Mark my words, the Federal Reserve will intervene. This is why I think we're in a bottoming process. I think the the bleeding edge of the smart financial actors are actually on Sachs's side and Friedberg side, but then they're taking that next intellectual leap and saying, okay, well, what happens when Apple basically says, hey guys, I'm going to have to fire 15% of my employees? I think what happens is the fed intervenes... they're gonna they're gonna get to four and a half very quickly. And then this something's going to break. Like all these guys are saying I think they're right. And then the fed put comes back on the table and we'll have this. We'll have the UK. You know, the UK thing happened in, what, six days. Hours will play out over 6 or 9 months, but it's going to play out the exact same way.View on YouTube
Key elements of Chamath’s scenario did occur in the real world, even though some details (like the exact form of the “Fed put”) differed.
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Rate hikes to ~4.5% “very quickly”
When the podcast aired (1 Oct 2022), the effective federal funds rate was about 3.1%. It rose to ~4.1% by December 2022 and ~4.6% by February 2023, meaning the Fed did in fact reach roughly 4.5% within a few months. (fred.stlouisfed.org) -
“Something breaks” in the financial system within months of that level
After policy rates crossed that range, the U.S. saw the 2023 regional-banking crisis: Silicon Valley Bank failed on March 10, 2023; Signature Bank failed on March 12; First Republic was seized in May. These were among the largest bank failures in U.S. history and were widely tied to losses on long‑duration securities driven by the rapid rate hikes. (en.wikipedia.org)
Those failures occurred roughly 1–5 months after the funds rate moved into the 4–5% zone, which is within (and earlier than) the 6–9 month window his normalized prediction allowed. -
Fed intervention via backstops reminiscent of a “Fed put”
In direct response to this turmoil, on March 12, 2023 the Federal Reserve announced the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) to provide term funding against Treasuries and agency securities at par, explicitly to assure banks could meet depositor needs and to stabilize the system. (federalreserve.gov)
This was a targeted financial‑stability backstop—conceptually similar to the Bank of England’s emergency long‑dated gilt purchases in September–October 2022, which were also temporary, stability‑focused operations rather than broad, open‑ended QE. (bankofengland.co.uk)
While the Fed did not immediately pivot to rate cuts or full‑scale QE (it actually kept hiking to above 5% and only began easing much later, in 2024–2025), the creation of BTFP and the systemic‑risk guarantees for bank depositors fit the “intervene with backstops” part of his forecast reasonably well. (fred.stlouisfed.org) -
Equity market bottoming and subsequent surge
U.S. equities effectively bottomed around October 12, 2022, very near the time of the episode, and then entered a sustained bull market. By July 31, 2023, the S&P 500 was up strongly from that low, and by October 2025 it had risen nearly 90% from the October 2022 bottom, with a widely recognized bull run led by large‑cap tech. (en.wikipedia.org)
That pattern—bottoming around the period of aggressive hikes and then a powerful rally over the next 2–3 years—matches his claim that we were in a “bottoming process” and that equities would eventually surge after the Fed’s stabilizing response.
Caveats: The Fed’s actions were more constrained and credit‑facility‑based than the almost-immediate gilt‑purchase program the Bank of England ran, and the ensuing bull market was driven by multiple forces (earnings, AI optimism, etc.), not just policy backstops. However, the core sequence he predicted—rapid hikes to ~4.5%, a break in the system, Fed stepping in with backstops, and a strong subsequent equity bull market—did happen, so on balance the prediction is best classified as right, albeit directionally rather than in every specific detail.