Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: I'm Amy Morris. Now this week we'll take a look
Speaker 1: at the top priority. What should it be for the
Speaker 1: CDC Job One just might be regaining the public trust.
Speaker 1: There is a race among workaholics and women are starting
Speaker 1: to gain some ground. We're going to look at why,
Speaker 1: and we'll take a look at the latest trendy neighborhood
Speaker 1: used to just be called Wall Street. Let's get started.
Speaker 1: We begin with a focus on oil and whether the
Speaker 1: past week changes the narrative in a significant way. After
Speaker 1: the White House announced last fall it would refill the
Speaker 1: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at specific oil prices, President Biden making
Speaker 1: that announcement, United States Godment is going to purchase oil
Speaker 1: to refill the Strategic Patrol reserved when prices fall to
Speaker 1: seventy dollars a barrel, and that means oil comments can
Speaker 1: invest to wrap up production now with confidence they'll be
Speaker 1: able to sell their oil to us at that price
Speaker 1: in the future seventy dollars. But it didn't happen, and
Speaker 1: prices are going up again. So what did happen? Let's
Speaker 1: bring in Bloomberg opinion columnist Liam Denning, he covers energy
Speaker 1: and commodities. We can start with the surprise cut that
Speaker 1: OPEC announced this past week. Liam, How does that change things? Well,
Speaker 1: it changes things immediately, just in terms of the oil price.
Speaker 1: You know, it was kind of ironic that the OPEC
Speaker 1: supply cut was accompanied by a statement talking about preserving
Speaker 1: the stability of the market, and then the very next
Speaker 1: thing that happens is an eight percent jump that day
Speaker 1: in the oil price. OPEC's idea of price stability, of course,
Speaker 1: tends to err on the side of those prices going
Speaker 1: up rather than down, and I think it may cause
Speaker 1: some additional problems for the Biden administration, but also for
Speaker 1: the FED and other central banks, because the weakness in
Speaker 1: all prices has obviously been useful for them, as they contemplate,
Speaker 1: you know, on the one hand, raising rates further to
Speaker 1: combat inflation, but also on the other mindful of the
Speaker 1: fact that we've just gone through an acute banking crisis,
Speaker 1: which which still doesn't seem quite settled just yet. Since
Speaker 1: the White House did make the announcement that the SPR
Speaker 1: would be replenished, and it hasn't happened yet, it's been
Speaker 1: a lot of ups and downs. Walk us through that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what happened was, obviously last year we had the
Speaker 1: Russian invasion of Ukraine. Oil prices spiked. US gasoline prices
Speaker 1: got to their highest level ever last June, averaging more
Speaker 1: than five bucks a gallon for the first time, and
Speaker 1: in response, President Joe Biden authorized drawing down one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In October,
Speaker 1: the administration announced a plan to replenish the SPR, but
Speaker 1: in a slightly different way from what we've been used to.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, our plan is to basically start
Speaker 1: replenishing the SPR once oil falls into a range, and
Speaker 1: their words were around sixty nine to seventy two dollars
Speaker 1: per barrel. Now, what has happened since then? A couple
Speaker 1: of things have happened. One is, in effect, we have
Speaker 1: actually replaced about three quarters of that one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty million barrels through a sort of congressional slight of hand, Basically,
Speaker 1: future sales that were mandated by Congress got taken out
Speaker 1: under legislation, and so that has net net replaced a
Speaker 1: lot of those barrels. However, there's still forty million barrels outstanding,
Speaker 1: and that will rise to more than sixty million barrels
Speaker 1: because we still have some congressionally mandated sales happening this year.
Speaker 1: But the other big thing that's happened is that effectively
Speaker 1: the administration has just not really shown any kind of
Speaker 1: commitment to that process. And that strikes me as quite
Speaker 1: odd in a couple of ways. Politically, why come out
Speaker 1: and say it if you don't really plan on following
Speaker 1: it up, you're just kind of creating a hurdle for
Speaker 1: yourself that you then fail to clear. But secondly, for
Speaker 1: the oil market, the whole idea of this was to
Speaker 1: do two things. One was it was to sort of
Speaker 1: legitimize drawing down oil from the SPR because the government
Speaker 1: was effectively saying, look, if all prices get too high,
Speaker 1: we are going to release barrels from the ESPR to
Speaker 1: dent the economic impact. On the other hand, if all
Speaker 1: prices get too low below that sixteen seventy two range,
Speaker 1: we will step in and start buying barrels for the
Speaker 1: spr which, if you think about it, is kind of
Speaker 1: an olive branch to the oil industry's saying, look, price
Speaker 1: is full too much. We're going to help you out.
Speaker 1: You can go out and drill with confidence. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of balancing that green agenda on the one hand
Speaker 1: for Biden, but also the need to balance it with
Speaker 1: energy security. But since then, we've seen advisors like Amos hostein,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of attaching conditions. And then when we
Speaker 1: saw all prices really drop in the week of Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley bank failing, we didn't really see the government move.
Speaker 1: You write in your column that the US is essentially
Speaker 1: swung from being this huge net importer of oil to
Speaker 1: a net exporter, usefully repurposing a critical piece of public infrastructure.
Speaker 1: But then, as you said, the administration attached that new
Speaker 1: condition and kind of brought everything to a standstill. What
Speaker 1: did it do, Well, you're you're right now that the
Speaker 1: US is a net exporter of oil. I think the
Speaker 1: administration quite rightly said, Look, the main threat to US
Speaker 1: from oil these days is less that we got to
Speaker 1: cut off and we actually run out of oil. It's more,
Speaker 1: one of the economic impacts of high oil prices, if
Speaker 1: someone like Russia does something disruptive the problem is by
Speaker 1: by going out there and saying, when oil falls into
Speaker 1: this range of sixty nine seventy two, we will proactively
Speaker 1: refill the strategic Petroleum Reserve. What the administration is really
Speaker 1: doing there was was trying to put a put into
Speaker 1: the market, and everything the administration has done since then,
Speaker 1: I don't think, for just to be clear, I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone is expecting the White House to suddenly turn
Speaker 1: into a you know, a day trader of oil with
Speaker 1: its finger constantly, you know, poised over the buttons, sir.
Speaker 1: The body language, and the lack of quick movement when
Speaker 1: all prices collapse, I think can only help to shred
Speaker 1: any credibility that was there that they will actually follow
Speaker 1: through on this. And more and more it seems like
Speaker 1: a political act, a desire to be seen to be
Speaker 1: doing something for energy security without actually following through quickly
Speaker 1: to really do anything substantive. Liam. Let's also talk about
Speaker 1: the timing of this. That's significant. We watched the regional
Speaker 1: bank turmoil, the SVB failure, all of that happening as
Speaker 1: they're talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and replenishing it.
Speaker 1: How did they link together? They were separate incidents that
Speaker 1: seemed to impact each other, or at least one more
Speaker 1: than the other. I think the link here is is
Speaker 1: kind of how the Silicon Valley Bank failure affected the
Speaker 1: old market. And if you look at the data that
Speaker 1: we get from the CFTC, which shows the physician essentially
Speaker 1: if hedge funds in all futures, what you see when
Speaker 1: an SVB fails is just as we saw in other
Speaker 1: types of asset classes, people sold first and ask questions later.
Speaker 1: So you saw a huge drop in the positions of
Speaker 1: hedge funds in oil futures. Think about that another way.
Speaker 1: It's panic now if you think about it from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the White House saying it plans to proactively
Speaker 1: buy barrels when all prices fall. Well, frankly, when you
Speaker 1: have that kind of blood on the street's moment, when
Speaker 1: everyone else is panicking, that's exactly when a buyer with
Speaker 1: huge resources and an ability to take a long term
Speaker 1: view should be stepping in. Although the White House nominally
Speaker 1: had this plan to stabilize all prices with spr purchases,
Speaker 1: it just didn't really feel any pressing need to follow through.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the Biden
Speaker 1: administration energy policy, because they've been pushing the green energy
Speaker 1: objectives really hard. Can the administration strike a balance between
Speaker 1: the strategic petroleum Reserve and having these green energy objectives
Speaker 1: on the table. Is that something they can work together?
Speaker 1: If you go back to when President Biden was campaigning
Speaker 1: for the presidency, you know, he had pretty much the
Speaker 1: greenest presidential platform we had ever seen. Then we get
Speaker 1: the invasion of Ukraine and a reminder of how dependent
Speaker 1: we are, even after the shale boom, how dependent we
Speaker 1: are on global energy trade. President Biden is trying to
Speaker 1: balance these two competing objectives. Longer term, you could argue,
Speaker 1: if we get more of our energy from renewable sources
Speaker 1: that aren't linked to whatever's happening in places like Russia
Speaker 1: or the Middle East, that that is that will actually
Speaker 1: enhance our energy security. The problem is, in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we still use an awful lot of oil and gas.
Speaker 1: We still depend on those trade flows, and so you
Speaker 1: know it's going to be a difficult balancing act. We've
Speaker 1: seen President Biden not just doing things like tapping the
Speaker 1: Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But for example, recently approving a controversial
Speaker 1: a new project on the north slope of Alaska known
Speaker 1: as Willow which you know it drew criticism from within
Speaker 1: his own ranks for approving that. He's going to have
Speaker 1: to steer a very narrow course on this. Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 1: colonist Liam Denning covers energy and commodities. Now, coming up,
Speaker 1: we'll look at how Wild Street turned from an office
Speaker 1: corridor into a fancy residential area. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcast. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. The rise of remote work
Speaker 1: during the pandemic has cut demand for office space. It's
Speaker 1: left some American downtowns feeling like ghost towns. As a result,
Speaker 1: we've heard a lot of talk of converting downtown offices
Speaker 1: into apartments. Now we continue to watch the post pandemic
Speaker 1: job recovery throughout the United States, but what we're finding
Speaker 1: is that the job's recovery in New York City and
Speaker 1: maybe some other cities too, is unbalanced. Let's get more
Speaker 1: information from Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox. Justin New York
Speaker 1: jobs are not back yet. Where is everybody? Um? I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're getting close, but there's still about one
Speaker 1: percent short of where they were right before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And what the funny thing is, it's not the office workers,
Speaker 1: the office jobs that have gone away. It's it's all
Speaker 1: the leisure and hospitality, retail and actually government as well,
Speaker 1: which is mostly local government employment and the stuff like finance,
Speaker 1: information which is publishing, and some internet stuff, professional and
Speaker 1: business services. Those are all up in New York City.
Speaker 1: But those people, you know, aren't necessarily coming into the
Speaker 1: office every day, so they're not in the office. Why
Speaker 1: would that have a more significant impact on the economy
Speaker 1: in New York City, especially in Manhattan where all these
Speaker 1: people come in from other boroughs and the suburbs. If
Speaker 1: people aren't coming in as many days, there's a lot
Speaker 1: less spending going on, and you know, restaurants for lunch,
Speaker 1: going out after work, shopping while you're in at the office,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg did an estimate a month or two ago that
Speaker 1: it's maybe a twelve twelve billion a year and lost spending,
Speaker 1: and that shows up in the retail and leisure to
Speaker 1: hospitality jobs. And then you can feel it in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: It's like the middle of the week, it feels like
Speaker 1: it's totally back Friday especially, it really doesn't. One of
Speaker 1: the columns that you have on the Bloomberg terminal is
Speaker 1: about this talk of converting the downtown offices into apartments. Now,
Speaker 1: I can tell you in Washington, d C. Where I am,
Speaker 1: a lot of the downtown office space is vacant, and
Speaker 1: it's federal space. It's, as you mentioned, government workers who
Speaker 1: are still either working from home close to one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the time or more than half of the time.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to figure out what to do with
Speaker 1: all these great, big, beautiful boxes that are empty now
Speaker 1: that used to have offices. Similar in other metropolitan areas
Speaker 1: it turned. I mean, it's a little hard because they
Speaker 1: give the monthly jobs data down in all these categories
Speaker 1: for New York City. They don't do it for many
Speaker 1: other cities, but they do for DC because it's a state.
Speaker 1: Basically at least for statistical purposes. It's not voting purposes.
Speaker 1: That's a whole different column, just exactly. But DC is
Speaker 1: much much, much worse offce than New York. I mean,
Speaker 1: the overall jobs are down four and a half percent
Speaker 1: instead of about one percent like in New York City.
Speaker 1: And it's just across every single job category except information,
Speaker 1: which is like the media in DC and some internet
Speaker 1: stuff everything, but that is down, which in New York
Speaker 1: a bunch of job categories are up. And I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny because in DC government employment is
Speaker 1: down less than another place, but you're right, government workers
Speaker 1: of just not coming back. In New York You've had,
Speaker 1: definitely in the finance sector a lot of pressure to
Speaker 1: bring people back, and I think in federal government has
Speaker 1: just been stuck on that. And so that's interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: the government employment is down more everywhere else in the country,
Speaker 1: mostly local government, but in DC it's not down much,
Speaker 1: but those people aren't coming in and that's having a
Speaker 1: huge effect on the city. So converting those downtown offices
Speaker 1: into apartments, as you alluded to in your column in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: specifically Wall Street, actually how would that lure people back?
Speaker 1: If they won't come downtown to work. Are they going
Speaker 1: to come downtown to live? Well, I mean in Wall Street,
Speaker 1: that's happened. You could say at this point it's it's
Speaker 1: it's more of a residential neighborhood than an office neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It still feels like an office neighborhood because it's got
Speaker 1: these narrow streets and very tall buildings. But there are
Speaker 1: more than sixty thousand people living down in the Financial District,
Speaker 1: where I think in nineteen seventy there were eight hundred,
Speaker 1: and that's something. There are couple the Battery Park City
Speaker 1: was this big new development built on sort of the
Speaker 1: land the dirt day dug up for the World Trade
Speaker 1: Center that it's part of it. But since the nineties,
Speaker 1: well in the nineties, there was this really concerted effort
Speaker 1: by the city because there was a ton of vacant
Speaker 1: office space down there to convert especially older buildings into apartments,
Speaker 1: and it happened. And what's kind of interesting is it's
Speaker 1: this like really fancy neighborhood now, even though it's all
Speaker 1: these people who don't need to commute to work but
Speaker 1: have basically the best transit in the country, and they're
Speaker 1: increasingly have restaurants and other things to go to as well.
Speaker 1: Who are the big losers? Is there any sector that
Speaker 1: can benefit and which sectors are struggling well? Among sort
Speaker 1: of service sectors where there's a lot of jobs that
Speaker 1: you don't need a college degree for, it's I mean
Speaker 1: leisure and hospitality, and it's still down nationally too. Restaurants
Speaker 1: are almost back, but accommodation, hotels and sort of entertainment
Speaker 1: is still down from where it was before. And then
Speaker 1: this category bank carey called other services, which is like
Speaker 1: dry cleaners, manicurists, all of that is also down. And
Speaker 1: so I mean one interesting thing in most places, another
Speaker 1: category that is up that has some very high end
Speaker 1: jobs but also a lot of not so high end
Speaker 1: jobs is healthcare, and it's up in most place. Again,
Speaker 1: in DC it's down, but in most places that's up,
Speaker 1: But in New York it's up a lot. And at
Speaker 1: one level it feels a little unsustainable how fast healthcare
Speaker 1: employment and grown. It's like the biggest part of it
Speaker 1: is home healthcare services. But on the other hand, I mean,
Speaker 1: at least given all the other service jobs that have
Speaker 1: been lost in New York City, it's been kind of
Speaker 1: a welcome replacement, and you get the sense that some
Speaker 1: people have shifted from sort of hospitality jobs to those jobs.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that shift. Is the workforce completely different now?
Speaker 1: Has the pandemic fundamentally changed the way most of us work? No,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of those jobs are exactly the
Speaker 1: same as they were before. That's sort of the thing,
Speaker 1: but it has impacted them. I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: lot fewer leasure and hospitality jobs. And it's interesting at
Speaker 1: this point how much of that is, because I think
Speaker 1: spending on restaurants is significantly higher in real inflation adjusted
Speaker 1: terms now than it was before the pandemic. There's just
Speaker 1: a lot fewer workers, and I think part of it
Speaker 1: is just a lot of people when they lost their
Speaker 1: jobs and that we're sort of like, I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to do something else now and have shifted to
Speaker 1: other fields. I mean, it's just it's funny. In New
Speaker 1: York City, so much of the attention, understandably has been
Speaker 1: about high end office workers and will they keep coming
Speaker 1: to the city and will they stay and that's still
Speaker 1: an issue, and how often people will come in as
Speaker 1: an issue, and whether enough of them will use public
Speaker 1: transit to pay the bills is an issue, But in
Speaker 1: terms of who's been leaving New York City, it's it's
Speaker 1: not it's people in the Bronx. I mean the Bronx
Speaker 1: is now the big pop is the main borow it's
Speaker 1: losing population, and that's the poorest borrow. It's the working
Speaker 1: class borough. And I think people there are just like,
Speaker 1: I'm not finding jobs that can pay my rent, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to move to North Carolina or Florida or wherever.
Speaker 1: So where is this going? Will the pendulum swing back?
Speaker 1: I mean, New York's gonna be different. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: like New York created a crazy amount of jobs in
Speaker 1: the last decade, but it feels like those jobs to
Speaker 1: serve those people there just aren't going to be as
Speaker 1: many of those. And so it's just an interesting question
Speaker 1: what it means for New York for its school system,
Speaker 1: which has a lot fewer students with again the biggest
Speaker 1: losses in the Bronx because so many people have been
Speaker 1: leaving to go find better work somewhere else. It's just weird.
Speaker 1: It's it's very different from the population loss the city
Speaker 1: had in the sixties and seventies, but it's a lot
Speaker 1: of population loss, and it's just going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to see where this goes, and we're going to watch
Speaker 1: it with you. Justin, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time with us. Thanks for having me. Justin Fox
Speaker 1: is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Don't forget We're available as
Speaker 1: a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform,
Speaker 1: and stay with us. Coming up, we'll pull back the
Speaker 1: curtain and take a peek at what's going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes of the coronavirus pandemic. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, and the Bloomberg Business App,
Speaker 1: or listen on demand wherever you get your podcast. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Let's turn our attention
Speaker 1: now to the coronavirus pandemic. And you might recall that
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen was already spreading widely across the world in
Speaker 1: February and in early March of twenty twenty, well before
Speaker 1: many Americans had gotten the message that the disease was
Speaker 1: something to take seriously. Last fall, CDC director Rochelle Willinski
Speaker 1: told ABC News she had been trying to get more
Speaker 1: Americans vaccinated as a self critical CDC report about the
Speaker 1: agency's messaging issues was public. I don't give up. My
Speaker 1: job is to give people the information that they need
Speaker 1: to have in order to make the safest, smartest decisions
Speaker 1: for their own personal health, and I will continue to
Speaker 1: do that whatever possession I hold. Now we're learning through
Speaker 1: a report by The New York Times that staffers at
Speaker 1: the CDC's Disease Intelligence Service were pressured by the Trump
Speaker 1: administration to keep quiet about what they knew that COVID
Speaker 1: was spreading asymptomatically joining us now to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg opinion columnist Faye flam and faith an allegation that
Speaker 1: a federal agency, particularly a science based agency, is succumbing
Speaker 1: to pressure from the White House. That's a serious allegation,
Speaker 1: and it's also a risky one. It asks the question
Speaker 1: if federal agencies can be trusted. It does, and there
Speaker 1: was just a survey showing that a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't trust CDC. This was actually known. I wrote about
Speaker 1: this in March of twenty twenty, that the Trump administration
Speaker 1: was blatant and said Mike Pence was going to be
Speaker 1: vetting statements coming out of CDC from that point on,
Speaker 1: and I wrote that it should be the other way around.
Speaker 1: CDC should be helping make Mike Pence not make scientific errors.
Speaker 1: So how can the CDC then rebuild that trust? Well,
Speaker 1: I think we have to look beyond this particular allegation, because,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's a little misleading, since most of
Speaker 1: us knew about the asymptomatic spread of the disease through
Speaker 1: other scientific sources. I was writing about it. Lots of
Speaker 1: science writers were discussing this because there were non CDC
Speaker 1: scientists doing studies and openly talking about it, so it
Speaker 1: was no secret. It was nothing that was successfully covered up.
Speaker 1: But I think the problem was that people weren't hearing
Speaker 1: the bottom line from CDC, and CDC had brand name trust,
Speaker 1: and we all would have done so much better in
Speaker 1: the pandemic if they had been able to give unbiased,
Speaker 1: a political information from this sort of central, known, trusted source,
Speaker 1: rather than having people pick up bits and pieces from
Speaker 1: Twitter or from television or from their favorite podcast or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point. Like you said,
Speaker 1: the CDC did have this brand name trust and they
Speaker 1: managed to lose it. But what I want to get
Speaker 1: down to is was this the result of maybe the
Speaker 1: Trump administration narrative? Was it a series of unforced errors
Speaker 1: bungles that the CDC made, It helped erode the public's
Speaker 1: trust in their own agency. It was a combination. I
Speaker 1: think it was both. I think it was incredibly damaging
Speaker 1: to have the Trump administrations say we're gon we're gonna
Speaker 1: muzzle people at CDC. But the CDC had already done
Speaker 1: a lot of things wrong, including things back in February
Speaker 1: when there were scientists who were warning everybody that COVID
Speaker 1: was already spreading widely around the world, and we were
Speaker 1: being given a lot of false reassurance, and we were
Speaker 1: just not getting what other countries were getting. The other
Speaker 1: countries were getting widespread testing in February twenty twenty, they
Speaker 1: were getting contact tracing, they were getting the people were
Speaker 1: getting a lot of help, and we were getting nothing.
Speaker 1: You made a really good point there that we were
Speaker 1: getting a lot of false reassurance. I also wonder if
Speaker 1: some of this isn't the need to not say I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, because there were a lot of
Speaker 1: things they didn't know we did. No, they had no
Speaker 1: way of knowing. And it's not it's not exactly in
Speaker 1: the federal agency's per view. Any agency to stand up
Speaker 1: and go, you know what, we just don't have an
Speaker 1: answer to that right now. It doesn't do a lot
Speaker 1: of good. Is that what they were trying to avoid?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think with science communication there's always
Speaker 1: a way to talk about things that might be a problem.
Speaker 1: So early on, I think, you know, it was pretty clear,
Speaker 1: very early that this thing was highly transmissible, and that
Speaker 1: colds and flu are often spread by people before they
Speaker 1: get symptoms. So I think it wouldn't have been difficult
Speaker 1: to say, this might be spreading from people who aren't
Speaker 1: sick or aren't visibly sick. And you can always use
Speaker 1: language to say we're not sure of this, but we
Speaker 1: think this might be happening. We think this might be
Speaker 1: spreading pretty widely. This is a possibility, This is a
Speaker 1: you know, things that are lower risk. Still you might
Speaker 1: need to work about it. So there are ways to
Speaker 1: communicate science that get the uncertainty across now. I was
Speaker 1: reading your column on the Bloomberg Terminal about this. It's
Speaker 1: a terrific column. I recommend to everybody check it out.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you say was really profound.
Speaker 1: It struck me the US government was trying to reassure
Speaker 1: the public rather than help us prepare. That's an important statement.
Speaker 1: How could they have done that better? Well, I think
Speaker 1: it would have been. Think about the lockdowns. I mean,
Speaker 1: think how much less disruptive it would have been if
Speaker 1: we had had information coming to us all through February
Speaker 1: and March about the possibility of working from a home,
Speaker 1: getting people sort of ready to think about how they
Speaker 1: deal with childcare. We were sort of whiplashed into it.
Speaker 1: So and businesses could have had time to prepare. Clearly
Speaker 1: hospitals didn't have time to prepare adequately. They should have
Speaker 1: been working on this from the beginning, even if it
Speaker 1: didn't turn out to be as bad as it was
Speaker 1: it ended up being, so I think that using that
Speaker 1: time it was could have been incredibly helpful. Hey, how
Speaker 1: does the lack of trust in the CDC manifest itself?
Speaker 1: How do you get the notion beyond the polling that
Speaker 1: we know people have lost trust in that federal agency
Speaker 1: and perhaps have lost trust in other science agencies, science
Speaker 1: based agencies as well. How does that manifest itself? What
Speaker 1: do we do about it? Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I've I got a lot of outraged emails from people
Speaker 1: after that piece ran, because they were particularly outraged that
Speaker 1: Rochelle Wilensky, the CDC director said on the Rachel Maddow
Speaker 1: Show sometime in twenty twenty one that you couldn't transmit
Speaker 1: the virus if you had been vaccinated. And that was
Speaker 1: the scientific community walk back right away. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: like that that was left to stand. But I think
Speaker 1: it just you know, there's a lot of polite it
Speaker 1: is size tension. Those people were coming more from the
Speaker 1: right side of the political spectrum who are concerned more
Speaker 1: about the overselling of vaccines, and you know, the bi
Speaker 1: valent boosters have not been taken up even by people
Speaker 1: who are at high risk end would probably benefit from them. Well,
Speaker 1: we know about the shutdowns, and we know about the
Speaker 1: economic impact of the pandemic itself. But let's look at
Speaker 1: the cost of the loss of trust. How has that
Speaker 1: cost the US? Well, I think we had if you
Speaker 1: look at the US and compare US with other countries,
Speaker 1: similarly wealthy countries, we lost a lot more people and
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of reasons for that, but I
Speaker 1: think that has to play into it. I mean, there
Speaker 1: is no reason the US should have been so much
Speaker 1: worse than European countries in terms of the loss of
Speaker 1: life from the pandemic. Now that the CDC is going
Speaker 1: through some sweeping organizational change is and now we are
Speaker 1: hearing from Republicans in the House of Representatives that they
Speaker 1: want to see even more change. Is that going to
Speaker 1: be enough? What else does this agency have to do
Speaker 1: to I don't want to say make amends, but to
Speaker 1: sort of heal that rift. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that there has to be some agreement between the you know,
Speaker 1: the the White House and CDC that they should have
Speaker 1: freedom to talk to the public without being out shut
Speaker 1: shut up by that whoever is in office. But also
Speaker 1: I think Lenski said something that was a spot on
Speaker 1: that she said, you know, we were not we we
Speaker 1: are good at certain things research and writing scientific papers,
Speaker 1: and there's sort of a long time scale for that,
Speaker 1: but that they weren't particularly nimble at jumping in and
Speaker 1: dealing with a completely novel health emergency, and so they
Speaker 1: want to restructure in a way that they would be
Speaker 1: better at at dealing with something that comes out of
Speaker 1: the blue and hits us fast. People can learn from
Speaker 1: what went wrong, and we just had we hadn't really
Speaker 1: had a situation like this. You know. People always they
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, trying to fight the last battle,
Speaker 1: and so being prepared specifically for another emergency exactly like
Speaker 1: this one could be sending them down the wrong track,
Speaker 1: but being better prepared to handle something that hits us suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, Looking more broadly, I think that's that's the
Speaker 1: direction that I hope they're going. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Faye
Speaker 1: flam Now, in pretty much all societies, one of the
Speaker 1: big perks that comes with wealth is the richer you are,
Speaker 1: the less you have to work. But in the US
Speaker 1: there's a twist. We tend to take great pride in
Speaker 1: working a lot. A defining mark of corporate life is
Speaker 1: obsession with overwork. And the higher up the ladder you climb,
Speaker 1: the more hours you're expected to contribute, you get paid more,
Speaker 1: but you work a whole lot more too. Oh It
Speaker 1: is a Bloomberg opinion columnist covering corporate America, and she
Speaker 1: has a terrific column on the Bloomberg Terminal about this
Speaker 1: very thing, but she takes a bit of a different
Speaker 1: angle how workaholic men are actually starting to slow down
Speaker 1: now and that makes more room for workaholic women. Beth
Speaker 1: tell us where the men are going, So this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. We saw the highest paid men who logged
Speaker 1: the most hours put back the most on their work
Speaker 1: between twenty twenty two and twenty nineteen. So seventy seven
Speaker 1: hours less, fewer hours worked in twenty twenty two compared
Speaker 1: to twenty nineteen. They still worked the most, let's be
Speaker 1: clear here, but they actually cut back the most. And
Speaker 1: I think that's just really interesting trend to see here
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, it's always more and more
Speaker 1: and more and more, and there was finally a little
Speaker 1: bit of a reversion back to the mean. Has this
Speaker 1: been because of the pandemic, as the pandemic changed this
Speaker 1: narrative and shifted how we see work aholism. I think
Speaker 1: it has. I think for a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 1: I think with this this demographic, we're seeing the same
Speaker 1: thing we've seen with so many people really reevaluating what
Speaker 1: work means to them. Maybe they were traveling less during
Speaker 1: the pandemic and said I can't go back to that
Speaker 1: kind of crazy schedule. So I do think that that's
Speaker 1: a huge part of it. And I do also think
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that this is a really privileged group, right.
Speaker 1: Not everybody has the power of the social capital to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to work less, and you know my boss
Speaker 1: will comply with that, because I have that power and
Speaker 1: authority to do that. In addition to closing that overwork gap,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it could also help close the wage
Speaker 1: gap between men and women. Absolutely, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the things I argue in the piece. So there's there's
Speaker 1: two components, right. And in the ideal world, these the
Speaker 1: men who cut back at work shift all those powers
Speaker 1: to childcare so women can work more and increase their compensation. Right,
Speaker 1: That was going to be the ideal scenario. We didn't
Speaker 1: quite see that happen. So we did see men pick
Speaker 1: up more household work, but they also spent more time
Speaker 1: on leisure activities. There was a really amusing i'll call
Speaker 1: it the Stanford study that also showed that there was
Speaker 1: a serious increase in people playing golf in the middle
Speaker 1: of the week. So you can take take from that
Speaker 1: way you will, okay, But I do think that I
Speaker 1: do think that even if all these hours are not
Speaker 1: being shifted to household work on the part of men,
Speaker 1: it does reset the bar, right, It sort of resets
Speaker 1: the standard of what the ideal worker looks like, and
Speaker 1: maybe that is not one that is so tied to
Speaker 1: this notion of overwork. You mentioned how this might change
Speaker 1: the bar or change the expectation for what the ideal
Speaker 1: worker is or what the ideal work situation is. Is
Speaker 1: that something that's still evolving. Have we found it yet?
Speaker 1: Because we seem to be in it for a long
Speaker 1: time and then the pandemic sort of through the whole
Speaker 1: chessboard on the floor, So is that still something in progress?
Speaker 1: I think it is. I think this is a start.
Speaker 1: We've definitely still seen in other countries. The level of
Speaker 1: the average howers worked is still significantly lower than in
Speaker 1: the US, so I think there is still decline, but
Speaker 1: I think it's also we're doing This has not always
Speaker 1: been the case where overwork led to higher pay. This
Speaker 1: is something that sort of flipped in the nineties just
Speaker 1: of course, as educated women were really entering the workforce
Speaker 1: on that so you know, this has just not always
Speaker 1: been the way. So I do think that suggests that
Speaker 1: maybe we could revert back a little bit to how
Speaker 1: things used to be, and we're gonna watch it with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Beth, Thank you. Bethco It is a Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Opinion columnist. She covers corporate America and that does it
Speaker 1: for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by Eric Moullow,
Speaker 1: and you can find all of these columns on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Terminal. We're also available as a podcast on Apple,
Speaker 1: Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us. Today's
Speaker 1: top stories and global business headlines are coming up. I'm
Speaker 1: Amy Morris. This is Bloomberg.