Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Penl podcast on Paul Swing You.
Speaker 1: Along with my co host Lisa Brahma Wicks, each day
Speaker 1: we bring you the most noteworthy and useful interviews for
Speaker 1: you and your money, whether at the grocery store or
Speaker 1: the trading floor. Find a Bloomberg Penl podcast on Apple
Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com. The pandemic that is sweeping the
Speaker 1: world has raised questions about about a lot of industries,
Speaker 1: but in particular the insurance industry, as a growing number
Speaker 1: of businesses seek for some compensation and one insurance CEO
Speaker 1: saying that this is going to be the worst situation
Speaker 1: for insurers UH in recent history. Joining us now, we
Speaker 1: are so pleased to say Ted Math as Chairman and
Speaker 1: chief executive Officer of New York Life based in New
Speaker 1: York City, Ted, thank you so much for being with us.
Speaker 1: I was talking about Lloyd's of London and the chief
Speaker 1: executive officer coming out and saying that the insurance industry
Speaker 1: could face losses that are the worst in recent memory,
Speaker 1: worse than nine eleven two thousand and one, and worse
Speaker 1: than the Katrina hurricane in the United States. Do you
Speaker 1: agree with that assessment? Uh? Good morningly. So what I
Speaker 1: what I would say is this is that there's no
Speaker 1: question that for all different kinds of insurers, New York
Speaker 1: Life is a life insurer. This presents some unique challenges
Speaker 1: in many ways. For life insurers. It's a bit of
Speaker 1: a triple challenge. You have the fact that UM the
Speaker 1: prospect of substantial mortality claims as a result of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: You have the significant market dislocations that are occurring UM
Speaker 1: and life insurers are very large long term investors. And
Speaker 1: then you have the impact that all businesses have to
Speaker 1: today to some degree, which is the operational impact on
Speaker 1: how do you navigate a world where for most of us,
Speaker 1: I know New York Life, about of our working population
Speaker 1: was in offices, with four percent working from home before
Speaker 1: this crisis, and today that's completely flipped. So those challenges
Speaker 1: are there, But the life insurance industry in particular is
Speaker 1: really built for these kinds of situations to be able
Speaker 1: to provide security for people in these highly uncertain times.
Speaker 1: So ted what would be characterize would be the biggest
Speaker 1: risk to your business model, maybe the business model of
Speaker 1: life insurance in general as we go through this just
Speaker 1: extraordinary time. UH. This the life insurance business is a
Speaker 1: highly relationship oriented personal business. We work with people on
Speaker 1: protecting what matters most to them and in a sense
Speaker 1: that has been built over decades by people building individual
Speaker 1: relationships and what we've often described as a face to
Speaker 1: face environment. Today we all have to, essentially, UM, occupy
Speaker 1: a world we didn't anticipate, where social distancing makes face
Speaker 1: to face interaction extremely limited. UM. What we are having
Speaker 1: to do is navigate how to take the depth of
Speaker 1: the relationships we've built over the years and translate them
Speaker 1: into this virtual environment all of us as we are here,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you today from my basement on a
Speaker 1: phone as opposed to sitting with you inside of the studio. UM.
Speaker 1: That is something that I am highly confident we can navigate.
Speaker 1: But in many ways, UM, that is one of the
Speaker 1: bigger challenges today. UM. But leveraging the human relationships, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ted Uh. New York Life Insurance Company is the largest
Speaker 1: life insurance company in the United States, one of the
Speaker 1: large largest life insurers in the world, and it's also
Speaker 1: a very big investor. And I'm wondering as an investor
Speaker 1: in a lot of assets. How much do you think
Speaker 1: this pandemic will change the focus more to companies doing
Speaker 1: the right thing rather than just doing the right thing
Speaker 1: for their balance sheets. I think that's an excellent question.
Speaker 1: What I would say is, this is what I'm I'm
Speaker 1: proud about is the fact that New York Life actually
Speaker 1: is the largest mutual life insurance company. This is our
Speaker 1: We actually entered this year our hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: year And I think that this is a time in
Speaker 1: a calling for all companies um to really dig deep
Speaker 1: and ask what is the essence of their mission? What
Speaker 1: is it? How do they define themselves? And it has
Speaker 1: to be more than your bottom line and more than
Speaker 1: your balance sheet. So in New York Life, we knew
Speaker 1: that we nobody could predict this kind of pandemic occurring,
Speaker 1: but we knew that they did occur. We have the
Speaker 1: history to know. We've been through yellow fever epidemics, other
Speaker 1: war wars, financial crises, the two thousand and eight two
Speaker 1: thousand nine financial crisis, and throughout all of those, what
Speaker 1: we've been able to do is make sure that we
Speaker 1: can live up to the promises we make. And that's
Speaker 1: because of the inherent value proposition that's embedded with within
Speaker 1: the company. So we were able to come out and
Speaker 1: say to all of our employees that we're not going
Speaker 1: to have any layoffs. That creates unbelievable certainty in a
Speaker 1: world of great uncertainty. For the twelve thousand men and
Speaker 1: women that represent us as agents out there, we were
Speaker 1: able to say to them that we can provide an
Speaker 1: economic floor to them and help them navigate this world
Speaker 1: of unprecedented you know, social distancing, um and and and essentially,
Speaker 1: because we have made decisions with a long term orientation,
Speaker 1: we don't have to make changes to our overall asset
Speaker 1: portfolio that backs up those guarantees. And fundamentally, even for
Speaker 1: our policy owners, many of whom are worried about they've
Speaker 1: lost their job or they're worried about losing their job,
Speaker 1: it's an opportunity for them to be able even too,
Speaker 1: if they have to not make certain premium payments, We've
Speaker 1: given them the flexibility to defer those payments as we
Speaker 1: try to figure out where we can find some stability
Speaker 1: through this crisis. So I think that calling on that
Speaker 1: value proposition and being able to recognize that this is
Speaker 1: at its foremost a human tragedy, and it's an opportune
Speaker 1: time for institutions to lean into their empathy and lean
Speaker 1: into their humanity. And that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: we have essentially now with partnered with Signa to launch
Speaker 1: the Brave of Art Fund to help the families of
Speaker 1: healthcare workers. That's interesting I was looking at that the
Speaker 1: Brave of Heart Fund partnering with Seeing the Fun will
Speaker 1: provide financial and emotional support for the foundlis of healthcare
Speaker 1: workers and volunteers UH nationwide. That's a wonderful offering. Ted
Speaker 1: math has thanks so much for joining us Tennis Chairman
Speaker 1: and CEO of New York Life. This is Bloomberg Markets
Speaker 1: with Lisa Ramo, Weds and Paul's Wheeney on Bloomberg Radio. Well.
Speaker 1: As the curve of new virus patients begins to bend,
Speaker 1: everybody's looking towards treatments, potentially vaccines, and they're looking towards
Speaker 1: big farmer. They're looking towards the biotech companies to deliver.
Speaker 1: To get a sense of kind of where we are
Speaker 1: on that path, we welcome our good friend Sam Fazelli.
Speaker 1: He's a director of research for Bloomberg Intelligence in Europe.
Speaker 1: But More importantly, his day job is he's a senior
Speaker 1: healthcare ANALYSTI has been found the farmer industry for decades. Sam,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us. Uh, we appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Gill Lead had some odd news yesterday. I know you're
Speaker 1: on top of that. As you know, again, investors continue
Speaker 1: to look for these healthcare companies to deliver at vaccines.
Speaker 1: What happened to Gilead yesterday? He Paul many nice still
Speaker 1: to my old friend Paul, Thank you for having me on. Well,
Speaker 1: basically what happened was there was a leaked um a
Speaker 1: bit of data on a w h O website that
Speaker 1: perhaps wasn't even complete in terms of its analysis, and
Speaker 1: some people saw that if he was the Financial Times,
Speaker 1: and they then the whole world knew about it thanks
Speaker 1: to social media. What basically is going on here is
Speaker 1: that that's a trial that was out of China and
Speaker 1: worked in pretty severe patients and showed no evidence of
Speaker 1: activity based on what I have heard, I've not seen
Speaker 1: the actual paper myself. So the reality there is that
Speaker 1: these are clinical trials, many of them. This is just one.
Speaker 1: It's a small one out of a large number of
Speaker 1: trials that are going on. So very difficult to just
Speaker 1: read something out of one trial that fails. Sam very
Speaker 1: good point the idea that this trial may or may
Speaker 1: not be valuable to determine whether or not Ramdzevier actually
Speaker 1: is effective. However, what it did highlight was how much
Speaker 1: the market has a baked in assumption that there will
Speaker 1: be some sort of remedies or remedies in the near
Speaker 1: future that will at least mitigate the death rate. We
Speaker 1: saw the entire market fall yesterday after this study came
Speaker 1: out or was published. However, problematic it was, how faulty
Speaker 1: do you think those assumptions are based on the pipeline
Speaker 1: of drugs and vaccines that you currently are studying. Yeah, well, look,
Speaker 1: I mean we were. We were in hope. I mean
Speaker 1: that's what humans live on intentionally, right. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I thought you said we all
Speaker 1: need help, and I was like, yeah, that's too But Carriya,
Speaker 1: so nothing, everyone's hopeful, everyone's hoping, and the following industry
Speaker 1: is trying its best to throw everything they've got by
Speaker 1: letting their cupboards, which is what basically some farm farmer
Speaker 1: companies have done, and also what they've got on the market.
Speaker 1: So but at the end of the day, we're trying
Speaker 1: to solve a disease that we've only really known about
Speaker 1: for six months. I mean, we've learn about cancer for decades,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it takes time to a decade to find
Speaker 1: the treatment for a cancer therapy. So infectually disease a
Speaker 1: little bit easier because the target is easy to test
Speaker 1: in a test you but but you still have to
Speaker 1: get the trials done. And I really do worry about
Speaker 1: um people getting too hopeful on some of this, and
Speaker 1: and really really think that that I should just everyone
Speaker 1: should just step back and let the science roll out
Speaker 1: and then and then we judges as these therapies report. So, Sam,
Speaker 1: I know you spend a lot of time talking to
Speaker 1: the companies that you cover in the farming industry, you're
Speaker 1: the biotech in industry as well. You talked a lot
Speaker 1: of smart investor sers who are m d s and
Speaker 1: PhDs like yourself. Um, is it, what's the feeling that
Speaker 1: the timetable, because what we've heard out of the White House,
Speaker 1: UH and from others is that twelve to eighteen months
Speaker 1: for a vaccine, And what's the feeling within you know,
Speaker 1: your community as to the accuracy or potential accuracy of
Speaker 1: that time frame. So I think it's possible, as I've
Speaker 1: said before, if all the stars aligned, and unfortunately though
Speaker 1: we know that in clinical development the star don't always
Speaker 1: all align. But it don't depends what you want out
Speaker 1: of a vaccine. UM. If you want a vaccine that's
Speaker 1: not been fully tested yet, but you know in juices
Speaker 1: in a moment a response that might be sufficient to protect,
Speaker 1: you could always go and create a room of vaccinated
Speaker 1: people within the health care community that you want to
Speaker 1: protect first. Those are the sorts of US strategies that
Speaker 1: that that epidemiologists and governments can use. But if you
Speaker 1: really want a vaccine that you are as sure as
Speaker 1: you can be is safe giving it to healthy individuals
Speaker 1: like you and I, UM, then you just have to
Speaker 1: spend the time to test it and test it in
Speaker 1: large numbers, and that will take more than two up
Speaker 1: t eighteen months. We just had some office you on
Speaker 1: talking about UM. One of the things that nobody seems
Speaker 1: to want to talk about is the volume that these
Speaker 1: vaccines require. If you really hit it right, that's a
Speaker 1: very big challenge. UM. So you know, and they're working
Speaker 1: on it right. Well. When you talk about the volume needed.
Speaker 1: I also wonder the international effort and how much cooperation
Speaker 1: there has been. Is there an international effort to get
Speaker 1: a high volume of vaccines to the public to the
Speaker 1: masses as quickly as possible with nations working together, or
Speaker 1: is it a really case by case kind of situation.
Speaker 1: I think I haven't seen any dance of nation nations
Speaker 1: working together. I've certainly seen evidence have come he's working together,
Speaker 1: so A that's for example, I made this SNOPHI and
Speaker 1: Galaxis MTh Klein in Europe, and we just heard today
Speaker 1: that Johnson and Johnson has teamed up with Emergent Power
Speaker 1: Solutions for access to manufacturing and that they need to
Speaker 1: do that because I continue, when the vaccine works well,
Speaker 1: as we have seen in the case of Merak with
Speaker 1: Goddess Hill and Gleaxus ms Klein in Shoe Drinks, we
Speaker 1: quickly hit capacity issues. Both companies are working for the
Speaker 1: next four years to increase capacity for those vaccines. So
Speaker 1: God help us. If what I was actually is when
Speaker 1: he works right, everyone's going to scramble together. That would
Speaker 1: be interested to see how the nation's behave. Sam Facelli,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being with A. Sam Facelli,
Speaker 1: director of Research for the e m E A region
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Intelligence, also a very long time analyst of
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. And now we'll just say
Speaker 1: Paul I was reading an essay by Joseph Stiglitz of
Speaker 1: Columbia yesterday which was talking about the need for more
Speaker 1: coordinate shan in coming up with some of these vaccines
Speaker 1: is sort of the elimination of the current I P framework.
Speaker 1: Interesting idea. What an historic week for oil in terms
Speaker 1: of volatility. We had the May contract earlier this week
Speaker 1: actually trading in negative territory for the first time. Supply
Speaker 1: demand dynamics are incredibly challenging right now. To get an update,
Speaker 1: we welcome Dr Ariel Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council,
Speaker 1: also a founding principle of International Market Analysis based in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Dr Cohen, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Help us put into context kind of what we experience
Speaker 1: this week when're looking at w T I crude. First
Speaker 1: of all, we should not focus on this one May
Speaker 1: UH futures contract that went into the negative territory. This
Speaker 1: was a unique situation where we ran out of storage capacity.
Speaker 1: We see W t I back into seventeen range. We
Speaker 1: see Brandon twenty one range. Uh. It is a huge
Speaker 1: blow for the American shale oil patch. But once the
Speaker 1: economy starts recovering. I went over the future futures projection.
Speaker 1: We are going to the thirties towards two. So it's
Speaker 1: it's little little health for for the oil for the
Speaker 1: oil fields right now. But as the economy will go
Speaker 1: into recovery territory, hopefully by the full uh, you'll see
Speaker 1: oil going into the high twenties, thirties, et cetera. Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on a second. So you said they'll be in
Speaker 1: the thirties in two. Are you expecting oil prices to
Speaker 1: remain suppressed for that many years? Well, the question is
Speaker 1: what is suppressed when you have so much oil slushing around.
Speaker 1: You have the US production going up and up. You
Speaker 1: have the Saudias and Russians. You have major oil produced
Speaker 1: series who are not selling nearly as much as we
Speaker 1: could Iran, Venezuela, Libya, et cetera. And you have objective
Speaker 1: structural changes where you have more and more electric cars. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have, um, this is less of immediate impact on oil.
Speaker 1: You have renewable still growing up. That's more affective gas.
Speaker 1: But basically, as long as you don't have robustic and
Speaker 1: on the growth and massive demand coming from places like China, India,
Speaker 1: Africa unless so Europe, you will not go back to
Speaker 1: oil in the seventies or eighties unless some catastrophic, um
Speaker 1: catastrophic things happening in the middle ees. So Ariel. This
Speaker 1: is important because the Kansas City Fed has come out
Speaker 1: with a study showing that of US shell producers would
Speaker 1: become insolvent if oil prices did not rise above thirty
Speaker 1: dollar mark, and this would be by the end of
Speaker 1: this year. I'm just wondering, first of all, whether you
Speaker 1: agree with that assessment, but second of all, what President
Speaker 1: Trump could actually due to support some of these companies
Speaker 1: given the fact that oil prices are unlikely to rise
Speaker 1: meaningfully in the next month or two. Correct, in the
Speaker 1: next month or two, they will probably go into the
Speaker 1: low to mid twenties unless we have a major event
Speaker 1: such as an approval of an effective vaccine, and that
Speaker 1: will indicate that by the fall early one uh, we
Speaker 1: probably have aero buzz growth in the economy. As for
Speaker 1: the shale patch, look uh these um uh, these oil
Speaker 1: patches are economically efficient. UH hends on the field depends
Speaker 1: on the well um it varies. If the smaller producers
Speaker 1: go billy up, the bigger producers have deep enough pockets
Speaker 1: the excess of the BPS to pick them up and
Speaker 1: have this capacity. It doesn't mean they will produce at five,
Speaker 1: but these resources will be available. And to my to
Speaker 1: my my research, thirty and up thirty five and up
Speaker 1: um the oil shale wells, oil shell fields are economically effective.
Speaker 1: So I totally understand and feel the pain of people
Speaker 1: who lose their jobs and lose their businesses. On the
Speaker 1: other him, remember creative destruction in the market economy, UH
Speaker 1: has this Darwinian process in which some of these companies
Speaker 1: will be picked up by bigger and more aggressive players.
Speaker 1: So Dr Colemen, I wonder if you could help me
Speaker 1: with the strategy being pursued by the saluities. In terms
Speaker 1: of yesterday in the Russia cut supply by nine point
Speaker 1: seven million barrels. But that doesn't seem to be enough
Speaker 1: given that the demand their destruction we've seen, are they
Speaker 1: just strategically trying to push the US shale operators just
Speaker 1: completely out of business and to get to the U
Speaker 1: s out of the UH oil business. The original idea
Speaker 1: of putting US shell out of the business was Russian. UH. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the the chairman of CEO of the Russian state owned
Speaker 1: beheam of called rosnip uh Ego session. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: running round with this idea for a long time. UH.
Speaker 1: They made their move in March. UH the oil talks
Speaker 1: fell apart. But what you see now the Saluities are
Speaker 1: selling their oil at a great discount in Europe. So
Speaker 1: it is as much a struggle to take the market
Speaker 1: share away from the Russians as it is to put
Speaker 1: our guys in the shell pnch art in business. So
Speaker 1: just quickly, here are all going forward? Do you think
Speaker 1: that Saudi Arabia and Russia are going to cut a
Speaker 1: meaningful additional amount of the oil produced given the fact
Speaker 1: that their current cuts that they've promised that still haven't
Speaker 1: gone into effect are considered insignificant compared to the lack
Speaker 1: of demand that we're seeing. Well, let's take a look
Speaker 1: at supply and demand. Uh. The supply UH was it
Speaker 1: about ninety plus million barrels a day. It's collapsed by
Speaker 1: about uh the of thirty. Uh. They're cutting twins, They're
Speaker 1: talking about cutting twenty uh so the marginal price may
Speaker 1: go up, but we don't see it yet. In the
Speaker 1: future contract. I would say, let's wait till May and
Speaker 1: see how this cuts are being implemented. But it's important
Speaker 1: to remember his story. Really every time I'll pet agreed
Speaker 1: on cut. Everybody cheated. Everybody is selling a tonker, a
Speaker 1: tanker or two or five from the back door, so
Speaker 1: to speak. I cross my desk more offers of selling
Speaker 1: oil and deep discounts over the years that I can.
Speaker 1: You know, I can count on a real code. You
Speaker 1: live an interesting life. I've missed those offers to buy
Speaker 1: cheap tankers of oil. They are not crossing my desk,
Speaker 1: they are crossing yours. Ariel coh and thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being with us. Ariel Co and senior fellow
Speaker 1: at the Atlantic Council, also founding Principle of International Market Analysis,
Speaker 1: joining us from Washington, d C. Paul, you've gotting those.
Speaker 1: I am not occasion. You'll get that email looking too
Speaker 1: if I want to buy some barrels of oil, but
Speaker 1: not recently. Seriously, yeah, you would think that that would
Speaker 1: be getting them all the time, because nobody can sell
Speaker 1: their oil right now. Yeah, although you can't just story
Speaker 1: it in your kid's room. I've looked into it just can't.
Speaker 1: It's it's not particularly safe. I'm sure that, uh, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that a CS would come and and file a complaint.
Speaker 1: One of the more I think ominous developments from this
Speaker 1: coronavirus really taking shape over the last several days has been, uh,
Speaker 1: the security of the food supply chain within the United States,
Speaker 1: particularly on the beef and pork uh. Michael Hurtzer, agricultural
Speaker 1: reporter for Bloomberg, joins US now. He's based in Chicago. So, Michael,
Speaker 1: I've seen about some news command of Bloomberg News about
Speaker 1: a quarter of American pork production, maybe ten percent of
Speaker 1: beef output has now been shuttered and farmers are actually
Speaker 1: slaughtering their own pigs. What's going on here? And how
Speaker 1: bad is could this get? I guess we don't know
Speaker 1: how bad it's going to get yet. Um. Some of
Speaker 1: these plants that have closed, there's been eight major kind
Speaker 1: of pork and beef plants have closed across kind of
Speaker 1: the central US, and one of the plants in in Greeley,
Speaker 1: Colorado is actually restarting. So I guess it will depend
Speaker 1: on just how quickly the workers can get better and
Speaker 1: then the plants can resume operations and then they can
Speaker 1: start to wrap their their arms around the sick employees. So,
Speaker 1: just to sort of put this into perspective, what's been
Speaker 1: going on is that farmers usually rely on meat processing
Speaker 1: plants to slaughter and process the meat and then distributed
Speaker 1: that to restaurants and to big box grocery stores. What's
Speaker 1: happened is Tyson in a number of other plants, there
Speaker 1: have been illnesses that have forced the plants to shut
Speaker 1: down correct and as a result, there hasn't been the
Speaker 1: slaughtering and processing capabilities. So farmers are just facing an
Speaker 1: overpopulation of their animals and slaughtering them themselves. Do we
Speaker 1: have a sense of how common that is for farmers
Speaker 1: to be doing that? Usually, you know, if there's there's
Speaker 1: a sick animal that will get cold, but actually at
Speaker 1: the call either market ready animals that are kind of
Speaker 1: at the desired wait for the accessing or to to
Speaker 1: kill out the younger animals. It's it's quite rare, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't happened, you know, at any scale for years. Um,
Speaker 1: we're kind of being told that this is still relatively isolated. Um,
Speaker 1: but it could get worse if if the situation at
Speaker 1: the plant doesn't improve. And part of the problem is
Speaker 1: is that just like the grocery stores, the meat plants,
Speaker 1: they kind of need a ready supply of animals moving
Speaker 1: through there pretty quickly. And the animals, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're moving out of the barns and then there's another,
Speaker 1: you know, group of animals coming into the barn and
Speaker 1: into the processing plant. So it's kind of a just
Speaker 1: in time inventory and and that's really what's kind of
Speaker 1: under pressure right now. So, Michael, are we seeing higher
Speaker 1: beef end pork prices at the supermarket now? If not, now,
Speaker 1: is that something we should be planning on. If you're
Speaker 1: reading your sale papers, which kind of are, you know,
Speaker 1: the papers that come in the mail are dropped on
Speaker 1: your doorstep, you can still probably see some sales for
Speaker 1: some meat items, uh, you know, supplies going into the
Speaker 1: pandemic were we're nearly a record and um, so the
Speaker 1: retail level probably hasn't seen quite the pressure yet outside
Speaker 1: of maybe some some gouging that that people may be experiencing.
Speaker 1: But the market, the wholesale markets, which we have a
Speaker 1: gouge every day from from the U. S. D A
Speaker 1: has been surging for both pork and beef, and those
Speaker 1: prices will will eventually transfer down to the consumer. Michael,
Speaker 1: do we have a sense of the proportion of meat
Speaker 1: processing plants that have had to close as a result
Speaker 1: of worker illness. We had one of the major kind
Speaker 1: of unions estimating that for pork it was about um.
Speaker 1: We're hearing, you know, might be fifteen and again on
Speaker 1: the beef about um so far, and some plants have
Speaker 1: started to get closer to resuming operation. And although there
Speaker 1: have you know, Tyson shut down two plants on pork
Speaker 1: and one on beef just this week. So, Michael, are
Speaker 1: processing plants are they geographically dispersed throughout the country or
Speaker 1: they kind of particular geography that may be more at
Speaker 1: risk to the virus. Some of the sticking points have
Speaker 1: been like they'll generally are in more rural areas, but
Speaker 1: the workforce is much of it our immigrants and some
Speaker 1: of those people you know will travel obviously, and we're
Speaker 1: traveling prior to kind of the lockdowns, and so it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just like the world. It's these plants.
Speaker 1: They could be in the middle, middle of nowhere, but
Speaker 1: the workers, you know, travel here and there and and
Speaker 1: uh and then concentrate at the plant or or sometimes
Speaker 1: because they are immigrants or maybe not having the most
Speaker 1: highest paying jobs, they do live in culser quarters than
Speaker 1: then might be ideal for for something like this, pand
Speaker 1: make Michael Hurts her thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: with us. Michael Hurts, or agricultural reporter for Bloomberg News,
Speaker 1: talking about something that's gotten a lot of attention, the
Speaker 1: possibility of a meat shortage, in particular pork as a
Speaker 1: number of these meat processing plants closed down in the
Speaker 1: wake of the coronavirus, other people saying that we're far
Speaker 1: away away from a meat shortage. Nonetheless, what it highlights
Speaker 1: to me, Paul, is the incredibly complex supply chain, especially
Speaker 1: for something that is just in time type of fulfillment
Speaker 1: such as the meat industry. Yeah, that's that was new
Speaker 1: news to me from Michael, kind of that just in
Speaker 1: time aspect to it, and you know, you just get
Speaker 1: a little bit of a disruption and it flows through
Speaker 1: the system. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg pan L podcast.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or whatever. Podcast platform you prefer Paul Sweeney. I'm on
Speaker 1: Twitter at pt Sweeney. I'm Lisa abram Woids. I'm on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Lisa A. Bramwod's one before the podcast. You
Speaker 1: can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio. It is
Speaker 1: a belated