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 podcasts.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. This week we
Speaker 2: look at the economy and the unique market dynamics that
Speaker 2: are making it so hard to pin down trends. And
Speaker 2: we're going to take a look back at the end
Speaker 2: of Roe v. Wade and how that's impacted women's health
Speaker 2: since then. Plus we are seeing a drop in productivity.
Speaker 2: Output per hour in the US is lower than last quarter.
Speaker 2: But it's not time to panic, at least not yet.
Speaker 2: But first, Republicans were angry about President Biden's son, Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden's plea deal on tax and gun charges, with some
Speaker 2: alleging that the Department of Justice during the Biden administration
Speaker 2: has been politicized and weaponized. Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke
Speaker 2: out about those out delegations.
Speaker 1: This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential
Speaker 1: to American democracy and essential to the safety of the
Speaker 1: American people.
Speaker 2: But Attorney General Merritt Garland statement did not appease Republicans much,
Speaker 2: who maintained that the Justice Department and FBI are biased
Speaker 2: against the GOP. Let's now bring in Bloomberg opinion columnist
Speaker 2: Jonathan Bernstein. He covers politics and policy.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Jonathan, in your column on the Bloomberg terminal, you call
Speaker 2: the Republican reaction to Hunter Biden's plea deal an example
Speaker 2: of the paranoia that script many in the party, paranoia
Speaker 2: about what walk us through that.
Speaker 4: Well, the story here is that Republicans have now decided
Speaker 4: that the entire criminal justice federal criminal justice system is
Speaker 4: biased against them, and their proof of that is basically that, well,
Speaker 4: sometimes Republicans getting dubted for things, and sometimes Democrats don't
Speaker 4: get indibted for things Republicans. And there's no evidence here,
Speaker 4: there's no case to be made. But you know, nobody
Speaker 4: who knows the FBI thinks the FBI is full of
Speaker 4: communist rangth yeah, or even full of Democrats. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a long history of the FBI going after liberal
Speaker 4: organizations and I don't think I think, yeah, in the
Speaker 4: past some liberals have been paranoid about the FBI. But
Speaker 4: but currently, you know, because they are committed to believing
Speaker 4: that Donald Trump is innocent of everything. You know, why
Speaker 4: would and people like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or
Speaker 4: Hunter Biden in this case must be guilty of everything.
Speaker 4: Evidence notwithstanding this must all be a bought by the
Speaker 4: deep state against Republicans.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to pick this apart a little bit
Speaker 2: and kind of dig into it. First of all, is
Speaker 2: this about the Biden administration specifically, or would this apply
Speaker 2: to any administration that doesn't necessarily agree with the party
Speaker 2: line or anyone who doesn't agree with the Republican party line.
Speaker 2: Let's start there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a great question, and I don't
Speaker 4: think it's specifically about the Biden administration. I think you know,
Speaker 4: what it seems like to me is that what you
Speaker 4: have over more than fifty years, but increasingly in the
Speaker 4: last say ten years, and especially with Trump, is the
Speaker 4: breakdown of the belief among publicans, among movement conservatives, in
Speaker 4: the whole notion of neutrality. And you see that with
Speaker 4: what they you know, originally with the idea that the
Speaker 4: liberal media was out to get them. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of academic studies of this, and it
Speaker 4: turns out that there's not really, you know that the
Speaker 4: mainstream media, that the New York Times, that Bloomberg, that
Speaker 4: CBS News are not particularly liberal. They do have biases,
Speaker 4: but they are generally biases that have to do with
Speaker 4: journalistic norms and self interest, not a plot to get conservatives.
Speaker 4: And what's happened over time is that they have extended
Speaker 4: this from well, the neutral media is out to get
Speaker 4: us too, now the bureaucracy is out to get us,
Speaker 4: and to the FBI is out to get us, and
Speaker 4: the Justice Department professionals are out to get us. So
Speaker 4: I don't think it has to do with the Biden
Speaker 4: administration or Hunter Biden in particular. It's that that's their
Speaker 4: way of understanding and explaining the world, and it's a
Speaker 4: real dangerous way of thinking about the world.
Speaker 2: I want to get into that danger, into that risk.
Speaker 2: But I want to ask also about the rhetoric that
Speaker 2: you were just explaining. It is becoming more standard rhetoric
Speaker 2: that justice isn't blind. It's oh yeah.
Speaker 4: I think both parties are susceptible to this, but Republicans
Speaker 4: by having the elite Republicans, by having highly visible Republicans
Speaker 4: repeat this over and over for fifty years, that it's
Speaker 4: a partisan bias. Have convinced themselves, convinced their rank and
Speaker 4: final voters, and convinced a lot of other people too,
Speaker 4: neutral people that oh, yeah, you know, the media, while
Speaker 4: they're liberal.
Speaker 2: Let's get into the risks. Now you mentioned how this
Speaker 2: could be very dangerous, is it? Did you mean for democracy,
Speaker 2: the country, the party? What did you mean?
Speaker 4: This goes to sort of back to James Madison and
Speaker 4: how he explained democracy, And if you go back to
Speaker 4: the seventeen hundreds, there was this assumption that democracy couldn't work,
Speaker 4: and that was because there had been a long history
Speaker 4: of you know, going back to Rome, but then especially
Speaker 4: since then, of you know, small republics were established and
Speaker 4: they would function for a while, and then the losers
Speaker 4: in that local democracy would say we're not willing to lose,
Speaker 4: and they would have a coup. They would even invite
Speaker 4: foreigners to invade and take them over. Because if you
Speaker 4: have a majority and a minority, and those seemed fairly
Speaker 4: permanent and you're in the minority, democracy is sort of
Speaker 4: a losing game for you. There's no reason to participate
Speaker 4: and to endorse the democracy. And so people thought democracy
Speaker 4: couldn't work and James Madison said, well, you know what,
Speaker 4: all these city states that tried democracy that were republics
Speaker 4: and failed, their problem was that they were too small.
Speaker 4: And everybody assumed you had to be small to be
Speaker 4: democracy because you had to meet in one place and
Speaker 4: you had you know, you have to be able to
Speaker 4: do things in person. And he says, no, we're going
Speaker 4: to have representation so we can have a large scale country,
Speaker 4: and we're going to have in a large country. We're
Speaker 4: not going to have a natural majority because people in
Speaker 4: you know, on the coast of Maine are going to
Speaker 4: be concerned with fishing, and people other people are going
Speaker 4: to be concerned with farming, and other people are going
Speaker 4: to care about religion, and other people are going to
Speaker 4: care about whatever abortion or civil rights or something else,
Speaker 4: and most people won't care about most issues. And that's
Speaker 4: sort of what we have so that you know, if
Speaker 4: you lose on one issue, you may have some other
Speaker 4: issue you care about that you can win anyway. So
Speaker 4: no natural majority. The problem is if natural majorities come
Speaker 4: to exist, and one way that can happen is if
Speaker 4: you have one issue that suddenly everybody cares about, and
Speaker 4: that's sort of the story of the Civil War, everybody
Speaker 4: cares about slavery. There has to be a winner, there
Speaker 4: has to be a loser. The losers in the South say, well,
Speaker 4: in that case, why should we be part of your country?
Speaker 4: And because they're geographically separate, they get to try to
Speaker 4: have a civil you know, right. But what we have
Speaker 4: now isn't like that, and it's not ideology. People aren't
Speaker 4: sort of liberal and conservative. I don't think that's all
Speaker 4: aboutic But what we do have is strong partisanship. And
Speaker 4: we have Republicans encouraging small strong partisanship by saying there's
Speaker 4: nothing else in the world. Everything is already partisanship. If
Speaker 4: you're losing, it's because the Democrats are winning, and that's
Speaker 4: not true. But if everybody believes it, it becomes it
Speaker 4: becomes its own truth. And then elections become super high
Speaker 4: stakes and you have a possibility of a permanent winner
Speaker 4: and a permanent loser, and democracy just doesn't work under
Speaker 4: those circumstances.
Speaker 2: One last question for you, and I don't know that
Speaker 2: you wouldn't have the answer to this, but how do
Speaker 2: we go back? How do we get here? How do
Speaker 2: we get back?
Speaker 4: It's a great question. The good news is that most
Speaker 4: of this is phony, right, It is true that most
Speaker 4: people in their worlds, like you know, one of the
Speaker 4: one of the you know, the media isn't or at
Speaker 4: least the neutral media there are. There are partisan media, right,
Speaker 4: There's a democratic aligned media, there's Republican aligned media. But
Speaker 4: there's a lot of media that's not that's real, and
Speaker 4: they really are neutral in the between the parties. Academic academia,
Speaker 4: most academics have strong biases, but they're not partisan. Months
Speaker 4: they care about things, you know, about their academic training
Speaker 4: and their the academic stuff that they care about. You know,
Speaker 4: most of the FBI, or in fact, as far as
Speaker 4: I know, all of the FBI, is not partisan. They
Speaker 4: do have strong biases because all bureaucrats have care about
Speaker 4: doing things their professional way, and so if you cross that,
Speaker 4: you may wind up getting prosecuted for something that somebody
Speaker 4: else did a similar thing, but it didn't hit the
Speaker 4: FBI that way, you know. And that's the same with
Speaker 4: local cops and sheriffs or what have you. They have biases,
Speaker 4: but they're mostly not partisan biases. So some of it
Speaker 4: is just sort of accepting that the world is more
Speaker 4: complicated than just democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, the Republicans have
Speaker 4: find that this sells very well among their audience, and
Speaker 4: it's very hard to see how they stop doing that.
Speaker 4: But you know, well, they they're coming up against reality
Speaker 4: all the time and that may have some consequences for them.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion colonist covering politics and policy,
Speaker 2: and Bloomberg Opinion continues with a look at the Goldilocks
Speaker 2: economy and why these latest market trends are so hard
Speaker 2: to pin down. This is Bloomberg.
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 podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Last spring
Speaker 2: was hard on the US economy. Markets fell, inflation spiked,
Speaker 2: and stagflation was the word of the day. But investors
Speaker 2: who thought stagflation was here to stay were wrong, And
Speaker 2: now perhaps they shouldn't count on the Goldilocks economy to
Speaker 2: stick around either. Let's get more insight now. Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 2: columnist Connorson is founder of Peachtree Creek Investments and joins
Speaker 2: me now. Connor, always a pleasure, Thank you for bringing
Speaker 2: us your insights. I want to ask you, first off,
Speaker 2: how short sighted we are when it comes to predicting
Speaker 2: end dates inflation.
Speaker 5: I think the challenge that everyone's having is that we're
Speaker 5: dealing with huge impacts still from the pandemic economy and
Speaker 5: the lags associated with the boom and the bust that
Speaker 5: we saw during that, and those lags are different for
Speaker 5: growth in inflation, and so right now we're just now
Speaker 5: finally getting the benefit of the sort of deflationary side
Speaker 5: of the pandemic bust. So auto inflation is likely to
Speaker 5: come down over the next six months. Rental and shelter
Speaker 5: inflation is finally going to show up in the CPI data,
Speaker 5: and that's great news, but it's also a little bit
Speaker 5: of a false comfort if growth remains as strong as
Speaker 5: it appears to be at the moment.
Speaker 2: So when you talk about false comfort, let's talk about
Speaker 2: that a little bit. Where do you see it going
Speaker 2: or is that the point you can't really It.
Speaker 5: Sort of gets to that stagflation every point from last spring,
Speaker 5: when at that time you had growth slowing from the
Speaker 5: other side of the pandemic, but inflation was ramping up
Speaker 5: because of the lags in shelter inflation and things like that,
Speaker 5: and so you know, everyone was thinking, well, the Feds
Speaker 5: raising rates, growth is slowing, inflation is spiking, and it's
Speaker 5: going to be a disaster. It's kind of the mirror
Speaker 5: image of that. Now where growth is resilient. We see
Speaker 5: the housing market picking back up. We see in tech
Speaker 5: that AI is leading to a new boom, and we're
Speaker 5: getting that deflationary benefit from autos and shelter. And the
Speaker 5: concern is that we could see growth be really strong
Speaker 5: over the next six months and people respond favorably to
Speaker 5: this decline in inflation, but it's really just the deflation
Speaker 5: we're getting is sort of baked into the cake, and
Speaker 5: we could see inflation pick up again on the other
Speaker 5: side of that.
Speaker 2: Can I pick that apart just a little bit? Because
Speaker 2: we've seen these unique market dynamics in the past few years.
Speaker 2: Why has it been so hard to get a handle
Speaker 2: on this?
Speaker 5: I think we just never in a modern era haven't
Speaker 5: seen an economy adjusted to a two to three year pandemic.
Speaker 5: And we had a huge amount of fiscal stimulus that
Speaker 5: went into the system as well. So it's things like
Speaker 5: last year how we saw manufacturing sentiment tick down, and
Speaker 5: in a lot of times that tick down has been
Speaker 5: a leading indicator recession, but it was really just that
Speaker 5: consumers were shifting their spending from goods to services, and
Speaker 5: our retailers didn't need as much stuff as they did
Speaker 5: in twenty one, and people sort of overreacted to that.
Speaker 5: And in the housing market, we saw the spike and
Speaker 5: mortgage rates make people think that we were going through
Speaker 5: another two thousand and eight, when instead people have owned
Speaker 5: mortgage rates just decided not to sell our homes. And
Speaker 5: so it's been tough to sort of use historical playbooks
Speaker 5: to figure out the economy rather than sort of looking
Speaker 5: at the very unique things we've been going through.
Speaker 2: Right, you actually have a column about this on the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg terminal, and you are able to use housing as
Speaker 2: an example as to why this seems so. I don't
Speaker 2: know if volatile is the word, but unpredictable is probably
Speaker 2: a better term to use for that. My question for
Speaker 2: you is a little more esoteric now, and it's about
Speaker 2: because of the pandemic, all of this happening is this
Speaker 2: just where it is now? Like have we just fundamentally
Speaker 2: changed the whole model and we're trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what that model is or is there a way for
Speaker 2: the pendulum to swing back.
Speaker 5: I think there will be a time when we finally
Speaker 5: aren't looking at pandemic comparisons anymore, and that time is
Speaker 5: probably middle of next year, perhaps when sort of the
Speaker 5: rental sort of shelter impact of the pandemic is really
Speaker 5: behind us in the inflation data and auto supply champion
Speaker 5: have normalized, the auto industry has normalized, and so maybe
Speaker 5: by the middle of twenty four we can finally just
Speaker 5: talk about the economy as it is without having to
Speaker 5: go back to twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. But
Speaker 5: we still have another year or so of these weird
Speaker 5: sort of abnormalities to flow through the data, flow through
Speaker 5: the system. And until we can get there, we have
Speaker 5: to just sort of look at what's going on and
Speaker 5: not rely too much on sort of the past three
Speaker 5: receptions or how things typically work in economic cycles.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columns Connor sent
Speaker 2: about the goldilocks US economy. Connor, that's your word that
Speaker 2: you used in your column on the Bloomberg terminal, when
Speaker 2: you refer to it as a Goldilocks economy, what do
Speaker 2: you mean by that.
Speaker 5: I'd say, historically, goldilocks term and economic speak has been
Speaker 5: sort of solid growth but not aver inflationary, And right
Speaker 5: now we have sort of pretty resilient economic growth. We
Speaker 5: continue to see great job growth, and we see inflation
Speaker 5: coming off. And I think we're going to see inflation
Speaker 5: come off really, really hard on the back half of
Speaker 5: this year because I expect autodflation and shelter inflation to
Speaker 5: really accelerate, and we could start getting some monthly inflation
Speaker 5: numbers that actually look consistent with two percent. But that's
Speaker 5: just because we have this auto and shelter inflation coming out,
Speaker 5: which we've been expecting for a while and it's finally
Speaker 5: going to be showing up in the data. But at
Speaker 5: the same time, if you see the stock market at
Speaker 5: all time highs again and the housing market picking up again,
Speaker 5: it's unlikely that that two percent inflation would be sustainable
Speaker 5: in the longer term.
Speaker 2: Let's insert the Fed in here for a moment. We
Speaker 2: have heard the FED chair talking about trying to get
Speaker 2: to that two percent number, and even saying that we're
Speaker 2: anticipating a couple of more hikes coming up in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. From where you stand, just the what do
Speaker 2: they call it, the hawkish pause that we've just experienced
Speaker 2: versus the hikes that maybe down the road. How does
Speaker 2: that play into this dynamic?
Speaker 5: Well, I do think we'll get at least one more
Speaker 5: hike in July. But I think a lot of what
Speaker 5: they're doing isn't so much what they're definitely going to
Speaker 5: do or what they definitely believe, but what their view
Speaker 5: is that inflation expectations can get unanchored and a lot
Speaker 5: of this is kind of unpredictable, and so they don't
Speaker 5: want to let everyone believe that thing's in our under
Speaker 5: control and start buying stocks and houses again. So they're
Speaker 5: using this language to try to hold people in check,
Speaker 5: keep people scared of recession, keep people worried, because they
Speaker 5: really want to see those good inflation prints before they
Speaker 5: feel comfortable with backing off. And I don't know about
Speaker 5: giving me all clear, but just sort of backing off
Speaker 5: as hawkish posture.
Speaker 2: Are we going to continue to see some passing phases
Speaker 2: as we claw our way out of the pandemic? Aftermath.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're predicting maybe middle of next year we'll
Speaker 2: get more of a sense of normalcy, but between now
Speaker 2: and then more waves of different phases that we haven't
Speaker 2: really seen before.
Speaker 5: I think so, because again, if you look at sort
Speaker 5: of the market rent data, market rents are now about
Speaker 5: flat year every year, and they continue to fall, So
Speaker 5: I think we're going to see negative rent growth. Sort
Speaker 5: of if you were buying or renting an apartment in
Speaker 5: the third uarter of this year, it's going to be
Speaker 5: cheaper than it would have been a year ago, and
Speaker 5: that's not going to show up into the CPI shelter
Speaker 5: data until early next year, middle of the next year,
Speaker 5: So we could see again some false comfort where if
Speaker 5: all of a sudden it looks like shelter inflation is
Speaker 5: two or three percent rather than sixty seven percent, you'll
Speaker 5: see overall core inflation be very low, and you could
Speaker 5: get again people thinking that we're getting solid growth with
Speaker 5: following inflation, and that's just not going to be the
Speaker 5: reality for the long term.
Speaker 2: So what is it that investors are getting wrong when
Speaker 2: they try to make their predictions. Is it because they're
Speaker 2: looking at the old model, the pre pandemic model, and
Speaker 2: this is how it usually is, so let's go this
Speaker 2: way and things are just too volatile.
Speaker 5: Now, Yeah, I think the mistake people have been making
Speaker 5: for a whiles they feel like the only way to
Speaker 5: get inflation down is by crushing growth, and that any
Speaker 5: decline in inflation would only happen if growth slows down.
Speaker 5: And I think we're just getting supply side deflation because
Speaker 5: of these pandemic impacts, and sort of steady or even
Speaker 5: accelerating growth with decelerating inflation is something we could get
Speaker 5: for two or three quarters. But it's just a quirk
Speaker 5: of the pandemic and it's not really any kind of
Speaker 5: new world where we've figured out sort of economic utopia.
Speaker 5: But we should just take the did as it is,
Speaker 5: but not get too comfortable.
Speaker 2: Okay, So how do we change that trajectory?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 2: If we keep making the same stupid mistakes because of
Speaker 2: the new model that we're having to deal with, even
Speaker 2: if it is a temporary model, how do we get
Speaker 2: ourselves out of the rut?
Speaker 5: I would focus on sort of watch autos to see
Speaker 5: when the auto supply chain is fixed, and at that
Speaker 5: point we could have more confidence about where auto inflation
Speaker 5: is going to go, and the same thing goes with
Speaker 5: the rental market. I would focus more on what's happening
Speaker 5: with real time rents and vacancy rates, because that ultimately
Speaker 5: is where shelter inflation is going to go in the
Speaker 5: long run, and the shelter inflation data we're going to
Speaker 5: get over the next two to three quarters is already
Speaker 5: baked based on what's happened in the rental market early
Speaker 5: in the first half of this year, and so it's
Speaker 5: really just sort of thinking about growth sort of as
Speaker 5: as it's going to be, not just again this inflation data,
Speaker 5: which is really not telling the story of what's happened
Speaker 5: in the economy today.
Speaker 2: Connor, thank you. Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Connorson is founder of
Speaker 2: Peachtree Creek Investments. Coming up, it's been more than a
Speaker 2: year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
Speaker 4: Wade.
Speaker 2: We'll take a look at the continuing fallout. This is
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast Countess Saturdays at
Speaker 1: one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. It's been a
Speaker 2: year since the US Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson,
Speaker 2: overturning Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortion, and
Speaker 2: we continue to monitor the fallout. Vice President Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: marked the anniversary at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina,
Speaker 2: condemning states that have implemented full abortion bans, prompting her
Speaker 2: to ask, how dare they?
Speaker 4: We?
Speaker 6: All of us are now called upon to advance the
Speaker 6: promise of freedom, including the freedom of every woman to
Speaker 6: make decisions about her own body, not the government telling
Speaker 6: her what to do.
Speaker 2: And beyond that, we are getting a better idea of
Speaker 2: how that decision is taking a toll on obgyns and
Speaker 2: other healthcare providers as well as women. And what's becoming
Speaker 2: more clear is that abortion access can't be excised from
Speaker 2: medical treatment without impacting and ultimately reducing the quality of
Speaker 2: other forms of healthcare. Joining us now with more on this,
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis. Lisa covers biotech, healthcare and
Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical industry. Lisa, let's talk about the impact of
Speaker 2: healthcare for women where this is showing up the most
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 7: A big impact obviously is on reproductive healthcare, no surprise there.
Speaker 7: But it doesn't just mean that that's necessarily affecting women
Speaker 7: who have a pregnancy that they would like to terminate,
Speaker 7: but women who have a pregnancy where they have a
Speaker 7: complication and it is threatening their life or the life
Speaker 7: of the child. And you know, I just wrote a
Speaker 7: column that talks about how that could expand into other
Speaker 7: areas a.
Speaker 3: Reproductive healthcare and healthcare in general.
Speaker 7: Because doctors are less interested in working in states with
Speaker 7: these kinds of restrictions.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that. What sort of position does this
Speaker 2: put a physician in? How are they able to navigate
Speaker 2: and manage this?
Speaker 7: I mean, it's a very difficult position that obgins are
Speaker 7: being put in in states with restrictions or bands. Essentially,
Speaker 7: they're being asked to not do their job in the
Speaker 7: way that they were trained to do their job and
Speaker 7: do what's best for the patient. A lot of times
Speaker 7: they're trying to navigate a very confusing legal area that's
Speaker 7: changing day by day and they have to ask permission
Speaker 7: or a lot of times people are being more conservative
Speaker 7: with their treatment rather than doing what they would naturally do.
Speaker 7: And so what that means is that if someone has
Speaker 7: a complication that threatens their life, that will eventually threaten
Speaker 7: their life, they're asking the pregnant person to wait until
Speaker 7: they're in trouble essentially to come because they're worried that
Speaker 7: the physician is worried that they could be legally liable
Speaker 7: if they perform an abortion before the state considers that
Speaker 7: to be life threatening.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting is I was going to ask
Speaker 2: about that, apart from providing healthcare in a timely manner,
Speaker 2: if this also puts physicians in some sort of legal peril.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to tease apart here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I spoke with one physician who was
Speaker 7: working in Tennessee at the time that the band went
Speaker 7: into effect. There they had a trigger law, so that
Speaker 7: went into effect last summer, and she worked with women
Speaker 7: who are at high you know, who have high risk pregnancies,
Speaker 7: and essentially was shipping all of her patients to another
Speaker 7: state because the way the law was written, it was
Speaker 7: putting her at legal risk and she was afraid she
Speaker 7: was going to have to make a decision that you know,
Speaker 7: would be for her own benefit, but to the detriment
Speaker 7: of her patient, possibly costing her patient, you know, their lives.
Speaker 3: So she was shipping people to other states to be treated.
Speaker 2: Are physicians sticking with this? Are they moving their practices?
Speaker 2: Where are they winding up? Are they just staying put?
Speaker 2: What happens to them?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a good question and something I'm really worried about.
Speaker 7: This particular physician ended up going to Colorado because she
Speaker 7: just felt like she couldn't practice safely in the state
Speaker 7: of Tennessee. Every physition that I've spoken with knows someone
Speaker 7: who is leaving or considering leaving. I think the biggest
Speaker 7: impact seems to be right now that we're seeing, at
Speaker 7: least data wise on where people choose to train. So
Speaker 7: we already know that from the match data that's you know,
Speaker 7: kind of where medical students get paired up for their residencies.
Speaker 7: That OBGYN students there was a ten percent dip in
Speaker 7: applications in states with the most restrictive abortion laws, so
Speaker 7: they're just not interested in going to those places. I
Speaker 7: think on two levels as doctors and then as humans,
Speaker 7: because a lot of those people are of reproductive age themselves,
Speaker 7: you know, considering having families and would be going to
Speaker 7: a state where they themselves might face some of these
Speaker 7: same decisions.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis
Speaker 2: about how women's healthcare providers are impacted a year after
Speaker 2: Roe v. Wade was overturned, and in addition, how women's
Speaker 2: healthcare is being impacted overall. Lisa, you said something that's
Speaker 2: really interesting about how some physicians are moving their practices
Speaker 2: and that some physicians, when they are going through those
Speaker 2: match programs and when they're in medical training, opt to
Speaker 2: stay away from areas that have the most restrictive abortion laws.
Speaker 2: That sounds like if you extrapolate this out, there is
Speaker 2: a real have and have not situation that's going to
Speaker 2: be breaking down in the United States based on women's healthcare,
Speaker 2: which is strange, is it not.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, it already kind of exists because
Speaker 7: we know that the states that have instituted some of
Speaker 7: the most restrictive abortion laws are the same states where
Speaker 7: maternal mortality rates are the poorest.
Speaker 3: So you know, women already a dangerous place to give birth.
Speaker 7: Or be pregnant, and that is going to get worse
Speaker 7: if you don't have doctors who want to work in
Speaker 7: those states, and so you know, I think that can
Speaker 7: extend into other forms of reproductive health care and healthcare
Speaker 7: in general for women.
Speaker 3: If doctors don't want to work in those places.
Speaker 2: So how are women managing? Then if it doesn't it
Speaker 2: create a backlog though in those places where they are
Speaker 2: providing the abortions, it seems like not only you're not
Speaker 2: able to get the health care that you need in
Speaker 2: State A, but if you do go to State B,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to wait.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: No, that's definitely true. Although I wrote a second piece
Speaker 7: that is about kind of sanctuary states and the gargantuan
Speaker 7: effort that's going into helping people navigate to get to
Speaker 7: places where they can get healthcare. I mean, it's not
Speaker 7: going to be possible for everyone, but you know, there's
Speaker 7: just a large network of agencies organizations that are helping
Speaker 7: pay for travel, pay for hotels, pay for meals places
Speaker 7: in for I live in Illinois, which has become one
Speaker 7: of these haven states. Places clinics have opened up new
Speaker 7: facilities in the last year to meet that demand for
Speaker 7: people who are coming. But it's going to get harder
Speaker 7: because you know, a larger swath in particular in the
Speaker 7: South states that previously had been able to perform abortions
Speaker 7: on people whose lives were at risk. That's becoming less
Speaker 7: possible because each month's new laws are being passed, stayed,
Speaker 7: and then passed. So I mean it's becoming a situation
Speaker 7: where there are going to be haves and have nots,
Speaker 7: and to get care, people are going to have to travel,
Speaker 7: which feels very unreasonable.
Speaker 2: How far is this going to go?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if if, like so many things in history,
Speaker 2: are we going to see the pendulum swing the other
Speaker 2: direction and maybe this comes up before the courts again,
Speaker 2: or are or is it now the law of the land.
Speaker 2: Like I'm trying to sort of project out into the
Speaker 2: future where this is going to go.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, your guess is as good as mine, Amy,
Speaker 7: I mean, I hope so.
Speaker 3: But I really I worry that even.
Speaker 7: If a woman dies from being pregnant, which not being
Speaker 7: able to get the care they need to end the pregnancy,
Speaker 7: that that's not going to change things because we've already
Speaker 7: seen so many instances and stories of women who have
Speaker 7: been forced into situations where they get very, very sick
Speaker 7: before they get the care that they need, and it
Speaker 7: doesn't change.
Speaker 3: It hasn't changed anything so far.
Speaker 2: In a situation like that that you just described, do
Speaker 2: you see the States intervening or I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to think if there's any other recourse for
Speaker 2: women like that.
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm hoping that at some point things settle
Speaker 7: a little bit and that hospital systems feel less afraid,
Speaker 7: doctors feel less afraid to make decisions that they had
Speaker 7: made for decades before these laws were passed, and that
Speaker 7: that becomes less of an issue. But I also hope that,
Speaker 7: you know, people walk back some of the more restrictive
Speaker 7: laws that are forcing doctors into these terrible positions.
Speaker 2: Have you been able to talk to any doctors about this.
Speaker 7: I have, you know, and they're really upset because they
Speaker 7: feel like they're not able to treat patients in the
Speaker 7: manner that they were trained to treat patients. You know,
Speaker 7: it's antithetical to know their training, to have their whole
Speaker 7: purpose is to help people and do no harm, and
Speaker 7: it's been very tough for them.
Speaker 3: So let's hope.
Speaker 7: Let's hope that some of these laws get walked back
Speaker 7: a little so that they can do their jobs.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis. Lisa covers biotech, healthcare, and
Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical industry. Since productivity news has not been great,
Speaker 2: output per hour is slipping. Labor productivity a little less
Speaker 2: than one percent lower than a year ago, the fifth
Speaker 2: drop in a row. Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox now
Speaker 2: joins us and brings us some perspective. Justin, thanks for
Speaker 2: taking the time with me today. Now you say in
Speaker 2: your column it's not time to panic yet. When will
Speaker 2: it be time to panic?
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 8: Basically, this is the longest run of negative one year
Speaker 8: productivity growth since they started measuring in the forties, which
Speaker 8: sounds really bad. The one thing is it follows this
Speaker 8: really big leap early in the pandemic when basically everybody,
Speaker 8: you know, companies laid off everybody and then realized within
Speaker 8: a few weeks that, oh, they still have lots of business,
Speaker 8: even restaurants doing takeout, and so there were these huge
Speaker 8: gains in productivity because output rebounded and all of these
Speaker 8: people were out of jobs. And now what we've been
Speaker 8: doing for the past couple of years is sort of
Speaker 8: adjusting and companies hiring people and sort of fitfully getting
Speaker 8: back to more normal. And so, yeah, either this recession
Speaker 8: that people have been predicting for the past two years
Speaker 8: is going to happen and then productivity will at least
Speaker 8: initially fall a little more, or we're about to see
Speaker 8: that expansion takeoff. Productivity should start rising and then I
Speaker 8: don't know. I mean, it's even if it's got a
Speaker 8: long ways to go to be close to even the
Speaker 8: levels of like the late nineties, early two thousands, but
Speaker 8: it's not a disaster right now if you look at
Speaker 8: it over slightly longer time horizon.
Speaker 2: Why is this happening? Is this yet another quirk of
Speaker 2: the pandemic?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just this people there
Speaker 8: were such massive layoffs and then so many people, especially
Speaker 8: in my restaurants and other services. I think with the
Speaker 8: expanded unemployment benefits and with the various cash payouts during
Speaker 8: the pandemic, they didn't have to go back right away,
Speaker 8: and I think a lot just reconsidered and we're like,
Speaker 8: I'd rather do something else. And so there's been this
Speaker 8: This is what got called the Great Resignation, and then
Speaker 8: to some extent quiet all these labor market phenomenon a
Speaker 8: lot of it just traces back to there was just
Speaker 8: this sudden, huge disruption to how the labor market work
Speaker 8: in the US, and we're still figuring out who needs
Speaker 8: to hire, how many people, and how much they need
Speaker 8: to pay them to actually get them to stay, and
Speaker 8: so that that's having all sorts of strange impacts on
Speaker 8: the economy, which comes out in the productivity numbers, which
Speaker 8: are simply the big The main ones we look at
Speaker 8: are just real output, which is basically GDP divided by
Speaker 8: how many hours people are working.
Speaker 2: How long can we maintain this? I mean, what's the
Speaker 2: risk if we continue to find this falling productivity?
Speaker 8: Productivity? Rising productivity is what is sort of the miracle
Speaker 8: of the last two hundred years or so that has
Speaker 8: brought us from poverty to affluence or at least mass affluents.
Speaker 8: And you know, Paul Krugman's line is that productivity isn't everything,
Speaker 8: but in the long run, it's almost everything. It's what
Speaker 8: causes living standards to increase. And when you sort of
Speaker 8: look at us economic history of the past half century,
Speaker 8: it was a pretty sharp decline in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 8: and there were lots of you know, people's slimming standards
Speaker 8: decline too, And you know, it's really hard to tell
Speaker 8: from quarterly or annual numbers what actually is going on.
Speaker 8: But I guess my main point is i'd sort of
Speaker 8: seen some people saying very dire things about the productivity
Speaker 8: numbers of the past few quarters, and I just it
Speaker 8: feels too early to have any confidence about what's going
Speaker 8: on with that, and just watching sort of at a
Speaker 8: more micro level at what's going on it. When you
Speaker 8: go to a restaurant, you can sort of see what
Speaker 8: they're struggling to figure out what the right amount of
Speaker 8: service to give is, how much can be automated, and
Speaker 8: things like that, and I think that's happening across the economy.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion column is justin Fox and that does it
Speaker 2: for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We're produced by Eric Mullow,
Speaker 2: and you can find all of these columns on the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Terminal. We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify
Speaker 2: or your favorite podcast as platform. Stay with us. Today's
Speaker 2: top stories and global business headlines are coming up. I'm
Speaker 2: Amy Morris, and this is Bloomberg