Piers Morgan Uncensored - "Brink Of DISASTER!" Andrew Ross Sorkin On Elon Musk, AI Bubble + Ryan Cohen's “Hostile” eBay Plot

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

There’s growing concern about the state of the global economy. Warnings about the so-called "AI bubble" and escalating conflict in the Middle East have led a number of commentators and market experts to predict that a major downturn could be on the horizon. Some have even gone further, with one renowned forecaster warning that the world may be heading towards a global depression. With fears of history repeating itself, Piers Morgan is joined by broadcaster and author Andrew Ross Sorkin, whose new book 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History examines the events that led to the Wall Street Crash and the lessons they hold for today's economy. Later, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen joins Piers to discuss reports that he is exploring a hostile takeover of eBay. Cohen explains the thinking behind the move and what it could mean for shareholders and the future of online retail. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and sponsored by: Mars Men: For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at Mengotomars.com. 00:00 Introduction 02:06 Andrew Ross Sorkin’s interview with Piers 03:00 Andrew on his new book ‘1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History’ 07:14 The risk of AI 09:01 Is Elon Musk a force for good or not? 09:57 AD: MARS MEN - Get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at Mengotomars.com 10:58 Piers asks Andrew: “Who is the one individual he would invest his net worth in?” 13:13 Lewis Hamilton’s statement on millionaires 14:50 Current debt in America 16:58 Donald Trump and the state of the US economy before and after the war in Iran 21:00 How is the stock market still afloat amidst the Iran war? 23:03 What is the best and safest way to get rich?25:15 What is the world going to look like 100 years after 1929? 28:18 Andrew Ross Sorkin on Ryan Cohen’s GameStop’s financing to acquire eBay 29:22 Andrew reacts to Ryan Cohen’s response 31:05 POLYMARKET POLL: Will GameStop acquire eBay? (https://polymarket.com/event/will-gamestop-acquire-ebay) 33:48 Andrew on power lunches 34:44 Ryan Cohen reacts to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s interview with Piers 38:40 Hype around SpaceX launch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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by a mile. And he keeps finding new ways to make money when people think it's impossible. The lesson of Warren Buffett, it's to have humility. You know, the phrase FOMO did not exist in 1929, but boy, do we have it now. I think we're getting closer to the end of the story than the beginning, but I don't know how the end of the story really plays itself out just yet. Ultimately, you need guardrails to make a free market actually free, because what is it happening is it's not free. It becomes about crony capitalism. And the U.S., despite all the hand-wringing, I think, is the best economy in the world. There's the line, lunches for whims. Do you go to lunch?

I just don't know what the power lunch is anymore. Elon Musk is officially the world's first trillionaire, at least on paper. The record-breaking stock market debut of his company, SpaceX, makes him as rich as the poorer half of the world's entire population combined. If Musk was an autonomous country, then sometimes it seems he would quite like to be quite like. to be one, he'd have the 20th biggest economy in the world. He could spend a million dollars every day for 3,000 years before emptying his bank account, and that's without accounting for interest. There's a big moral debate to be had about whether anybody should have that much money. But for today's show, we're looking at it slightly differently.

Despite the unstoppable rise of Musk and a handful of major tech and AI companies, many experts currently think the economy is on the brink of disaster. In fact, it looks a lot like the moments before the Great Depression of 1929, a booming economy built on shaky foundations, ordinary people saddled with debt, a stock market buoyed by overhyped stocks, a small group of major companies with massive power, and an even smaller group of extremely rich industrialists

who got ever richer whilst workers' wages stagnated. So is history repeating itself, where the broadcaster Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book, 1929, tackles exactly this subject. And he joined me in my London studio at the end of last week to discuss it. Welcome to London. I'm thrilled to see you, sir. Welcome to Uncensored.

Please. I can't think of anyone bigger to us. Are we too big as a world to fail? Oh, goodness. We are now officially too big to fail. There's no question. We are too big to fail. Really?

The whole thing couldn't collapse. Oh, no. It could collapse. I'm just suggesting we now have a problem that is of a different magnitude if we were to fail. Do I think we're going to fail tomorrow? I don't know. I know there's been a lot of doomsday predictions, and I obviously just wrote about the Great Depression. I think we're getting closer to the end of the story than the beginning,

but I don't know how the end of the story really plays itself out just yet. Are there obvious parallels with 29? I mean, one that struck me was when that last big depression occurred, the stock market was an all-time high of 341 points, for example. today the stock market is also at an all-time high, 50,500,000, whatever it is. Should that be a red flag? I mean, are we, is that one flag? There should be yellow flags, red flags, all the flags.

When I was writing this book, I thought I was writing about 1929. Really? And as I was working on it. Well, you were running about 29. You mean you're running about now? But as I was working on it, it became so clear to me that so many of the things that were happening then, new technology, automobiles, radio. Everybody was excited. People thought a company RCA was the invidia of its time. And as I'm writing this book, and I'm seeing AI play out, the excitement we have around that technology. By the way, tariffs happened in 1930, Smoot Hawley, happens now. The phrase democratization of finance, we want to let everybody in and give everyone an access to the lottery ticket. What phrase do we hear now? I mean, so there are these parallels. Are they the exact same? No. biggest thing that I think we have to watch for, the match that lights the fire every time is

dead. It's loans. Back then, you could walk into a brokerage house. By the way, you could walk at the old oak room in the Plaza Hotel. That was an E. F. Hutton. You could walk in, you give them a dollar. They would literally loan you $10 for every dollar you gave them. By the way, E.F. Hutton lived in Moralago back in 1929. Another parallel. Another parallel. You say in the book, to the nation experiencing the implosion of a stock market, felt like watching a heavyweight champion getting knocked out by an untested, unheralded amateur. It wasn't the way the world was supposed to work. It was destabilizing. Instead of shocks set in a company by paralysis of spirit and a loss of confidence,

people started questing all the things they have taken for granted. Did a capitalist society make sense anymore? Could it depend upon going forward? Or had everyone been duped by the glorious markets of the 20s? And there have been lots of gold rushes and equivalents. and obviously in 2008-9 with a massive global crash. I could have written that sentence about 2008. Yes, you could.

And I guess the big gold rush right now is AI. Totally. There's a belief that the top seven tech companies, they're spending gazillions on AI, and that this may all blow up, that it may not be the great thing that everyone thinks is going to be. And if they were to fail collectively, then the whole market disintegrates.

Is that even a possibility? Well, look, I actually think it's maybe more, complicated and potentially worse than that. Because I see it as a double-edged sword. On one end, I worry about an AI bubble, meaning overspending on AI, and ultimately, it just doesn't catch up the way. Like the dot-com bubble of 2000.

Exactly. But then think about the other side. In success, what does success with AI actually look like? Well, to justify these prices of these companies, you have to create extraordinary amount of productivity. Productivity means you have to grow at less cost. What is the cost? You get rid of the humans.

We are the cost. Now, if we are the cost, who's gonna have the money to pay for these things? So to me, there's a very tiny slipper. We have to land the plane to make this work out properly. And we are reliant on AI not learning how to self-design, which is the key warning that Professor Stephen Hawking gave to me shortly before he died,

which is if that happens, that's the end of our world. Because if it can think for itself, it doesn't need us anymore. I think we're still some ways from that. Sergei Bryn, who founded Google, recently came out and said, he thinks there needs to be another sort of major transformational sort of invention, if you will, to get to the full... But I saw Anthropic saying, I think, only yesterday.

Warning, we've got to slow down here because the rate... The rate of change. It's so quick that it can be like the genie getting out of the bottle. It's trying to get out, and it may be that we just make a mistake. And boom, it's gone. I don't know. I've talked to a lot of people in the industry to try and understand

when we could get to a point where it's truly dangerous. I don't think we're there now. I don't even think we'd be there in two or three years to now. The question is, what does AI do on its own that genuinely injures us?

And that may be once we get to robots. You know, Elon with humanoid robots, if you think about them building factories on their own and then deciding to build a new factory. Well, I'm more worried about NeurLink, because I'm thinking if he can do that with people. Oh, and then control your brain.

Right. So at the moment, it's all for the good intention of people who've lost the ability to, you know, to function properly, having this addition to their brain, which helps them function properly again. But if you start to roll that out, logically, if you can start to mess with the human brain

in a way that makes us, I guess, robotic, well, we're becoming effectively robots, aren't we? Well, I think one of the things that I, I don't know how much time you spent with my new friend, my new friend Claude or chat GPT. Even before we get to that, just the loss of agency over your, I mean, how often I don't, I find myself asking questions. And then if I don't think about it long enough, sometimes I'll realize that the answer is not right.

But think about if you're a younger person, you don't have the experience, you've lost agency. Well, I ask you. I ask, oh, I see people ask you questions about me. mean, right? Whether it's GROC or whatever, whichever one I use X a lot. And most of the time GROC is pretty accurate, but sometimes it's completely wrong. And people are taking this as a kind of biblical script. Yes. Like a, you know, it's like the draft of the Constitution. But it's not. It's flawed at the moment. Deeply flawed, I would say. And if you identify, sometimes I'll say, hey, I don't think you have this right. And then it will say, oh, I apologize. I did make a mistake.

but unless you know where to push back. And that's going to be a much broader societal problem, I imagine, over the next couple of years. Is Elon Musk a force for good or not in totality? I think ultimately he is a demonstrable force for good. He's a genius. I mean, he's a genius. I think what he's done with automobiles is extraordinary.

What he's done with SpaceX is extraordinary. What he's doing with AI. I admire so much about what he's. has created. Can I critique certain things that he's said or done along the way? Absolutely. But I think if I look at the totality of this man, I mean, I think 100, 200 years from now, he's the person will be writing the history books about it. You've interviewed him, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jim Bezos. If you had to put all your life savings, which is not inconsiderable, Andrew, congratulations.

I don't know about that. books and movies and television work. Oh, who am I going with? Who are you going with to invest in just one of them? Summary is almost upon us, and if you're not completely satisfied with your beach body, my condolences, that must be hard for you. It's not just because you're watching the World Cup and drinking beer. Once men hit their 30s, it's harder for the body to lose fat, retain muscle,

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free gifts at men go to mars.com. That's men go to mars.com for 50% off and three free gifts at checkout. And remember to tell them that I sent you. Oh, wow. We'll assume all at their peak, right? So here's the complicated part. The thing is, on a, the question is it, quote, risk adjusted. Elon Musk has been the winner of this game by a mile. Right. And he keeps finding new ways to make money. when people think it's impossible. Yes. Right?

When the original investors in Tesla, people thought it was insane what he was doing. Is he the greatest businessman of all time? I think it's hard to come up with another one, only because he keeps finding these new opportunities. Think about what he's just done, by the way, with SpaceX. He builds these data centers in the middle. Nobody's focused on the data centers.

And now he's selling access to Google and to Anthropic. He's coming up with new. I mean, even when things are not working for him, X, by the way, originally wasn't working for him as an economic animal, if you will. He then merges it with his AI company, and all of a sudden the data stream now has value, and he makes that work for the investors. So I kind of think I'd probably give him the money. My only issue with X, for example, there's no doubt that he's leveled the playing field politically, I think,

in a much fairer way. There's also no doubt if you talk to any public figure that's been using, using it regularly. The amount of abuse you get exponentially higher has become real wild west. I mean, I had one troll calling me a satanic paedophile. So, obviously, for the record, neither of those things. But I actually formally complained to X just to see what happened. And they rejected the complaint. It didn't cross any of their boundaries for any kind of action to be taken. That was like, well, if that's happening to me, it happens to me. It happens to all of us. But that isn't right, is it? That is not right. That is not right. But then the question, then we get back to the First Amendment question, free speech question, about what we want to allow, what we don't want to allow. Do we want to set up systems so that certain things can't be said? I don't know what the right end. I have... What is the answer? I have gone from one end to the pendulum to the other, and I don't have a good one for you. Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One star, Sir Lewis, as he now is, made news this week by saying billionaires shouldn't exist. This is. despite the fact he's nearly one himself, and his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, is one.

But you can believe something whilst also being that person. Do you think, does he have a point? I mean, there's a lot of very, very rich people who dominate the 1% of the world, and that gap between them as a collective force and those with absolutely nothing has never been bigger. Can a society survive with that disparity? Well, so what I worry about is the political polarization

that happens as a result of inequality, more than anything else. Do I think billionaires should exist? I'm not here to tell you that billionaires shouldn't exist. I think the question is, if we have this kind of inequality, how do we pay for the services that people, the ordinary person, ultimately needs, who is paying it, what's the tax structure look like? And those are some bigger issues. And this goes to the tax question, which is if you believe,

that the tax system is a manifestation of democracy. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary.

Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&PNP. Global Mobility, Canadian new vehicle, total registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Fair system. Do people look and say it's fair how people are being taxed? And I would say right now, people look and think that's not fair. And worse, the people with money are able to lobby, some people would call it bribing the system, to keep either policies in places or to change policies to make it more attractive for them and less attractive for everybody else. And so that's the piece of it that I ultimately think needs to get solved before I would say. say we need to get rid of billionaires as a class. The current debt in America is how much? We are on our way towards $40 trillion with a T by the end of this year.

I mean, the average person hears that and goes, how does this make any sense? How can America, the great superpower of the world, be that in debt and still be functioning, and that alone having what appears to be a still pretty thriving economy? This is the thing singularly that I worry about more than anything else. People worry about AI, they worry about bubbles. I worry about the sovereign debt of the United States. And if there's going to be a moment, if we do have, by the way, a bubble that bursts in the United States, the playbook we've learned from 2008 from the pandemic is what do we do?

We write a check. Write a check to every, we bail everybody out. You buy yourself out adding to the debt. Adding to the debt. And so what I worry about is the next time we write that check, and it could be trillions of dollars, whatever that check is, that whatever invisible line you think exists in the bond market, that the investors say, no, mas, we're not doing this anymore like this. We cannot do it like this. But what happens then?

Well, what happens is the bond investors say, we're only going to buy your bonds. If there's double or triple the interest, you're going to pay me for the risk that I'm taking on. Well, if that happens, all of a sudden, it completely rescambles the budget of the United States, meaning what the government services are offered, and that's what can lead to, I think, real both civil unrest, potentially, but a devolution both in services and the economic implications. You say in the book, you quote President Hoover, who in response to the 29 crash,

said the only problem of capitalism is capitalists. They're just too damn greedy. That hasn't changed. That part hasn't changed. Look, capitalism is the best program that I've found over the years as it relates to socialism. But you do need some guardrails. Ultimately, you need guardrails

to make a free market actually free. Because what ends up happening is it's not free. It becomes about crony capitalism. It becomes about all of these weird incentives that screw up the system. And that, I think, is ultimately the thing we've got to watch for. Let's talk about Donald Trump

before the war in Iran and now. Because there's a reason why I'm going to separate the two things. Obviously, a year ago, he launched the Tariff War. Many people predicted total financial Armageddon. It would be a total disaster. Well, that didn't happen. It wasn't a disaster.

But was it by any qualitative assessment a success? What is the reality of where we are with tariffs? Okay, so there's two elements. Because, by the way, I was in the category of this could be a real problem. I was in that category, though. And I think most people who were really sort of worried at the moment were in that category on what was called Liberation Day. When he first came out with the tariff program, people freaked. But they freaked because the levels of the tariffs were extraordinarily higher than they ultimately were.

So part of it was that the plan changed. Is tariff war a good strategy if you are the biggest beast in the room? I genuinely believe tariff war is not good for consumers in America, and I believe it's not good for it. Why? Because ultimately... Because it's ultimately a tax that at least is partly born by the consumer- in the United States. And not just that. I think there's a broader question, which is, to the degree that you are a nation that wants to have relationships with others that are long-term and loyal. We talk about here we are in the UK, the special relationships between the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.K., there was no problem between the U.S. and the U.K. prior to this. Do you believe that tariffs were warranted on the U.K.? I didn't know. The trouble is I could see the merit in some of it. He's always had a thing about China, for example, ripping America.

He's always believed in the power of tariffs. None of it was a surprise to me. Oh, by the way, I think you can use tariffs. And the president, by the way, has authority to use tariffs. And they can be used properly. If there is a country that demonstrably is doing something like China is and was, you can use tariffs against them. We have laws that allow for that. The idea of across-the-board tariffs, just as a toll,

that creates its own problems. What was the state of the economy right before the war in Iran? war in Iran started, particularly in the U.S.? What was the reality? I think the reality was that things were getting better on the whole. Still the best economy in the world? I think we were probably, I think, look, that's the funny part about this is the U.S., despite all the hand-wringing, I think is the best economy in the world. I think it was the best economy in the world during the beginning of the Trump term.

I think it was the best economy in the world, by the way, even at the end of the Biden term. And I say that, hopefully, just empirically, on the data, you know, as we moved into the war, I think there was, by the way, I think there was some underlying questions underneath the economy, what was going on. By the way, this AI boom, I pointed the book, but the AI boom has inflated everything. To an unhealthy degree? Well, to a concentrated degree. People would say concentration is unhealthy. If you take out the success of AI and remove it from GDP, you basically have a flat GDP. And then that raises the question about how healthy this really is.

This Iran war, I felt from day one, was a strategic mistake that Trump got talked into. He wouldn't accept that, but I think he did. And the longer it goes on, clearly the more economic damage is being done, not just to, obviously, the Iranians, but also to everybody, right, because of the power of the straight-of-full-moose, which most people probably weren't even aware of before this happened. The longer it goes on, what is the real damage to the economy, do you think? Look, I've been surprised at how resilient of this. Yeah, because the markets don't seem to have even noticed it.

It is head-scratching to me every day. How is that possible? Investors in the stock market are professional optimists. And by the way, you have to be. Or are they just, I mean, I'll say this respectfully, because I know you have to. swimming their pawn. But are they not just a bunch of lemmings? You look at the oil price graph, right, since the start of the war. Every time, every time Trump breaks wind, yes, one way or another,

what, what, what, what, no actual longer term thinking, no assessment of what he's saying, whether it bears any relation to the reality on the ground or anything. They just burp up and down. And I'm like, that's not a sensible way of reacting to this news. So here's the complication. There's two things going on. One is the stock market is supposed to be looking out 12 to 18 months from now. That is supposed to be the bet. So the bet that's taking place today is that in 12 months or 18 months from now, call it that there is no war, that the straight is open. That is what they're gambling on. Is that a good gamble? I don't know. I hope so. The other thing I just say, having studied 1929 in 2008, it has actually paid to be a professional optimist. I'm

I'm a professional skeptic. I'm a journalist. Both of us are. We're in the skeptical business. Our first instinct is who's lying to me and why. Right, exactly. So it's a little, there is a little bit of a disconnect there. But if you look over the last hundred years, even with a 1929 crash, even with a 2008 or a dot com or, you go down the list, you have been better off being invested in the market than not being in the market. And in fact, there's been a number of studies that have shown if you look at wars, any time. a war has broken out. In the past, by the way, you used to see big movements in the stock market.

I think people started clocking what was happening. Oftentimes, if you put money into the market when a war broke out, a year later, you were doing better. This is not investment advice. It's just historically, I think that's what this investor class today is looking at. In terms of getting rich, people look at someone like you and they go, well, come on, you know, you're like an expert in this stuff. is the best, safest way to get rich? It's the way that Warren Buffett has told people to get rich, which is to buy an index fund early on in your life, to compound your money. It is not sexy. It is not fast. But if you

have some patience and you are consistent about it, you can get rich. Warren, I interviewed him at CNN. And he was certainly, I would say the most, impressive business person I've ever met. I thought his world view about it all. Even down to he'd sent one email ever, which ended up in a lawsuit. So he never emailed anybody again. He just uses a normal phone. He had a Nokia flip phone, which he just took calls on. And it was a massive book called Snowball, wasn't it? About him? Incredibly dense, but brilliant, I thought. And by Alice Schroeder. Right. And incredibly well done. But it basically, The sort of philosophy was to invest in great bowl-run companies

that generated lots of cash and talk. But also following the habits of human beings. So when times were tough, people tended to stay at home. They'd order in pizza. They'd chew more gum because they had worried. They'd eat more confectionery and so on. And he would buy accordingly. And similarly, when times were great, he'd be into airlines and restaurants

because that's what people are doing. In other words, he's chasing behavioral patterns. and habits. I thought that was just incredibly simple, but fascinating. He has the strongest sort of emotional core. Most people, when the stock market falls, freak out, he says to himself, oh, my goodness, everything's on sale. Well, he said, when others are fearful, be greedy, when others are greedy, be fearful? It's very hard, I think, for most people to be able to follow that path.

I think it's the right path, but emotionally it's... You've got to have balls of steel, right? It's not a natural act for most. Your book is called 1929. We're heading towards 2000 and 29. So 100 years later, what is it going to look like the world if you were a betting man? And things are looking pretty unpredictable right now, but your job is to try and predict these things. What are we going to look like, in particular, that relationship between AI,

and jobs, because it seems to me to be the crucial fulcrum, forgetting about war and whatever stuff you can't control. The thing we can control is that balance between artificial intelligence, where it goes by 29, and what that does to the human jobs market. Okay, so just next three years, that's the prediction? Next three years, actually, I don't think it necessarily takes all the jobs that actually we've been expecting. I don't know if you've been following what's happening with mammograms.

People talk about mammograms because they always thought that radiologists for mammograms were going to lose their jobs first because AI can read a mammogram better than a person. There are more people who are radiologists doing mammograms than ever before. Why? Because the price of mammograms has come down and more people are getting mammograms than ever. And somebody still has to read them and still has to talk to the patient personally. So I think there's going to be an opportunity. Well, what about, say, like I talk about legal clerks, right? But their job is to just go and find old case studies.

Yes, those people are not going to have jobs. Right. So then what happens to the ladder in industries like that? Because you have to become... The apprenticeship. Right. So what happens to those people? Because if you can't get on the ladder, then surely the whole ladder eventually just falls. So this is to me the issue. And what I don't know is, is that over the next two or three years or is that over the next five or ten years?

I think it's going to be incredibly quick. So I think it's going to be slow and then incredibly. When you see companies like Facebook and others, you know, getting rid of thousands of people, the moment that starts to happen and they're citing AI is the reason. But that surely you have to accelerate. I'm a little worried that there's a little bit of theater going on in some of these announcements. Right now, I think people are using AI as an excuse for firing people, and I'm not sure that's the actual case. By the way, one of the things happened in the last two weeks, the cost of using AI is so incredibly high. Companies like Uber are saying that the ROI, the return on investment, doesn't make.

sense, that they'd actually prefer to use engineers. So I think there's going to play itself out for some time. Then I think there'll probably be a cliff. And there's going to be a big question about what that transition looks like. I think that's when it becomes a political and policy story. But I think it's probably a 2009 story. What's the number one lesson we should learn from this, from the 29 crash? It's the lesson of Warren Buffett.

It's to have humility. It's not to chase the next thing. You know, the phrase, FOMO did not exist. exist in 1929, but boy, do we have it now. And when we see folks making a fortune, everybody wants the lottery ticket. Everybody wants the ticket. The problem is that most people who buy the ticket lose. Talking of people potentially winning or losing,

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It's half cash. It's half stock. We have the ability to issue stock. Essentially, the eBay shareholders are going to continue owning eBay, except it's going to be run by an owner-operator as opposed to an entrenched management team that has zero invested. and zero skin in the game. And the other half of the structure, we've got $9 billion of cash on our balance sheet, and our bankers have advised us

that they feel confident in our ability to raise $20 billion. So it's a straightforward deal, but, you know, it was too complicated for them on CNBC. Now, the reason I wanted to play that to you is because it was way too complicated for me to understand whether anything that he said there was actually credible. You've now heard it. He says it's too complicated.

If you do understand. I would beg to differ. From what you just heard there, which was his kind of clarifying explanation, what would your response be? So look, I think what he is trying to do is slightly different than what is a classic acquisition.

And just for the record, I did understand exactly what the transaction was. I was desperately trying to get him to explain it to the public. in a way that they could understand it. But in terms of what the deal is, typically when you buy a company, you have more money than the company that you're buying

and you're buying out their shares. In fact, he said that he was buying it at a premium. That's not exactly what this deal is. He's paying some money to the company, but he's effectively telling eBay shareholders, you're going to roll in with me, meaning you're going to, a big portion of your shares are still coming here.

So I'm not really buying you out at all. I'm just, you're going to roll in with me. And if you like me as the manager and think that what I've done with Chewy, he had a great success with Chewy. If you think that what he's doing with GameStop was great, then you'll follow down this path. And that's what the deal is. The question is he needs to ultimately persuade those eBay shareholders. And those eBay shareholders are big Wall Street institutions, by the way.

It's not retail investors necessarily a lot, you know, there's a lot of retail investors in GameStop, got him very excited about GameStop. he's got to persuade Black Rock and, you know, Tiro Price and all the big funds that he's the guy to run this and that they need to trust him. That's what that story. Polly Market, when asked, will game stop the quiet eBay by the end of the year? 15% are saying yes in the prediction market, down from 22%. Where would you put the percentage? Look, I think it's going to be a challenge for Ryan.

I think he's done a – by the way, he did a great job with Chewy. I think he's doing a good job with GameStop. Could he pull it off? In this year, I think it would be very, very challenging, like almost impossible challenging. But that's because he effectively would have to get the board, which doesn't want to hand over the reins, and he'd have to get all the big institutional investors behind him.

Could he ultimately do it over time? Maybe. But it's not an easy one. Is an easier one what's going to happen to SpaceX when it floats in a couple of weeks? Is that going to be the rocket that we'll be? all expect? So it's interesting.

It's a rocket that almost invariably has to be a rocket for the first couple of weeks because the NASDAQ, the stock exchange where it's going to go public, has an index fund called the QQQ. Anyone who buys the NASDAQ index fund is automatically within the first five days going to be buying shares of SpaceX. So there is effectively an automated buyer of SpaceX shares. And by the way, there's other investment funds out there that try to mimic the NASDAQ fund. So they have to automatically buy shares too.

So I think in the immediate aftermath, there will be lots of shares moving higher. Having said that, Elon's done something very interesting, talking about the democratization of finance. He's allowing a lot more retail investors to buy in than historically. Why is he doing that? He believes in this idea of democratizing finance and believes there's a big audience for his shares. The question, it's going to be a big test. Most companies don't put the shares in retail investors' hands immediately because they're not considered diamond hands.

They're considered quick hands that they may sell if the stock moves too high. So it's going to be a very interesting one to watch. I sat with three billionaires about three, four years ago, over lunch, and I just said to them, come on, if you could invest in one stock, what would it be? And they all said SpaceX. So I thought it was very interesting. So it's going to be a fantastically exciting thing to watch. And watch for the next move. Elon's next move, SpaceX, I think, is going to ultimately buy Tesla.

I think that's inevitable. And they're going to rename the company X for the whole enterprise. Really? The whole thing. That's my call. That's a big call, but you're usually right. I want to weigh in with one simple question. In Wall Street, perhaps the most iconic movie about Wall Street. but about the financial world, the classic Oliver Stone film.

There's the line, lunches for wimps. Do you go to lunch? I used to go to lunch. These days, I don't really go to lunch that much. Do you concluded lunches for wimps? I just don't know what the power lunch is anymore. I tell you where it is. Maybe when we go to lunch.

No, it's Michaels. It's Midtown Manhattan with our mutual friend, Jonathan Wald. Absolutely. Isn't that the epicenter of power lunches? The epicenter of Power in New York. Andrew, great to see you. Great to see you. 1929, inside the crash.

As you've got here, a quote here from David Grant, riveting and illuminating. It certainly is, and a massive wake-up call for all of us right now. Here, thank you. Great to see you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks very much.

Well, joining us now to react to that interview is Ryan Cohen, the CEO of Gage. So, Ryan, you were listening there to Andrew. There was a little glimmer of hope. He didn't think it was impossible, just very difficult. What's your reaction? It reminds me of the movie Dumb and Dumber, where the girl tells Jim Carrey, he asks, what are my chances?

And she says like one in a million or something. And he says, so you're saying there's a chance. I mean, look, Andrew is notwithstanding your little dig, which I played to him. that he didn't understand it. I think he does understand it, and he outlined just now the reasons for his concern and wanting you to really articulate

how you thought this would work. Do you understand his concerns? Do you accept that he, you know, he's pretty expert in this, and the concerns are valid? Yeah, I mean, it's tough. Everything that I've done has always been tough. If you would have looked at what the chances of Chewy to succeed against Amazon, the odds were very, very low.

And turning around GameStop, if you asked all of Wall Street what they thought the business was going to be doing in 2026. When I joined the board, they would have said that the company would have been bankrupt a few times over. so this is tough. There have been reports today saying that you've not given up on this project and you may now take your proposal directly to shareholders for an attempted hostile takeover. Is that true? I'm definitely not going to give up.

I'm not going to stop. You're not denying the report which includes the... the proposal potentially direct to shareholders for an attempted hostile takeover? Is that been true? Ultimately, the owners of the business are the shareholders and the fate of the business is going to be decided by the owners of the business. And the vote is going to come down to who they want running the business. Do you want an entrenched management team that's collecting tens of millions of dollars

in risk-free compensation, running the business, or do you want someone that's putting all his chips on the table, both through GameStop and me personally? But ultimately, you know, the management team and the board has all kinds of perverse incentives, but I'm going to do everything to make sure that ultimately the owners of the business get to make that decision.

That doesn't sound like a denial. It's not a denial. Wow. Okay, so that is news. So you are seriously considering a hostile takeover? Going to do whatever we need to do in order to maximize shareholder value for GameStop. And we've made a big investment. We're one of the largest active shareholders of the business.

And I love eBay. and the business is highly complementary to GameStop's business, and it's a business that I personally understand very well and is within my circle of competence. So we'll see what happens. Well, I'll look forward greatly to your next move on that. Just very quickly, SpaceX. You know, we just heard Andrew talking about it

that it's going to be a rocket launch launch, but it's going to have to reach rocket levels to justify, I guess, all the hype. What's your view about it? I wouldn't bet against that. I wouldn't be arrogant enough to bet against Elon. And what I find interesting on all the skeptics on Wall Street is, how quickly they are to take the side of the establishment. I don't know what it is.

Maybe they play by the rules. They go on the show. They answer all their questions. They bow down to them. They get together in the Hamptons. I don't know what it is. But there's nothing that is more American than risking your own money. And if you end up making money great.

And if you end up losing money, then you lose money. And yet you look at the money. the mainstream media like with with GameStop as an example and it's almost like everyone is rooting and wants wants to see our demise and it's the same thing in this situation too they want to see us fail they hope we fail and doesn't really make sense to me it's anti-American what we're doing is tough but we're taking on risk and if you look at at the current management team and the board, you've got a board of directors that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for attending a few board meetings. You've got a management

team, you've got a CEO in particular that's making tens of millions of dollars, have never bought a single share of stock on the open market with his own money, and yet, why are they so quick to protect and want them to succeed? Like, you know, you talk about like, you know, I watch wealth inequality and all of these systemic risks. And then you have someone that's taking on a lot of risk and putting a lot of skin in the game. It's like, why do they want us to fail? I don't understand.

You know, I love entrepreneurs. I think they make the world go around. I think that most people are risk-averse and play safe in their lives and their business. And actually, if it wasn't for people like you and Elon Musk and others, the world would be a very dull place. And sometimes you've got to speculate to accumulate.

and you may crash and burn, but as we learned in top gun, sometimes you will crash and burn, but other times you're going to win. And I wouldn't bet against you either, Ryan, I've enjoyed talking to you the few times we've done it. I hope we continue to do it. And if you put it off, it'll be amazing.

And if you don't, well, you had to go. I appreciate it, Pierce. We're on the same page. We are, and we will talk again. Ryan, thank you very much. Nice seeing you. Peers Morgan Unscensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me.

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