Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week. What's the state of
Speaker 1: corporate governance? The deficit is a real issue. The US
Speaker 1: economy continues to send mixed signals to the financial stories
Speaker 1: that cheap our world fed action to con concerns over
Speaker 1: dollar liquidity and encouraging China data. The five hundred wealthiest
Speaker 1: people in the world. Through the eyes of the most
Speaker 1: influential voices Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, star Ward CEO,
Speaker 1: Kevin Johnson sec Chairman j Clayton. Bloomberg wool Street Week
Speaker 1: with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. Markets get their hopes
Speaker 1: up investors look past fears of a cold war with
Speaker 1: China and a possible second wave of COVID. This is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. It was a
Speaker 1: week of hope, but is it hope triumphing over experience.
Speaker 1: Equities continue to climb higher, but lurking in the background
Speaker 1: are those growing tensions between Beijing and Washington, and as
Speaker 1: well a fear that there might be a second wave
Speaker 1: of a pandemic that as of this week, has claimed
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand American lives. The economic numbers are stunning
Speaker 1: to be sure. This week, jobless claims fell for the
Speaker 1: first time in two and a half months, but during
Speaker 1: that period of time, over forty million Americans have become unemployed.
Speaker 1: Fiscal and monetary authorities continue to look for more solutions.
Speaker 1: That's after they've already thrown trillions of dollars into the
Speaker 1: stew of government support. So which story isn't we should
Speaker 1: believe the hopeful one of the equity markets back almost
Speaker 1: to the level they were pre COVID, or the one
Speaker 1: that tells us that we are not yet out of
Speaker 1: the woods. Rick Reader of Black Rock, really knows rates
Speaker 1: like no one else in this new world, and he
Speaker 1: sees the effect of FED action on yields right across
Speaker 1: the yield curve. But the FED has done has been
Speaker 1: pretty powerful. But you know, there is something that I
Speaker 1: think people underestimate when you when you think about what
Speaker 1: the FED does with central banks can do. When they
Speaker 1: before they wheel out the bazooka and say this is
Speaker 1: what we will do if we need to, the markets
Speaker 1: tend to take them at their word. Particularly is FED
Speaker 1: that has a lot of credibility to day. So the
Speaker 1: FED actually hasn't done a lot in the credit markets
Speaker 1: at all. But what's happening is there's a sense that
Speaker 1: the FED will be there for emergency reasons or to
Speaker 1: provide for markets to actually function effectively. So what's happening
Speaker 1: now is you're seeing a manifestation of what the FED
Speaker 1: has done. Let's take interest rates to zero. They're gonna
Speaker 1: keep them at zero for an extended period of time.
Speaker 1: And what it's as long as the economy is reasonably
Speaker 1: stable than this demand for income and we've talked about
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, the demand for income in the
Speaker 1: world because of the aging, demographic, etcetera, is so profound.
Speaker 1: And as long as people feel like, gosh, I need
Speaker 1: to that the economy is gonna be stable, I can
Speaker 1: start to go and get that income. And then when
Speaker 1: you think about the size of the high yield market,
Speaker 1: it's only a trillion dollar market. Do you think about
Speaker 1: the market cap of Amazon, it's more it's been uh
Speaker 1: And you think about it's a bigger Amazon is bigger
Speaker 1: than the entire high you horning there's not enough income
Speaker 1: in the world, And so what you're seeing is this
Speaker 1: is Gosh, I gotta get income. Economies doing fatter. I'm
Speaker 1: anticipating will continue to do better, and so the surge
Speaker 1: of money that's commenced been restive to say the least.
Speaker 1: So as a result, yields are really suppressed, I would say,
Speaker 1: and it's reasonably cheap still to borrow money despite everything
Speaker 1: that's happened. Does that sort of give government to blank
Speaker 1: check for stimulus? We had to former central bankers Carston's
Speaker 1: and Vabor come out and say this is really dangerous
Speaker 1: because we're basically gonna have the central banks funding the
Speaker 1: government debt. So you know that it has a long
Speaker 1: complicated discussion, and I would say a couple of things
Speaker 1: that are really important. One is there is something that's
Speaker 1: really profound about the ability for the governments to actually
Speaker 1: borrow today. I'm not saying there's an unlimited amount of
Speaker 1: the governments can borrow. They have to be conscious of.
Speaker 1: You can put too much doubt on the system. You
Speaker 1: create a crowding out effect for the corporate sector, household financials, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But today, because of the demograph, we can talk about
Speaker 1: the system is actually set up to be a lender.
Speaker 1: Insurance companies, pension funds actually need the assets and actually
Speaker 1: need to lend. And what's happened when you drop rates
Speaker 1: to so low, um, it's causing people to say, gosh,
Speaker 1: where do I go to actually be a lender? And
Speaker 1: so into day's environment, you can actually, you can actually
Speaker 1: create some more debt on the system as long as
Speaker 1: you're creating nominal GDP, which I would argue in the
Speaker 1: US we will have some some improvements, significant improvement and
Speaker 1: nominal GDP to pay down the debt over time. But
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say we shouldn't go too far,
Speaker 1: but to put a bit more down on the system,
Speaker 1: given the circumstances, is actually not as scary as it's
Speaker 1: been historically. Think about it. When we were back in
Speaker 1: oh six, oh seven, the households were indebted because the
Speaker 1: housing market, the financials were indebted. We're in a better
Speaker 1: position today, happening side. You've always got to be pragmatic
Speaker 1: about you can't just keep doing it. And but we
Speaker 1: can afford to do a little more debt, certainly to
Speaker 1: get to the other side of what is a shock
Speaker 1: to the economic system. So with that, that's the fixed
Speaker 1: income side of your book. Let's go to the equity side,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people saying, boy, the equities look
Speaker 1: like they're pretty high considering what we're really seeing in
Speaker 1: the economy, the equities telling us something meaningful about the recovery.
Speaker 1: But the first as we can't leave the fixed thing
Speaker 1: in side, because as part of why the equities are doing,
Speaker 1: uh doing a they're doing. When you move interest rates
Speaker 1: to to to zero, then you're basically telling people you
Speaker 1: need to find something else to do. And and when
Speaker 1: you can't create income in other ways, you need to
Speaker 1: find something else to do, and you create this transmission
Speaker 1: effect that gets into the discount rate on equities, that
Speaker 1: gets into the alternative assets that equities are. And listen,
Speaker 1: I think the equity market is too high on a
Speaker 1: short term basis given what the economy is telling you.
Speaker 1: But part of what I think people have been maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a bit short sighted about is you don't buy
Speaker 1: equities for the next quarter, and people talk a lot
Speaker 1: about next quarter and p ratio offer this year. If
Speaker 1: you go over the intermediate term and think about guess
Speaker 1: you've got we don't have interest low interest rates for
Speaker 1: a long time, and you think about where earnings are
Speaker 1: going to be over a long period of time. These
Speaker 1: equities are a long duration the longest duration asset there
Speaker 1: is equity valuations when you take equity risk premium and
Speaker 1: think about where we are versus on a low interest rate,
Speaker 1: on a low level where companies can borrow and actually
Speaker 1: buy back their stock if they want to. Equities are
Speaker 1: not high. I mean, I think they can go higher
Speaker 1: in the near terms. I think they should pull back
Speaker 1: a little bit probably, But you know, if you're building
Speaker 1: balance in your portfolio and you're a long term investor
Speaker 1: and medium term investor, to hold equities in the portfolio,
Speaker 1: you know, versus owning you're not gonna make any money
Speaker 1: owning the ten year Treasury note at sixty eight basis
Speaker 1: points sixty nine basis points. So I do think that
Speaker 1: that equities makes sense as long as you're an investor
Speaker 1: and can be thoughtful about. Gosh, I'm not gonna look
Speaker 1: at you know, could I go down in the next
Speaker 1: week or so. You could go down a bit, But
Speaker 1: I think people are under estimating equities for the for
Speaker 1: the intermediate to long haul are actually still okay value here.
Speaker 1: That was Rick Reader of black Rock coming up. We
Speaker 1: talked with the governor of one of the states hit
Speaker 1: hardest by the coronavirus as it moves cautiously to open
Speaker 1: back up, Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey. That's next
Speaker 1: on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Will
Speaker 1: Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg. Ready, New Jersey
Speaker 1: has been one of the state's hardest hit by the coronavirus,
Speaker 1: and Governor Phil Murphy has been on the front lines
Speaker 1: organizing efforts to bend the curve, comforting those afflicted, and,
Speaker 1: as he says, playing moneyball by sticking to the science.
Speaker 1: I hope what we can offer, folks um is that
Speaker 1: you know some basic sort of themes, which is number one,
Speaker 1: public health creates economic health. Inasmuch as we're all chopping
Speaker 1: at the bit to get everything opened again. If we
Speaker 1: if we transpose those steps or we jumped the gun,
Speaker 1: I think we throw gasoline on the fire. And I
Speaker 1: think we've been very deliberate. And the second handed glove
Speaker 1: with that is we say all the time that data
Speaker 1: determines dates. So inasmuch as we don't ever want this
Speaker 1: to be abstracted. In fact, we eulogize a handful of
Speaker 1: people every day. I call families every day to make
Speaker 1: sure it always stays personal. Having said that this is moneyball,
Speaker 1: this is what's the day to telling us and what's
Speaker 1: it allowed that data allow us to do? And I
Speaker 1: hope that that we get that right. So far, so good,
Speaker 1: and just about every one of those briefings that I've seen,
Speaker 1: at least. You also give credit to people in New
Speaker 1: Jersey for complying with the restrictions that are not easy
Speaker 1: to comply with. You mentioned chomping in the bit. People
Speaker 1: are chomping to put in New Jersey and elsewhere as well.
Speaker 1: As you start to back off, and it's not just
Speaker 1: an on off switch, it's by measures. How do you
Speaker 1: ensure compliance? It's going to get harder and harder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably is. But I have to say both individuals, David,
Speaker 1: in terms of staying at home and staying away from
Speaker 1: each other and wearing face coverings, as well as businesses
Speaker 1: both big and small, the compliance has been overwhelming relative
Speaker 1: to any expectation. Now, clearly as the weather has gotten warmer,
Speaker 1: as the clock has continued to tick, as folks see
Speaker 1: other states that have been less hard hit than New
Speaker 1: Jersey and New York, as they you know, that's all
Speaker 1: human nature, and I I get that. Are there more
Speaker 1: folks today than there were a month ago? Uh, saying
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna open on June something. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are some more, but I will say this, and by
Speaker 1: the way, I think the other point I would make
Speaker 1: is that we have we've done, We've started to open up.
Speaker 1: We've not this is not uh, you know, we we
Speaker 1: recognize that we need to take steps. For the most part,
Speaker 1: folks have done the right thing. What about the politics
Speaker 1: of it within New Jersey? We've seen, at least in
Speaker 1: some other places some of the states, a fair amount
Speaker 1: of politics involved where some people are really not just
Speaker 1: clamoring to get back, but really demonstrating pretty active in it.
Speaker 1: What's been the politics New Jersey? Do you have the
Speaker 1: legislature with you? Do you have the politicians back in
Speaker 1: you here? Yeah, for the most part, we do. There's
Speaker 1: been some demonstrations, There's no question about it. Nothing at
Speaker 1: the scale that we've seen in a place like Michigan,
Speaker 1: for instance, But they have been pretty regular demonstrations. And
Speaker 1: I don't begrudge that we never have. I would prefer
Speaker 1: folks to them virtually that they don't congregate, But that
Speaker 1: bothers me more than the demonstrations. Uh, you know, there's
Speaker 1: always exceptions with any legislature. But we we've had a
Speaker 1: very good across the aisle, give and take, generally strong support,
Speaker 1: and we've needed them. You know, we need laws to
Speaker 1: get past. We need to for instance, we need an
Speaker 1: ability to borrow money to fill up the enormous budget
Speaker 1: hole that we have as an example. But so far,
Speaker 1: so good. Again, there are some folks who, naturally, in
Speaker 1: any democratic reality, are gonna go off and say and
Speaker 1: do their own things. But for the most part, we're
Speaker 1: we've been in a good place. One of the tricky
Speaker 1: things everyone is confronting is reopening at the schools, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: with the summer most people are not going to school anyway.
Speaker 1: But you've got the fall coming up. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of uncertainty about how that's gonna work. As you approach
Speaker 1: that question, what are the criteria're gonna use, What are
Speaker 1: the things you're considering about how and when to open
Speaker 1: your schools? You know, we've promised folks by sort of
Speaker 1: mid June, we're gonna give them guidance, uh at least
Speaker 1: on pre K through twelve, And we're clearly talking to
Speaker 1: the universities and higher in community constantly as well. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's it's my bias, David strongly is that we
Speaker 1: get back to school. Uh. We've done the virtual stuff
Speaker 1: as well as any American state, but there's for a
Speaker 1: whole host of reasons, including mental health, the richness of
Speaker 1: the experience. I'd like, I want to see us back
Speaker 1: in school, but it's got to be a new normal
Speaker 1: if you ask me a different question. But relatedly, what's
Speaker 1: my biggest what what's the hardest nut to crack? I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna it's going to be the young, healthy, asymmetric, asymptomatic,
Speaker 1: unwitting student who could pass this virus to an older educator, administrator,
Speaker 1: someone with underlying health challenges. That's got to be the
Speaker 1: one piece of this that we've got to get right.
Speaker 1: I think we can with social distancing, face coverings, maybe
Speaker 1: virtual instruction, even within the in the bricks and mortar reality,
Speaker 1: but we've got to make sure we get that right.
Speaker 1: One of the things you said is a particular chan
Speaker 1: elenge of New Jersey is long term care facilities. It
Speaker 1: is not unique j New Jersey, but you've had a
Speaker 1: big issue with that. What are you doing about that?
Speaker 1: How can you really going forward sort of protect some
Speaker 1: of our elderly, some of the people with some of
Speaker 1: the underlying conditions. Yeah, we've been clabbored in long term care.
Speaker 1: We're not alone for sure. But uh. Of the eleven thousand,
Speaker 1: four one deaths, almost five thousand of them are from
Speaker 1: long term care facilities. Uh. And by the way, early on,
Speaker 1: when I just mentioned about schools early on, that was
Speaker 1: sort of the the spark that created the fire, the
Speaker 1: symptomatic unwitting heroic by I might add, healthcare employee or
Speaker 1: love one visiting and unwittingly passing it on. So we've
Speaker 1: thrown the kitchen sink at this, including at the uneven
Speaker 1: operator performance. The Attorney General has got an investigation outstanding.
Speaker 1: The National Guard, I'm very happy to say the President
Speaker 1: is just re up the funding to extend the National Guard.
Speaker 1: They're in a lot of our long term care facilities.
Speaker 1: The Federal Veterans Administration has come in and helped us out,
Speaker 1: not just in our veterans homes which have been hit,
Speaker 1: but also in other homes. We hired a nationally renowned firm.
Speaker 1: We're now we're now in the process of universal testing
Speaker 1: and re testing, cohorting, separating patients positive from non positive.
Speaker 1: We've learned a lot of lessons. The in that industry
Speaker 1: has learned a lot. We all have the hard way unfortunately.
Speaker 1: But it's also an economic issue. Without adat, we are
Speaker 1: getting increasing numbers of unemployed and the inclusion New Jersey,
Speaker 1: I think is that one in nine. Now you're up to.
Speaker 1: At what point do you still expect this is going
Speaker 1: to bottom out? Do you see a bottom to this unemployment?
Speaker 1: And it's starting to turn back around? Please God sooner
Speaker 1: than later. Uh. I think it's correlated with a couple
Speaker 1: of things. David number one, the responsible continued responsible reopening
Speaker 1: that we get that right that we don't have. You know,
Speaker 1: we're going down on one way street. I don't want
Speaker 1: to turn the car around and go back the other way. Uh.
Speaker 1: And secondly, I'll give you a big game changer, and
Speaker 1: that is direct federal cash assistance to states and municipalities. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's talked about. There are a couple of bills, including
Speaker 1: Bob Menendez, one of our great senators co sponsor with
Speaker 1: a Republican colleague, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. UH is a
Speaker 1: good example, Speaker Pelosi with the Heroes Act. UH. We
Speaker 1: need that, Uh, not just a blue state, not just
Speaker 1: New Jersey, all American states need that. And and frankly,
Speaker 1: that's the biggest potential accelerant that's available to us right
Speaker 1: now to reboot our economy and get as close to
Speaker 1: that that long uh long sought after V shaped recovery.
Speaker 1: That's to me the biggest game changer available. That was
Speaker 1: Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey. Coming up. Europe finally
Speaker 1: gets its act together for a fiscal stimulus package. That's
Speaker 1: next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio. We
Speaker 1: wrap up the week with our very special contributor Larry Summers.
Speaker 1: As always so Larry, welcome, Good to have you here.
Speaker 1: Af Throughout the entire week, markets were sort of a
Speaker 1: little nervous about China, and then at the very end
Speaker 1: of the week, President Trump had a big news conference
Speaker 1: at the White House and he said, boy, there are
Speaker 1: bad things coming from China. He did withdraw from the
Speaker 1: w h oh, so there's gonna be sanctions, but the
Speaker 1: markets could have shriped it off. Is this real or
Speaker 1: is it saber rattling some of both uh our withdrawal
Speaker 1: from the W HO is probably not as consequential as
Speaker 1: when the United States decided not to join the League
Speaker 1: of Nations after the First World War, but it may
Speaker 1: be the most important withdrawal from internationalism that the United
Speaker 1: States has engaged in since the Second World War. It's
Speaker 1: a completely irresponsible act that will set back the effort
Speaker 1: to combat disease in the world and will ultimately hurt
Speaker 1: our security. God knows the w h O is deeply flawed,
Speaker 1: but the United States should be fixing it, not abandoning it,
Speaker 1: and future generations will regret this decision and the lack
Speaker 1: of trust uh that comes from it. It's not something
Speaker 1: that affects the profits of companies over the next several years,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't affect the stock market. But that's the
Speaker 1: really consequential thing. The sparring on Hong Kong doesn't involve
Speaker 1: something that is going to concretely hurt corporate profits. That's
Speaker 1: why the market didn't react, and the market has been
Speaker 1: pricing in the fact that the United States and China
Speaker 1: are at deep blogger heads in a way they haven't
Speaker 1: been since Nixon opened to China fifty years ago, and
Speaker 1: that's what's continuing to play out. But think that the
Speaker 1: fact that there's no market response shouldn't make people complacent,
Speaker 1: not about the United States abandoning the world's health organization,
Speaker 1: and not about the state of the US China relationship,
Speaker 1: which I believe if history goes wrong, goes off track
Speaker 1: in this decade, the far and away the most likely
Speaker 1: way in which that will happen is fissures between the
Speaker 1: United States and China. So, Larry, if the goal is
Speaker 1: to modify China's behavior in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: is there a way to do that? As a practic man,
Speaker 1: it looks like President she has decided what he wants
Speaker 1: to do, whether it's in Hong Kong and other places.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like anything we're doing is changing his
Speaker 1: mind any Look. I think one of a lessons of
Speaker 1: human life, and it's also a lesson of global life,
Speaker 1: is that it's harder to change people and it's harder
Speaker 1: to change nations then we often hope it would be,
Speaker 1: and that threats and scolding are not all that effective
Speaker 1: as UH tactics, And so I'm not surprised that this
Speaker 1: isn't working very well with respect to China, And of
Speaker 1: course it creates all the wrong incentives over the medium
Speaker 1: and UH long term. It strengthens the people who say
Speaker 1: in China that any kind of inter relationship with the
Speaker 1: United States is a mistake against those who want to
Speaker 1: be more intertwined UH with UH the United States. It
Speaker 1: teaches China that they need to avoid any kind of
Speaker 1: vulnerability to US, which means they will put more emphasis
Speaker 1: on splintering UH their technologies and their economic approach from
Speaker 1: anything that's global and is involved U with US. But
Speaker 1: in fairness, UH, these are really hard problems, and it's
Speaker 1: much easier to object to particular means that are being
Speaker 1: pursued UH than it is UH to propose ways that
Speaker 1: will be effective. I think over time, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to reduce our aspirations for how much we're going to
Speaker 1: change China and concentrate on the set of issues that
Speaker 1: most directly UH impact on our security. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to think about aspects of our own behavior UH
Speaker 1: that at times are provocative and recognized that in a
Speaker 1: bargain UH you have to demand, you get to demand things,
Speaker 1: but you also have to respond to uh the other
Speaker 1: side's concerns, and that our concept can't be that we
Speaker 1: run the world and China gets to decide how exactly
Speaker 1: it wants to fit into the world we run. That's
Speaker 1: probably not gonna work given China's current strength and UH
Speaker 1: broad economic power. The one other thing, one other that's
Speaker 1: one other thing if I could, Uh, David, I think
Speaker 1: probably the single most serious farm policy error that the
Speaker 1: Trump administration has made is the more you think that
Speaker 1: China is, in various ways a serious threat, the more
Speaker 1: important it is that we have strong global alliances with
Speaker 1: all the other countries in the world. And so what
Speaker 1: is odd is a strategy of UH elevating the Chinese
Speaker 1: China threat and at the same time not aggressively trying
Speaker 1: to get close to all the other countries and instead,
Speaker 1: in many ways abrogating commitments UH to them and lashing
Speaker 1: out at them UH in various ways. In a world
Speaker 1: where we want to put trade sanctions on China, what
Speaker 1: could be dumber than threatening trade sanctions on Canada and
Speaker 1: Europe and all the other countries who we need to
Speaker 1: cooperate with us if we're to have a realistic chance
Speaker 1: of influencing China's behavior. Larry, I want to come back
Speaker 1: to the unit statis just for a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: here because you've expressed concern about how quickly we're coming back,
Speaker 1: at least in some parts of the country, whether we're ready,
Speaker 1: whether we have the testing, the contact tracing, things like that.
Speaker 1: We are starting to open back up, even here in
Speaker 1: New York. Now we're hearing New York City maybe open
Speaker 1: with the next couple of weeks. How will it be
Speaker 1: different these cities now, these big cities are a lot
Speaker 1: of talk now, But what are these cities like New
Speaker 1: York City, like Boston, the places, whether they'll ever be
Speaker 1: the same again. Look, I think to two separate questions there,
Speaker 1: uh David. Several weeks ago um a set of criteria
Speaker 1: were laid out. There seemed to be a consensus around
Speaker 1: those criteria. In fact, the Trump administration laid them out
Speaker 1: for how much progress we had to make with respect
Speaker 1: to health, how much death counts had to come down,
Speaker 1: how much testing had to be in place. None of
Speaker 1: those criteria have been matched, and we're still moving ahead.
Speaker 1: And I think those were probably reasonable criteria when we
Speaker 1: laid them out, and I think it's therefore quite risky
Speaker 1: to be moving ahead. I can understand why the decision
Speaker 1: is being made, but I'm very concerned that I think
Speaker 1: we are taking substantial risks of a second wave of
Speaker 1: a re emergence UH. Everything the world knows about pandemic
Speaker 1: disease suggests that it doesn't grow. It's not an inverted V.
Speaker 1: It doesn't grow and then revert back to zero. It's
Speaker 1: more like upside down. W It goes up and then
Speaker 1: it comes down, and then it goes up again. And
Speaker 1: I think we're taking a substantial risk of that, and people, UH, markets,
Speaker 1: UH need to be aware that that's very much a
Speaker 1: risk we're taking. We could be doing much more to
Speaker 1: minimize that risk. We could have a much more organized
Speaker 1: national effort to make to massively increase the level of
Speaker 1: testing UH in the United States, for example, but we don't.
Speaker 1: We could be engaged in a major effort when there
Speaker 1: are tens of millions of people who are unemployed, to
Speaker 1: hire people to do contact tracing so as to reduce
Speaker 1: UH the spread. We could recognize, as is increasingly being
Speaker 1: recognized by the scientists, the problem of super spreaders and
Speaker 1: be trying to pursue targeted strategies directed at making sure
Speaker 1: that any superspreaders are separated from the rest of the population.
Speaker 1: As rapidly as possible. But we're not doing any of that,
Speaker 1: and so I think we are taking substantial, uh needless
Speaker 1: risks of more trouble down the road. We may look out,
Speaker 1: it may be okay, nobody can predict uh pandemics, but
Speaker 1: uh sometimes people don't buy insurance and they don't get
Speaker 1: sick and it work shout. Okay not to have what insurance,
Speaker 1: But that doesn't make it the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: So I'm alarmed our strategy. I think it's extremely odd
Speaker 1: that as a country we are debating, and this is
Speaker 1: a bipartisan issue, we're debating a three trillion dollar bill,
Speaker 1: and not two percent of it is devoted to uh
Speaker 1: finding vaccines and therapies and increasing testing. And so I
Speaker 1: would suggest as a minimum threshold of responsibility that of
Speaker 1: any legislation we devote to addressing these economic problems be
Speaker 1: devoted to the health aspect. Okay, there you have it,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Larry some re Seon, a special
Speaker 1: contributor of Courstion is former Secretary Treasury. That's it for
Speaker 1: this edition of Walstert Week. I'm David Weston. See you
Speaker 1: next week. This is Bloomberg