living—conditions described as weighing down Democrats’ political prospects. (en.wikipedia.org)

Democrats ultimately outperformed expectations in seat counts, but Chamath’s prediction was about the economic environment leading into the midterms, not the final electoral outcome. On the core factual points—slowing economy, high rates, high prices, and a politically unfavorable economic backdrop for the incumbent Democrats—the prediction was borne out by subsequent data and contemporaneous analysis.

The prediction was that Democrats would be “shellacked” in the November 2022 U.S. midterms, implying a large, wave‑type Republican victory at the congressional level.

What actually happened:

• Senate: Democrats retained and expanded their Senate majority, going from a 50–50 chamber (with the vice president breaking ties) to a 51–49 edge after netting one seat. (ballotwire.com)
• House: Republicans did win the House, but only by a narrow margin (around 221–214 or 222–213 depending on the final count), a net gain of 9 seats – far short of a typical “wave” or “shellacking” for the party in power. Analysts widely noted that the expected “red wave” failed to materialize and that Democrats broadly exceeded expectations. (cnbc.com)

A “shellacking” or “wave” midterm historically means large, double‑digit net House gains and/or loss of the Senate by the president’s party (e.g., 2010 or 2014). In 2022, Democrats not only held the Senate and governorships better than expected, but Republican gains in the House were modest.

Because the real outcome was a mixed, relatively close election with Democrats outperforming historical midterm patterns, the prediction that they would be “shellacked” and face a large Republican wave at the congressional level is best characterized as wrong.

The prediction is about a demographic outcome before the year 2100 ("before the turn of the century, the county of Los Angeles will have zero net births"). As of today (November 30, 2025), that future date has not arrived, so it is impossible to say yet whether Los Angeles County will in fact reach approximately zero net births by then. Demographic trends (fertility, mortality, and net migration) can and do change in response to policy, economics, culture, and immigration patterns over many decades, so any long-range forecast out to 2100 remains speculative. Because the forecast horizon is still 75 years away, the correct evaluation is that it is too early to determine whether the prediction is right or wrong.

Evidence since 2022 shows that the SPAC market both shrank dramatically and became dominated by a small group of repeat sponsors and mid-tier banks, in line with Chamath’s qualitative prediction that “6 or 7 players” would end up doing most of the business.

Key points:

1. Market collapse and consolidation in volume
   • After the 2021 boom (613 SPAC IPOs), the market shrank sharply: only 86 SPAC IPOs in 2022 and 31 in 2023, with many 2020–21 SPACs liquidating or terminating deals instead of merging. This reduced the field of viable sponsors and active vehicles. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. 2024: majority of issuance concentrated in a handful of banks
   • In 2024 there were just 57 SPAC IPOs raising about $9.6B. Cantor Fitzgerald led with 12 IPOs and ~$2.83B in proceeds. (old.spacinsider.com)
   • Cantor, BTIG, and Cohen & Company together priced 26 of the 57 IPOs (≈46% of all SPAC IPOs). (old.spacinsider.com)
   • The top five underwriters raised $6.9B of the $9.6B total—about 72% of all SPAC IPO proceeds—even though there were 24 different bookrunners overall. (old.spacinsider.com)
   → This is exactly the pattern Chamath described: a relatively small cluster of banks handling the bulk of issuance, with many smaller players at the margins.

3. 2025: revival still led by a small cluster of repeat players
   • By mid‑2025, Dealogic data showed 61 SPACs raising $12.4B, on pace for ~$25B for the year—far below 2021 in dollars and deal count, but a clear comeback. Fortune notes that serial sponsors are doing most of that year’s SPAC IPOs. (fortune.com)
   • The underwriting league tables are heavily skewed: Cantor Fitzgerald is the top underwriter with 14 deals (~$3.6B), BTIG is second with 12 deals (~$2.6B), and Santander is third with 5 deals (~$1.3B). (fortune.com)
   • A Reuters/FT-based view shows Santander holding about 7.9% of SPAC IPO bookrunning and ranking fifth, implying that the top four banks each have even larger shares and that a small group of underwriters accounts for a large fraction of all SPAC IPO volume. (reuters.com)
   • The Financial Times explicitly describes a “new cast of boutique banks” (Cohen & Company, D Boral/EF Hutton, Clear Street, Maxim, plus Cantor) as leading the revived SPAC wave, with Cohen & Company and Cantor tied for first in SPAC IPO count and D Boral ranking second in de‑SPAC deals. (ft.com)

4. Interpretation vs. Chamath’s wording
   • Chamath’s numeric detail (“6 or 7 players”) is not literally precise—there are more than 6–7 underwriters active, and SPACInsider still counts 24 bookrunners in 2024. (old.spacinsider.com)
   • However, the economic reality matches the spirit of his prediction: after the boom and bust, SPAC issuance and de‑SPAC activity are dominated by a small, repeat set of specialist sponsors and mid‑tier banks (Cantor, Cohen & Co, BTIG, D Boral/EF Hutton, Santander, Maxim, Clear Street, etc.), which together control the majority of deal flow and proceeds. (old.spacinsider.com)

Given that:

• The overall SPAC universe dramatically contracted, and
• A relatively tight cluster of recurring sponsors and underwriters now accounts for most SPAC IPO and de‑SPAC business,

Chamath’s prediction that the SPAC market would consolidate around a small number of key players has effectively come true in substance, even if the exact count and identity of those players differ from his off‑the‑cuff “6 or 7” and “the ten of us” phrasing.

Chamath’s prediction was explicitly conditional on the SEC implementing broad Scope 1/2/3 climate disclosure rules. The final SEC climate‑disclosure rule adopted in March 2024 eliminated any requirement to disclose Scope 3 emissions and limited Scope 1 and 2 reporting to material emissions by large and accelerated filers, a major scaling back from the 2022 proposal that had contemplated extensive Scope 1/2/3 reporting. (foley.com) These rules were then immediately challenged in court, voluntarily stayed by the SEC in April 2024, and consolidated in the Eighth Circuit, with implementation formally paused while litigation proceeds. (wiley.law) In 2025 a new SEC majority voted to stop defending the climate rule, leaving it effectively unenforced and its future uncertain; in any case, the earliest compliance date (large accelerated filers’ fiscal‑year‑2025 reports filed in 2026) has not yet arrived under an operative rule. (goodwinlaw.com) Because the broad Scope 1/2/3 regime he described was never implemented and no company has yet been required to file under a durable SEC climate‑disclosure mandate, there has been no real‑world test of the predicted wave of material‑omission lawsuits over such disclosures; current climate‑related securities cases instead arise under existing antifraud standards and voluntary ESG statements, not this stalled rule. (jdsupra.com) Accordingly, his conditional claim about what would happen under a fully implemented Scope 1/2/3 disclosure mandate cannot presently be assessed as right or wrong.

Several parts of Chamath’s prediction show signs of being directionally accurate, but the overall long‑run claim (“rather than materially reducing corporate carbon emissions”) cannot be robustly evaluated yet.

1. Growth of a consulting/auditing industry around ESG and emissions reporting
Evidence strongly supports a boom in ESG and sustainability consulting tied to disclosure and net‑zero planning:

• The global ESG consulting market is estimated around US$8–12B in 2024 and projected to grow to roughly US$36–39B by 2034, with auditing & verification the largest segment and North America (especially the U.S.) a leading region. (businessresearchinsights.com)
• Sustainability consulting services overall are valued around US$15.6B in 2024, expected to more than triple by 2034; about 64% of large U.S. corporations have engaged ESG consultants specifically to meet climate‑disclosure and reporting requirements. (globalgrowthinsights.com)
• In Europe, ESG reporting and consultancy is similarly expanding, with the market projected to nearly quadruple from 2024 to 2033, driven in large part by new disclosure mandates. (linkedin.com)
  This aligns with his claim that a large amount of money is flowing to consultants and verifiers around Scope 1/2/3 and broader ESG reporting.

2. Quality concerns and "BS"/greenwashing risks in climate reports
There is substantial evidence of inconsistent or low‑quality emissions data and climate claims:

• Even by 2024, only about 15% of companies in a Deloitte survey reported Scope 3 emissions, leaving a “huge blind spot” in total footprints, while Scope 3 can be up to 95% of emissions. (sustainabilitymag.com)
• Academic and practitioner work notes that no or low‑quality Scope 3 reporting slows global supply‑chain decarbonization and misallocates investor capital. (cmr.berkeley.edu)
• Regulators (e.g., Australia’s ASIC) report widespread problems in climate‑related communications: inconsistent use of “net zero”/“carbon neutral,” lack of detail on assumptions, and varied carbon‑accounting practices that can mislead investors. (regtrail.com)
• Multiple enforcement and media cases (e.g., DWS’s greenwashing settlements, Barclays’ criticized sustainability‑linked financing, Woodside’s net‑zero claims despite expanding fossil exploration) highlight how ESG labeling and emissions metrics can be used in ways many observers judge as weak or misleading. (ft.com)
  This supports his skepticism that a significant portion of the new disclosure ecosystem produces questionable or low‑decision‑usefulness output, although it does not show that reports are universally “BS.”

3. “Lawsuit upon lawsuit … adjudicated … on this concept of materiality”
Climate‑ and ESG‑related litigation has surged, including many cases that hinge on misrepresentation, greenwashing, or material omissions:

• The Grantham Research Institute reports a sharp rise in climate litigation against companies: about 230 cases since 2015, with two‑thirds filed after 2020, and a rapidly growing subset of “climate‑washing” cases (47 in 2023 alone). (theguardian.com)
• Courts and regulators are increasingly treating climate statements as potentially material to investors; legal commentary flags that net‑zero and similar claims can give rise to securities litigation if misleading. (skadden.com)
• There have been numerous greenwashing enforcement actions and cases (e.g., SEC actions against DWS and WisdomTree, the Active Super greenwashing ruling in Australia, KLM’s misleading environmental marketing case in Europe, and ongoing consumer and securities complaints over carbon‑neutral or net‑zero claims). (ft.com)
• New SEC climate‑disclosure rules themselves have been hit with multiple lawsuits from both industry groups and environmental organizations, contesting what must be disclosed and whether the SEC overstepped—explicitly invoking traditional securities “materiality” standards. (theguardian.com)
  This is broadly consistent with his forecast that the new ESG/climate‑disclosure environment would feed significant waves of litigation, much of it centered on what is “material” to investors.

4. Have these rules failed to materially reduce corporate emissions?
This is the hardest part of the prediction to test, and the evidence is mixed and still emerging:

• Empirical work on earlier mandatory disclosure regimes (e.g., the U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program) finds that plants subject to public CO₂ reporting reduced emissions rates by about 7% on average, with even larger reductions (≈10–14%) for plants owned by public companies or S&P 500 firms, implying disclosure alone can drive real abatement under some conditions. (nber.org)
• A 2025 study on Chinese A‑share firms concludes that environmental information disclosure significantly improves corporate environmental performance, particularly in densely populated areas with limited green space. (arxiv.org)
• Other analyses emphasize that poor or missing Scope 3 disclosure hampers decarbonization, suggesting that the quality and coverage of rules matter for whether they actually reduce emissions. (cmr.berkeley.edu)
  At the same time, many of the most ambitious new frameworks Chamath was implicitly talking about (EU CSRD/ESRS, ISSB’s IFRS S1/S2, California’s SB 253, the SEC’s 2024 climate rule) either only started to apply to reporting periods in 2024–2025 or are partially stayed/under legal challenge. (theguardian.com) We do not yet have multi‑year, global empirical evaluations of these post‑2022 Scope 1/2/3 disclosure regimes and their causal effect on emissions.

Putting that together:

• Confirmed/partly confirmed today: A rapidly growing ESG consulting/auditing industry tied to disclosure; widespread concerns about low‑quality or greenwashed reporting; and significant growth in climate‑ and ESG‑related litigation (including disputes over materiality of climate information).
• Not yet testable in full: Whether the new generation of detailed Scope 1/2/3 and ESG disclosure rules will primarily channel resources into consulting & lawsuits instead of producing meaningful, sustained reductions in corporate emissions over a decade‑plus horizon.

Because these major disclosure regimes are only just coming into force and credible long‑run emissions evidence is not yet available, it is too early to say whether Chamath’s central, comparative claim (“lawsuits and consulting rather than materially reduced emissions”) is ultimately right or wrong. Hence the prediction, as framed, is best classified as inconclusive (too early to judge) at this point.

Chamath’s claim was that broad climate‑disclosure rules would mainly:

1. Create a large “shadow industry” of carbon‑measurement and ESG consulting, and
2. Trigger extended legal fights over what is material,
3. Without producing a major, regulation‑driven reduction in corporate emissions.

Evidence as of late 2025 lines up with this:

• Rapid growth of measurement/ESG advisory industries.
  The global carbon‑accounting software market is already in the tens of billions of dollars and projected to more than double again by decade’s end, with analysts explicitly citing stricter emissions‑reporting and ESG compliance rules as a key driver. (thebusinessresearchcompany.com)
  Similarly, dedicated ESG‑consulting and sustainability‑consulting markets are now multi‑billion‑dollar sectors (≈$10–15B in 2024) growing at double‑digit CAGRs, with reports repeatedly naming tighter ESG and disclosure regulations as major demand drivers. (thebusinessresearchcompany.com)
  This is exactly the kind of compliance/measurement/consulting ecosystem he described.

• Intense legal and political fights over disclosure and materiality.
  The U.S. SEC’s climate‑disclosure rule, adopted in a weakened form that hinges on “material” Scope 1 and 2 emissions and drops mandatory Scope 3, has been stayed amid multiple court challenges; the SEC has now stopped defending it, leaving the rule in limbo. (climateinstitute.edhec.edu)
  California’s climate‑disclosure package (SB 253 and SB 261) has drawn lawsuits from Exxon and business groups, arguing the laws violate the First Amendment and conflict with federal securities law; an appeals court has already paused the climate‑risk‑reporting law while litigation proceeds. (apnews.com)
  These are precisely the “debate materiality when they get caught” dynamics he predicted—years of argument over scope, constitutional limits, and the burdens of disclosure.

• Global emissions trends show no large, regulation‑driven drop so far.
  Mandatory climate‑risk disclosure regimes have expanded rapidly—by 2022, 35 countries representing about 20% of global emissions had some TCFD‑aligned mandatory climate‑disclosure requirements, with the EU’s CSRD alone pulling ~50,000 firms (including many non‑EU companies) into detailed ESG reporting. (systemschangelab.org)
  Yet global energy‑related CO₂ emissions continued to rise, hitting new record highs around 37–38 Gt in 2023–2024, even as disclosure rules proliferated. (lemonde.fr)
  Academic work does find that firms that voluntarily disclose and respond to investor demand for climate information (e.g., via CDP) tend to reduce emissions more than peers, but these firm‑level improvements are incremental and have not yet translated into a clear, large, regulation‑driven fall in aggregate corporate emissions. (sciencedirect.com)

Taken together, the observable “main outcomes” since 2022 are: (a) a booming ecosystem of carbon‑accounting, ESG reporting, and sustainability consulting; (b) ongoing legal and political battles over what must be disclosed and when it is material; and (c) no evident, large, global cut in emissions attributable primarily to these disclosure mandates. While it’s still early and longer‑term effects could evolve, the trajectory so far matches Chamath’s forecast closely enough to judge it right in substance.

The prediction tied war‑driven disruptions in Russia/Ukraine and high fertilizer costs to (1) a major decline in global food production over the following year and (2) ensuing famine in parts of the world, especially Africa, by roughly spring 2023.

1. Global production did not collapse.
FAO estimates for 2022 put world cereal output at about 2.77 billion tonnes, only ~1.2–1.3% below 2021, with the global cereal stocks‑to‑use ratio still around 29.5–29.7%, which FAO characterized as relatively comfortable. (ukragroconsult.com) By 2023–24, total cereal production rebounded to a record ~2.836 billion tonnes, again indicating no sustained global production shortfall. (world-grain.com)

2. Ukraine’s planting and exports were hit but far less than implied.
In 2022, Ukraine’s planted area fell about 28% versus pre‑war levels, with corn and wheat output down roughly 34–35% from 2021, not an ~80% collapse in acreage. (farmdocdaily.illinois.edu) Despite the war, large beginning stocks plus the Black Sea Grain Initiative and alternative routes allowed wheat exports to fall only ~5% and corn exports to increase ~9% versus pre‑war levels in 2022/23, softening the global shock. (farmdocdaily.illinois.edu)

3. Fertilizer and price dynamics eased instead of worsening through 2023.
Fertilizer prices spiked in 2022 but were forecast – and then observed – to fall sharply (around 37%) in 2023, remaining high but no longer at crisis peaks, reducing the risk that planting would become broadly uneconomic. (worldbank.org) The FAO Food Price Index, after peaking in March 2022, fell for 12 consecutive months and by March 2023 was about 20.5% below its peak, helped by ample harvests (e.g., Brazil, Australia, EU) and continued Black Sea exports from Ukraine and Russia. (fao.org) This pattern is inconsistent with a deep, supply‑driven global production shock.

4. Famine outcomes in Africa were grave but not what was predicted.
The Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya) did experience a devastating drought from 2020–2023, with tens of thousands of excess deaths and many millions in severe food insecurity, a crisis that pre‑dated the Ukraine war but was worsened by high global prices. (en.wikipedia.org) In Somalia, IPC analyses for late 2022 and early 2023 projected extremely high needs: millions in Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3+), with hundreds of thousands in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and famine projected in specific districts. (ipcinfo.org) However, UN and IPC updates repeatedly noted that, while conditions were “catastrophic,” a formal famine declaration was narrowly averted during 2022–23 due to large‑scale humanitarian response. (aljazeera.com) Severe hunger crises were driven primarily by drought, conflict, and chronic vulnerability; the Ukraine war and price shock were aggravating factors, not the singular trigger of a new, clearly war‑caused famine by spring 2023.

5. Overall assessment.
Within the one‑year horizon the speaker emphasized (“famine hits us in a year”), the world saw:

• Only a modest, manageable dip in global cereal output rather than a sharp production collapse; (ukragroconsult.com)
• Rapid normalization and then record‑high production soon after; (world-grain.com)
• Severe but largely pre‑existing hunger emergencies in Africa, where projected famines were mostly averted through aid, and no widely recognized, new, war‑caused global famine event by spring 2023.

Because both the scale of production decline and the predicted, war‑driven famines did not materialize in the way described, the prediction is best classified as wrong. It substantially overstated the magnitude and global impact of war‑ and fertilizer‑related supply shocks, even though it correctly anticipated serious food‑security stress in vulnerable regions.

As of November 30, 2025, there is still no final political settlement or peace treaty ending the Russia‑Ukraine war. Fighting continues on multiple fronts, including in and around Donetsk and Luhansk (part of the broader eastern and Kupiansk/Novopavlivka offensives), and Russia still occupies large parts of Ukraine’s east and south, but the war is ongoing and unresolved.

Key points:

• Russia claims to have annexed Donetsk and Luhansk (along with Zaporizhzhia and Kherson) and demands their international recognition as Russian territory in its peace proposals, while insisting on Ukrainian military withdrawal from these areas.(themoscowtimes.com)
• Ukraine explicitly rejects recognizing any Russian annexations and continues to insist on the restoration of its 1991 borders; it has repeatedly stated it will not accept the permanent loss of Donbas territory as part of a settlement.(theguardian.com)
• In 2025, both the UN General Assembly and Security Council adopted resolutions that call for a just peace in Ukraine but do not codify any new borders or status for Donetsk and Luhansk; these documents leave the territorial question unresolved and emphasize principles rather than a concrete settlement.(en.wikipedia.org)
• A U.S.-backed 28‑point draft peace framework from November 2025, as reported, would recognize Russian control over Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, but it is only a proposed plan, has been heavily criticized, and has not been accepted by Ukraine or translated into a binding agreement.(bcfausa.org)
• Ongoing negotiations and counter‑proposals show that the eventual status of Donetsk and Luhansk is still being contested diplomatically, and the war itself has not yet been brought to an end.(reuters.com)

Because no final political settlement exists yet, we cannot say whether Sacks’ prediction about the eventual settlement (some form of de facto or de jure independence/separation for Donetsk and Luhansk rather than reintegration under Kyiv) has turned out to be right or wrong. It remains a claim about the future course of a still‑unsettled conflict, so the correct assessment at this time is “inconclusive (too early)”.

Evidence since 2022 indicates that the U.S. did not enter an official recession following the Russia‑Ukraine war, even though the war did worsen inflation and weigh on growth, and economic discontent clearly hurt Biden and Democrats with voters.

1. No post‑2020 U.S. recession (official data):
   The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the standard arbiter of U.S. recessions, lists the most recent peak as February 2020 and trough as April 2020, with no subsequent peak or trough announced through 2025. That implies the economy remained in expansion after mid‑2020, i.e., no officially dated recession in 2022–2024. (nber.org)

2. First‑half 2022 “technical recession” wasn’t broadly accepted as a real recession:
   Real GDP did contract in Q1 and Q2 2022, leading some commentators to say the U.S. was in a “technical recession.” (steelmarketupdate.com) But many analyses noted that this downturn was driven heavily by inventories and trade, while employment and income remained strong, and stressed that two quarters of negative GDP are not the official definition of a recession. (aneconomicsense.org) Both the White House and many economists therefore argued that the U.S. was slowing but not in recession, a view reinforced by continued job growth and later descriptions of the period as a near‑miss “soft landing.” (en.wikipedia.org)

3. War‑related shocks raised inflation and lowered growth, but forecasts and data showed a slowdown, not a U.S. crash:
   International institutions analyzing the economic impact of the Russo‑Ukrainian war concluded that the conflict would raise global energy and food prices and push up inflation, while trimming U.S. growth forecasts (for example, to about 3.3% in 2022), but did not project an outright U.S. recession in the near term. (euromonitor.com) The World Bank and IMF likewise framed the war as a major commodity shock heightening inflation risks and slowing growth, not as a trigger that had already pushed the U.S. into recession. (weforum.org)

4. Economic pain did hurt Biden’s standing and shape elections—but without a clear war‑induced recession:
   Throughout 2022, inflation and the economy were consistently at or near the top of voters’ concerns. Pre‑midterm polling found the economy/inflation was the most important issue for large shares of voters, and nearly half of voters in AP VoteCast/exit‑poll data named “the economy and jobs” as the biggest issue facing the country; those voters backed Republicans by roughly 2‑to‑1. (washingtonpost.com) Biden’s handling of the economy and inflation polled poorly (e.g., majorities disapproving of his performance on inflation and the economy), giving Republicans a clear opening to attack him on cost‑of‑living issues. (foxnews.com) Republicans did win the House in 2022, consistent with economic dissatisfaction weighing on Biden, but this occurred in a high‑inflation slowdown rather than a formally recognized recession.

5. Why the prediction is ultimately judged wrong:
   Sacks’s prediction, as normalized, has two key claims:

   • (a) that fallout from the Russia‑Ukraine war and related policies would help push the U.S. economy into a recession, and
   • (b) that that recession would sour voter sentiment toward Biden in subsequent elections.

   While (b) is directionally consistent with what happened—economic pain and high prices clearly hurt Biden and Democrats with voters—the critical antecedent (a) did not occur by standard economic dating: there has been no post‑2020 U.S. recession officially recognized by NBER, and the episode is increasingly described as a soft‑landing/near‑miss rather than a war‑induced recession. (nber.org) Because the prediction hinges on a war‑driven recession triggering voter backlash, and that recession never clearly materialized, the overall prediction is best classified as wrong, albeit partially right about economic discontent hurting Biden politically.