20VC: Bill Ackman on The Banking Crisis, What the Fed Should Do, The Three-Tiered Banking System, Why SVB is the Safest, Why Jamie Dimon Should Run For President & Investing Lessons; Losing $400M on Netflix and Making $2.8BN in COVID

One of the sad things about our country right now, I think free speech has been crushed to a great extent. If you can say something, if you could express a political view and get fired today, which is definitely a very real possibility, only if you are financially independent... can you take the risk of speaking freely.

I tell myself to make progress every day. The advice I give to go those who go through similarly challenging moments... Number one, adequate sleep; proper nutrition; exercise is a huge help... Surround yourself with people who love you, and then make sure, each day, you make progress toward digging yourself out of the mess.

The disappointments have been cases... where my spidey sense had a little bit of concern, but I chose to ignore the gut instinct. The gut is actually part of your brain ... I think it's important to listen to it.

I'd be very worried about raising rates until we've solved this regional bank problem. And it's not just regional banks; people are going to start thinking about their small community banks and how insolvent they are. We can't have another bank closure. We have one more, and it's going to get messy.

We need a system-wide deposit guarantee, and then we need FDIC insurance with appropriate premiums so that these smaller banks can operate. That network of banks is important for the farmer in Iowa as much as it is for the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.

The first thing to do is you guarantee deposits, okay, on a temporary basis where that temporary guarantee stays in place until they update the FDIC insurance program to have a greater than $250K guarantees per account... If they don't do that, my expectation is that people are still going to be concerned, and people like yourself are going to move from Silicon Valley Bank to the JP Morgan's of the world.

If it's Biden/Trump, I think Trump wins.

The world is a structurally different place than it was for the last 20-odd years, and you're going to see persistent levels of inflation, 3-4% inflation, for the foreseeable future.

The problem with people losing confidence in deposits is the details get lost in the headlines. Once you hear you can lose money with a deposit at the bank, it affects everyone.

What I've learned from that is that philanthropy is often not the solution to many problems and that business and for-profit business models are much more effective solutions to problems, most problems.

Happiness comes from helping other people ... What money has given me is the ability to have some kind of global impact on problems.

It starts with finding the right person; that's about 98%. You can choose the wrong person, and you could do all the right things, and it's not going to make for a great marriage.

I don't know that it matters so much whether you live in a $300K house or $2M house or a $20M house or whether your parents drive a Toyota. I think the major differences are you have access to a good education, your food on the table, you have financial security.

The Biden wealth tax, which is like 25% of the appreciation of things that you own privately, it's going to bankrupt every startup. No one will ever start a business in America anymore.

The key thing is picking someone that you totally trust, and David [Berkowitz] is one of the executors of trust ... If you can work together, succeed together, go through some challenging times together... Choose your partners carefully, but choose someone you totally trust.

I always like to say experience is making mistakes and learning from them.