Speaker 1: They put an alarm on my door that alerts my
Speaker 1: kind of my property management building are building management whenever
Speaker 1: I opened the door, and I'm only allowed to open
Speaker 1: the door to put the trash outside and to pick
Speaker 1: up food that's delivered or any items I have delivered.
Speaker 1: I have to report my temperature to three different re
Speaker 1: check groups every day, twice a day. Beijing is just
Speaker 1: on high alert. It's kind of more paranoid than any
Speaker 1: other city in China. Hello, and welcome to Stephanomics, the
Speaker 1: podcast that brings the global economy to you, which this
Speaker 1: week includes the inside of Sharon Chen's apartment in Beijing.
Speaker 1: She's the Beijing bureau chief of Bloomberg and she's in
Speaker 1: quarantine because she's just returned from a reporting trip to Whuhan.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to her because we're focusing this
Speaker 1: week on what the path out of lockdown might look
Speaker 1: like for all of our economies. Our chief economists for
Speaker 1: Europe in the Middle East, Jamie, has been looking at
Speaker 1: how quickly the economy could come back depending on which
Speaker 1: measures are removed and when are we talking to him
Speaker 1: in a minute, and also playing you part of a
Speaker 1: conversation I had with the former president of the European
Speaker 1: Central Bank, Jean Clautriche. But first let's hear more about
Speaker 1: that trip to the city of Wuhan, first into the
Speaker 1: crisis and now first out. Yes, so we went to
Speaker 1: Wuhan on April four, just before the quarantine was lifted
Speaker 1: on April eight. The idea was to go there and see,
Speaker 1: you know, how does the city of more than ten
Speaker 1: million people emerged from lockdown and it's the first city
Speaker 1: in the world that went through it. And throughout this
Speaker 1: whole process, this virus outbreak, Wuhan has kind of been
Speaker 1: ahead of the curve. Did have been the first city
Speaker 1: to deal with it and then now the first city
Speaker 1: to be locked down and then the first city to
Speaker 1: try to get back to normal. And we thought that
Speaker 1: going there maybe give us some clues about what kinds
Speaker 1: of things would happen when other big cities try to
Speaker 1: emerge from lockdown. Yeah, so that was the idea behind
Speaker 1: the trip. And now that I'm back in Beijing, I've
Speaker 1: been quarantined in my apartment for fourteen days and I
Speaker 1: can't leave on on Wohan. What what struck you most
Speaker 1: immediately about the experience there, because, as you say, we
Speaker 1: do look to Wuhan as an extreme example of the
Speaker 1: impact of the virus, but also a place that was
Speaker 1: quite far ahead of everywhere else. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think my biggest takeaway is that it was really kind
Speaker 1: of a two speed recovery or like coming back to normal.
Speaker 1: So you had the resumption of work and that was
Speaker 1: really apparent and really immediate, especially because it was something
Speaker 1: that the government was pushing. So the day we arrived
Speaker 1: there were there was hardly any traffic, and by the
Speaker 1: time we were leaving ten days later, we were getting
Speaker 1: stuck in traffic constantly at rush hour because people were
Speaker 1: going to work. You know, factories were working at full
Speaker 1: production capacity. They were working through the weekends, they worked
Speaker 1: through the long holiday that we were there to make
Speaker 1: up for all the lost time. But in terms of consumption,
Speaker 1: you know, the shopping malls were open, the restaurants were open,
Speaker 1: but they were basically empty. No one was eating out.
Speaker 1: Even the few people that we spoke to in the
Speaker 1: mall said that they don't think that they would go
Speaker 1: out like they used to before just for fun um,
Speaker 1: you know, they would really only go out for essential activities.
Speaker 1: People were still scared. I think both of the virus,
Speaker 1: even though there are officially no cases in Mohan. Now, um,
Speaker 1: they're they're both scared of the virus. It's kind of
Speaker 1: I think a psychological hangover after being told for weeks
Speaker 1: and weeks that it's very dangerous outside and you can't
Speaker 1: go outside and it's dangerous interact with people. But they
Speaker 1: were also scared of being quarantined again because in Mohan
Speaker 1: they have this health code system, so you're either green, yellow,
Speaker 1: or red, and even going into a shopping mall where
Speaker 1: later someone else is either suspected or confirmed of having
Speaker 1: the virus will turn your coat yellow and then you
Speaker 1: can get quarantined again, and your housing compound can refuse
Speaker 1: to let you leave the housing compound. So there's kind
Speaker 1: of like this high level of paranoia about both those things,
Speaker 1: both the virus and about being locked up again. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I think consumer habits and just social habits
Speaker 1: really have changed, and there was kind of this divergence
Speaker 1: between going to work and going out for fun. Now
Speaker 1: that's fascinating and I think and we are seeing that
Speaker 1: when we're looking at the sort of high frequency economists
Speaker 1: are now looking at the high frequency data in Beijing
Speaker 1: and other cities and you can see this reel, there's
Speaker 1: a sort of bat as you say, there's the kind
Speaker 1: of supply side and the demand side. The supply side
Speaker 1: shock as we used to talk about it has gone
Speaker 1: because people are more or less back to work, But
Speaker 1: anything that's to do with spending and consumer activity, particularly
Speaker 1: at the weekends, is just still way below where it was.
Speaker 1: And that's obviously concerning for economists thinking about how steep
Speaker 1: the recovery is. When you look at Wuhan and then
Speaker 1: you read people still talking about that v shaped recovery
Speaker 1: that we turn everything back on again, do you think
Speaker 1: that is is quite far off the map. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think if you listen to you know, like
Speaker 1: US President Donald Trump saying when we lift the lockdowns,
Speaker 1: everything's going to go back to normal, it just seems
Speaker 1: so far removed from what's happening in Buhan. You know,
Speaker 1: just because people have the freedom to go outside doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they want to the idea of people sitting
Speaker 1: in a crowded restaurant or going to watch a movie
Speaker 1: in a theater or going to a concert. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone in Wuhan would even consider that
Speaker 1: within the realm of possibility. Being at home for so long,
Speaker 1: I think it's really changed people in the long term,
Speaker 1: Like people are just more used to eating at home,
Speaker 1: used to cooking at home, not really going out getting
Speaker 1: food delivered. We also interviewed a restaurant owner. He off
Speaker 1: his ten restaurants. None of them have reopened. The original
Speaker 1: plan was for him to reopen three, and then when
Speaker 1: he realized that nobody's going out anyway, he decided he
Speaker 1: was just going to reopen one, and eventually he reopened
Speaker 1: none of them. And he said, you know, people now
Speaker 1: they don't go out for lunch on their lunch hour.
Speaker 1: Everyone's bringing lunch to the office, like bringing home cooked food.
Speaker 1: So all these little things that are really going to
Speaker 1: impact businesses like his, especially small businesses, I think, and
Speaker 1: I think it gives that point of the permanence of
Speaker 1: some of these costs. We know, as you said, the
Speaker 1: manufacturers are quickly doing the orders that got put on hold,
Speaker 1: and you could imagine that they might get back eight
Speaker 1: or ninety percent of what they would have had. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll grow much faster now in the classic kind of
Speaker 1: recovery way and catch up that lost ground. But in
Speaker 1: the service sector and spending on things like restaurants. We
Speaker 1: just we know that we're not going to be eating
Speaker 1: twice as many restaurant meals in the second half of
Speaker 1: the year. But what you're telling me is that we
Speaker 1: may not even be eating half the level of our
Speaker 1: normal level. That could really have an impact on the
Speaker 1: pace of the recovery. Well, Sharon, so how long have
Speaker 1: you got before that bell goes off your front door?
Speaker 1: How when do you when do you get to see
Speaker 1: the sun, to feel the sunshine again? So I have
Speaker 1: seven days to go, but Beijing has just said that
Speaker 1: my district is a high risk area because they discovered
Speaker 1: a cluster. A student from the US came back and
Speaker 1: tested positive for the virus two days after he completed
Speaker 1: his fourteen day quarantine. So there's been some rumors that
Speaker 1: they could extend it to twenty one days, but so
Speaker 1: far that hasn't happened. So fingers crossed that I get
Speaker 1: up in a week. Good luck, fingers crossed, and thanks
Speaker 1: so much for all the reporting you're doing. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I We'll be hearing more from Sharon and others in
Speaker 1: China in the weeks and months ahead as we start
Speaker 1: to see and feel what life looks like after lockdown.
Speaker 1: But now we have some new numbers to feed into
Speaker 1: that conversation brought to us by our chief Amire economist,
Speaker 1: Jamie Rush. Firstly, I should thank you for all that
Speaker 1: you're doing with the Europe team and globally. But something
Speaker 1: you did last week I thought was particularly interesting trying
Speaker 1: to take a stab at thinking about the economic impact
Speaker 1: of different stages of lockdown. And I guess what's the
Speaker 1: relevance of that to anybody thinking about where we go
Speaker 1: from here? As we know now that it's not going
Speaker 1: to be like flicking a switch when we start to
Speaker 1: move out of lockdown, we'll probably go through several stages.
Speaker 1: What did you do to try and get a handle
Speaker 1: on what that might mean for the economy and what
Speaker 1: were the results? So the starting point for our analysis
Speaker 1: was to look at what's been going on in France.
Speaker 1: In that country, the Statistics Office has published quite a
Speaker 1: lots of information about how lockdowns are affecting the economy,
Speaker 1: and what they've found is that the lockdown period has
Speaker 1: coincided with a falling output around about a third. But
Speaker 1: we've combined that information with some data from the Platonic
Speaker 1: School of Government, which has gone around and measured the
Speaker 1: stringency of of measures across countries. So when we look
Speaker 1: at the output loss, it's about thirty and when we
Speaker 1: look at the stringency index it's it's that's one data
Speaker 1: point to the other data point we have is that
Speaker 1: we know that when stringency is is zero, the output
Speaker 1: loss is going to be zero. So the question that
Speaker 1: we've been asking ourselves is is it reasonable to draw
Speaker 1: a line from zero to and then just read across
Speaker 1: what that means for output and to kind of get
Speaker 1: a sense of whether that is reasonable. We've looked at
Speaker 1: other indications, so we know that different stringency measures have
Speaker 1: been in place across countries, and we've plotted those against
Speaker 1: the change in the p m I in those countries,
Speaker 1: so we can see that actually they do look sort
Speaker 1: of linear, and the same is true when you look
Speaker 1: at traffic congestion. So the second step in our analysis
Speaker 1: was to take the Platonic School's methodology, unpack it, and
Speaker 1: then create a stringency reading from scratch. So a scenario
Speaker 1: for moderate containment measures. So we assume, for example that
Speaker 1: UM school. Some schools are still shut, but many are open.
Speaker 1: Some businesses are allowed to open, but but many remain
Speaker 1: shut and so on, and so we think this is
Speaker 1: consistent with a phased withdrawal of containment measures. And what
Speaker 1: we found is that when you move from this full
Speaker 1: lockdown back to the sort of phasing out of containment measures,
Speaker 1: the output loss drops from about thirty five to about
Speaker 1: so that step down is likely to be quite large.
Speaker 1: And we came into the thinking that it would be
Speaker 1: a V shaped recovery. We've progressively deepened the V. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had to increase our estimate of the short term
Speaker 1: impact of these shutdowns. You talked about the thirty five
Speaker 1: percent impact in France of a more or less total shutdown.
Speaker 1: Have we also changed our view of the shape of
Speaker 1: the recovery? What do you actually think the recovery is
Speaker 1: going to look like now? If it's not a V,
Speaker 1: is it an L? Is it a you? What do
Speaker 1: you think? I think what we've learned in the past
Speaker 1: few weeks is which governments are stepping up to the
Speaker 1: plate and offering the fiscal support that is required for
Speaker 1: persistent effects on output to be avoided after the pandemic passes.
Speaker 1: And we're also seeing which governments aren't stepping up to
Speaker 1: the plates, So I think in the in the doing
Speaker 1: the right thing category, we have have Germany and we
Speaker 1: have the UK, both of which are offering substantial income
Speaker 1: support to businesses a lot of liquidity to loan, so
Speaker 1: the comp these don't go bust. Time will tell whether
Speaker 1: that has come fast enough to prevent the worst damage
Speaker 1: from being done. But our base cases that these are
Speaker 1: economies that are likely to bounce back relatively quickly, but
Speaker 1: not all countries are are doing enough, so I think
Speaker 1: Italy and Spain probably fall into that category. The fiscal
Speaker 1: support isn't as forthcoming as it is elsewhere, and this
Speaker 1: means that the damage is going to be the more pronounced,
Speaker 1: and this damage is going to be hard to reverse.
Speaker 1: So once companies go bust, it takes time for new
Speaker 1: ones to spring up. And what we don't know is
Speaker 1: what sort of condition the banking sector is going to
Speaker 1: be in after all this, so they may not even
Speaker 1: be the loans available for new businesses to start, so
Speaker 1: there's um. I think these countries are the ones where
Speaker 1: the bounce back it's likely to be smaller, and they're
Speaker 1: also the ones that risk the slowest recoveries in future
Speaker 1: quarters and the consequences of the economy not bouncing back
Speaker 1: in the second half a huge If you can run
Speaker 1: a persistent output gap for many years, that will push
Speaker 1: debt up by a huge margin, whereas the a short
Speaker 1: chart shock is likely to have a smaller long run impact. Well,
Speaker 1: and you raise it. That's a key point, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it's a good way of thinking about it that
Speaker 1: if you're spending a lot of money now, you are
Speaker 1: directly investing in the gradient of your recovery. You're you're
Speaker 1: you're investing in a faster bounce back, and that obviously
Speaker 1: would be a contrast with the recovery we had after
Speaker 1: the global financial crisis, where we saw that there was
Speaker 1: a lingering effect and a much slower rate of growth
Speaker 1: for many years after the crisis. Obviously hoping that that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen this time. But your point about Spain and
Speaker 1: Italy actually in particular has a very high debt stock.
Speaker 1: There's much more constraints on it in terms of how
Speaker 1: much it can spend right now. But the implication of
Speaker 1: what you're saying is if they don't spend now and
Speaker 1: have that much more costly recession, slower recovery in the
Speaker 1: long run, that's worse for debt. I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So if they spend more now and debt rises relative
Speaker 1: to GDP by say ten percentage points, that's not a disaster.
Speaker 1: That's that's about as good as things can possibly look.
Speaker 1: Far more costly would be spending too little now, the
Speaker 1: economy failing to recover, and debt spiraling out of control
Speaker 1: as the deficit is impossible to bring back down again.
Speaker 1: There were some pretty striking figures were used to work
Speaker 1: the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Britain's fiscal watchdog Ransom
Speaker 1: what it considered to be sort of illustrative numbers on
Speaker 1: the public finances for the kind of hit to the
Speaker 1: economy that you were talking about at the beginning um
Speaker 1: and had the implication was a pretty big jump in
Speaker 1: public debt. When you think now, if you had to say,
Speaker 1: how do you think that's going to be paid for?
Speaker 1: Are we going to be looking at a big increase
Speaker 1: in taxes at the end of this or are we
Speaker 1: just going to say, Okay, now we've we've had this
Speaker 1: big crisis and we've just got a higher debt and
Speaker 1: now we're going to carry on light before So I
Speaker 1: think once we get the other side of this crisis,
Speaker 1: debt's going to be a lot higher, and some countries
Speaker 1: are going to feel pressure to reduce it. And I think, actually,
Speaker 1: that's that's relatively that's sensible. Um, if we just allowed
Speaker 1: debt to rise by temper percentage points every time there's
Speaker 1: a crisis, then at some point you reach a position
Speaker 1: of unsustainability and defaults of what follows. So I think
Speaker 1: it's it is the case that some of these debts
Speaker 1: are going to have to be repaid. Um. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be repaid fast. Our storia doesn't have to
Speaker 1: happen before the economy is recovered. But in the long run, yes,
Speaker 1: it's going to have to be financed by by higher taxes.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that there are ways of
Speaker 1: there are ways of doing that. I mean, exactly who
Speaker 1: experiences or feels the burden most is a question for
Speaker 1: the politicians. But you know, look at Germany's history of
Speaker 1: paying for reunification. It was done with the tax that
Speaker 1: was explicit linked to the activity is intended to finance. Um,
Speaker 1: something like that wouldn't be completely mad. I don't think
Speaker 1: in the in the future, Jamie, I'm sure we'll have
Speaker 1: plenty more to talk about in the next few months,
Speaker 1: but thanks very much. As it happens, I just chaired
Speaker 1: an online discussion on some of these issues for something
Speaker 1: called the Global Solutions Initiative. There were some lofty participants
Speaker 1: who said lots of interesting things, But let me just
Speaker 1: play you a few comments from the former President of
Speaker 1: the European Central Bank, Jean Clautriche on the scary subject
Speaker 1: of global government debt. We are cumulating an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of additional public spendings we had since the former previous crisis,
Speaker 1: an accumulation of indebtedness at the global level, graphically all
Speaker 1: countries apart from a very few countries. Germany is a
Speaker 1: case in point, but practically the only casing point. So
Speaker 1: we we have to be absolutely aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that there would be enormous problems not only to digest
Speaker 1: what we are spending right now, but also what we
Speaker 1: had unfortunately spent during the ten years after the previous crisis.
Speaker 1: And then I have to say I am wearing a
Speaker 1: lot for the example banks, because of course I eliminate hyperinflation,
Speaker 1: which would be a solution to swallow the debt. The
Speaker 1: enormous amount of that I eliminate the default or generalized
Speaker 1: default data aviation restructuring that that would also be a
Speaker 1: dramatic trauma, and I expect that we will avoid that.
Speaker 1: But then what's left financial repression, hyper taxation, or a combination.
Speaker 1: And there the sample banks have a very very important
Speaker 1: role to play. A combination of very low interest rates
Speaker 1: for a long, really good time together with a reasonable
Speaker 1: level of inflation suddenly not the zero inflation or very
Speaker 1: repreation we had in the past, and they've gone through
Speaker 1: them that. Thanks for listening to Stephanomics. We'll be back
Speaker 1: next week with more on how COVID nineteen is turning
Speaker 1: the global economy upside down. Remember you can always find
Speaker 1: us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website, app or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. For more news and analysis from Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Economics through the week. You can follow as Economics on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you can also find me on at my Stephanomics.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Sharon Chen, Jamie Rush, Jean Clautriche and all at the
Speaker 1: Global Solutions Initiative. Scott Lamon is the executive producer of
Speaker 1: Stephanomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Is Francesca Levi
Speaker 1: the hand, the