Speaker 1: January, just waiting for the numbers to come out here
Speaker 1: and so far what we've seen is a few numbers.
Speaker 1: Underneath here we go unemployment, um employment. Father Rose, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm a little stunned here by this number. Employment rose
Speaker 1: by two and a half million in May. According to
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate fell to
Speaker 1: thirteen point three percent. I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to look at these lumbers. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the COVID global
Speaker 1: economy to you. And what you've just heard was a
Speaker 1: big surprise that happened last week when the US job
Speaker 1: numbers came out. Everyone expected US unemployment to go up again,
Speaker 1: but instead, as you heard, it fell. Unemployment rose by
Speaker 1: two and a half million, when the forecast has been
Speaker 1: for it to fall by seven and a half million.
Speaker 1: That's a big forecast era even for economists. But stunned,
Speaker 1: though he was the very experienced reporter you heard there,
Speaker 1: Mike McKee was quick to spot something else in those
Speaker 1: figures that sadly was not so surprising. Though the unemployment
Speaker 1: rate for white Americans had fallen, the rate for Black
Speaker 1: Americans had continued to rise to a decade high of
Speaker 1: nearly seventeen percent. We've spoken in the past on Stephanomics
Speaker 1: about the way that minorities have been hit first and
Speaker 1: hardest by the COVID recession, losing their jobs more quickly
Speaker 1: as well as dying at much higher rates from the
Speaker 1: virus itself, and African Americans have a lot fewer savings
Speaker 1: to fall back on when they lose their job or
Speaker 1: get sick. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, the
Speaker 1: latest figures show the average African American household had a
Speaker 1: net worth of just over seventeen thousand dollars. That's one
Speaker 1: tenth the net worth of the median white household, one tenth.
Speaker 1: In a little while, I'm going to play you part
Speaker 1: of a conversation about the future for US jobs and
Speaker 1: the economy with the former chairman of President Obama's Council
Speaker 1: of Economic Advisors, now a Harvard professor, Jason Furman. I'm
Speaker 1: also going to talk to our sub Saharan Africa economist
Speaker 1: b Hassi Lawe in Johannesburg about the financing gap facing
Speaker 1: African economies as a result of COVID nineteen but first,
Speaker 1: the protests in US streets and those jobs figures have
Speaker 1: put inequality high on the agenda, and given that the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve is meeting this week, it seemed especially timely
Speaker 1: to consider the challenge that these stark economic disparities pose
Speaker 1: to the US Central Bank as it sets policy in
Speaker 1: theory for the whole economy. Matthew Bosler is a U
Speaker 1: S economy reporter based in New York. Matt, You've taken
Speaker 1: a look at this, and it is not a new
Speaker 1: issue for the Federal Reserve, is it. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's something that they've been really looking at more and
Speaker 1: more over the last few years, and in the last
Speaker 1: year or so, they've actually launched a formal reviewer their
Speaker 1: entire policy making framework. That's really overturning assumptions and practices
Speaker 1: that go back many decades at the Central Bank in
Speaker 1: terms of the way that they set interest rates um
Speaker 1: and so part of that involves looking at the way
Speaker 1: that their policy actually affects different groups. And for a
Speaker 1: long time they sort of set policy based on this
Speaker 1: notion of how it affects the overall economy the economic aggregates,
Speaker 1: without paying much attention to those disparities that exists within
Speaker 1: the economy, and something that they're really trying to do
Speaker 1: lately is take a finer look at how uh these
Speaker 1: different groups are being affected and their different experiences in
Speaker 1: the labor market and trying to incorporate that into their
Speaker 1: decision making process a little bit more explicitly. So let's
Speaker 1: some just tease out what that means in practice for policy.
Speaker 1: I mean, when they started raising interest rates after the
Speaker 1: global financial crisis in twin fifteen, that was when supposedly
Speaker 1: they'd reached full employment. But what was the black unemployment
Speaker 1: rate at that point. The black unemployment rate was eight
Speaker 1: point five percent and the white unemployment rate was four
Speaker 1: point four percent. And this kind of speaks to the
Speaker 1: whole issue of looking only at the economic aggregates when
Speaker 1: they set policy. So for many years, they've used the
Speaker 1: overall unemployment rate as a guide to inflationary pressures, and
Speaker 1: the theory goes that when the overall unemployment rate declines,
Speaker 1: then you start to see more inflationary pressures building in
Speaker 1: the economy. But the problem with that is if you're
Speaker 1: using the overall unemployment rate, that's obscuring these really wide
Speaker 1: disparities between groups like white Americans and Black Americans, for example,
Speaker 1: And so you get into this situation where you're raising
Speaker 1: interest rates and trying to slow down the economy even
Speaker 1: when unemployment for a group I Black Americans is still
Speaker 1: very high at levels that we would consider recessionary levels
Speaker 1: if we were talking about the overall unemployment rate. So
Speaker 1: this picture of two America's is really is really start there.
Speaker 1: And I was struck you had in the piece you
Speaker 1: wrote for Bloomberg about it, you had gone back to
Speaker 1: previous times where the fed's policy had been had had
Speaker 1: actually spurred some of the same kind of demonstrations that
Speaker 1: we've seen recently, or it helped to contribute to that.
Speaker 1: I think even in the even in the fifties, there
Speaker 1: was a sense that some of those interest rate right
Speaker 1: hikes then had helped trigger some of the March on
Speaker 1: Washington and pressure for the civil rights legislation in the sixties.
Speaker 1: That was news to me, That's right, And I think
Speaker 1: that is sort of lost in memory at this point
Speaker 1: for a lot of us observers of the modern FED,
Speaker 1: because we don't really think of the FED over the
Speaker 1: last few expansions as having raised rates really aggressively and
Speaker 1: sort of purpose put the economy into a downturn. But
Speaker 1: back in the fifties UH, sixties, seventies, and eighties, that
Speaker 1: was definitely more the case. You know, FED officials were
Speaker 1: more explicit about trying to you know, break the backs
Speaker 1: of unions and make it so that they would not
Speaker 1: be able to demand higher wages of the type that
Speaker 1: might cause a wage price spiral. And so back then
Speaker 1: this was a much more explicit part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: And as today, when the FED moved to Titan it
Speaker 1: would of course disproportionately affect black workers who were struggling
Speaker 1: to close the kinds of gaps that have existed in
Speaker 1: the labor market really going all the way back throughout
Speaker 1: the nation's history. And the other piece of this is
Speaker 1: the wealth side. I mean I mentioned that the typical
Speaker 1: African American household in Minneapolis UH had a tenth of
Speaker 1: the net worth the savings that it could fall back
Speaker 1: on was a new ten per cent of the average
Speaker 1: net worth of white households. And of course it's it's
Speaker 1: people with assets who have tended to benefit from quantitive easing,
Speaker 1: from the fact that asset prices are going up even
Speaker 1: now in the last few months, you've seen the stock
Speaker 1: markets come roaring back even as main street and the
Speaker 1: Black Americans are facing still a deep, deep recession. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that part of their thinking as well, that the
Speaker 1: wealth inequality is also especially in the age of quantitative easing,
Speaker 1: where the central bank is seen to be propping up
Speaker 1: asset prices. You know, that's another difficult area for them.
Speaker 1: I think that's a huge part of the story. And
Speaker 1: when you start talking about things like the racial wealth gap,
Speaker 1: the data on that front really look even a lot
Speaker 1: worse than the disparities that exist in the labor market.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one reason why this conversation has
Speaker 1: really grown louder in more recent years, because as what
Speaker 1: we saw in the Great Recession is that that was
Speaker 1: just extremely devastating for the Black community in terms of
Speaker 1: household wealth um and overall wealth, and that really hit
Speaker 1: them a lot harder than it did White Americans. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: those are the types of data points that economists are
Speaker 1: looking at more and more now, and the numbers are
Speaker 1: just so hard to ignore at this point that it's
Speaker 1: really become a lot more central part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: I guess what what many activists in this area was
Speaker 1: say is, well, it's all very well talking about it
Speaker 1: more um, but in practice, how is it going to
Speaker 1: change FED policy do you think going forward? Yes, So
Speaker 1: this is really about the Fed's attitude toward inflation and
Speaker 1: being reactive toward inflation versus being proactive toward inflation. And
Speaker 1: what we've really seen over the last thirty years or
Speaker 1: so since Paul Boker's tenure is that the FED tries
Speaker 1: to be pro active against scarding against inflation because they
Speaker 1: saw what could happen when you let inflation get out
Speaker 1: of control like it did in the nineties seventies, and
Speaker 1: so they've kind of had that mindset for many decades
Speaker 1: where they need to start raising rates ahead of time
Speaker 1: to get out of ahead of that and and squash
Speaker 1: it before it happens. But what we saw in the
Speaker 1: last ten years or so is that that playbook UH
Speaker 1: did not really serve lower income communities so well because
Speaker 1: it ended up foreclosing on you know, further job gains
Speaker 1: before it needed to UH and the inflation never materialized.
Speaker 1: And so that's a big part of the framework review
Speaker 1: that the FETE is undertaking now trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how can we do this in a way that does
Speaker 1: not prevent more people from getting jobs, more people from
Speaker 1: building wealth in the type of economy that we would
Speaker 1: normally think of as a hot economy, uh, one that
Speaker 1: is not necessarily spurring the types of inflationary pressures that
Speaker 1: demand an immediate response. And so I think for the FED,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to this idea of being more
Speaker 1: reactive and taking their time to really wait and see
Speaker 1: those inflationary pressures materialize before moving to slow things down.
Speaker 1: It seems so a million years ago that we were
Speaker 1: talking about running the economy hot. But you know, it
Speaker 1: was not so long ago at all that the even
Speaker 1: the white unemployment rate was three point four percent in
Speaker 1: the US compared to over um now, but do you
Speaker 1: think or nearly thirteen, But do you think just going
Speaker 1: back to the immediate prospects for jobs, I mean, have
Speaker 1: you changed your view of the way the labor market's
Speaker 1: going to work over the next few months as a
Speaker 1: result of that those surprising job numbers, because even even
Speaker 1: with the disconnect with the story for black Americans, it
Speaker 1: was pretty surprising to see the overall number of jobs
Speaker 1: go up. Does that do you think in the end,
Speaker 1: it look like the US the flexible US will come
Speaker 1: out of this better than others. So the tough thing
Speaker 1: about the jobs numbers that we just got when we're
Speaker 1: talking about these racial disparities, is that, yes, the job
Speaker 1: numbers were better than expected, and the unemployment rate for
Speaker 1: white Americans actually went down, but for Black Americans that
Speaker 1: went up further, and so it kind of speaks these
Speaker 1: disparities that exist. Typically, what you see in economic downturns
Speaker 1: is the gap between white and black unemployment rates tends
Speaker 1: to narrow in terms of the multiple uh that the
Speaker 1: black community faces. But then what happens is as we
Speaker 1: go into the recovery phase. In the early phase of recoveries,
Speaker 1: that gap starts to widen again, as white Americans are
Speaker 1: typically hired back into the workforce more quickly. And so
Speaker 1: that is going to be the real challenge for the
Speaker 1: FED and other policy makers going forward is trying to
Speaker 1: find a way to make the recovery more inclusive for
Speaker 1: all Americans in a way that typically has not been
Speaker 1: the case in the past, and prevent that dynamic from
Speaker 1: playing out again where it takes many years before black
Speaker 1: Americans can share in that recovery that white Americans experience
Speaker 1: well we will carry on watching. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: Matthew Bosler, thank you very much. Thank you. Now that
Speaker 1: question of what happens next for US jobs came up
Speaker 1: recently in a discussion I had with some very distinguished
Speaker 1: economists as part of an event organized by the European
Speaker 1: Leadership Network to Think Thanks, focused on improving relations between
Speaker 1: Europe and Israel. I can't play the whole thing. The
Speaker 1: sound wasn't good apart from anything else, but I thought
Speaker 1: you'd be interested in this exchange with Jason Furman. So,
Speaker 1: the US has seen a lot more job losses than
Speaker 1: Europe in the last few months. We talked about that
Speaker 1: in the past. He thought America might still come out ahead,
Speaker 1: assuming Congress doesn't mess things up. Two ways you can grow.
Speaker 1: One is people can go back to their old jobs.
Speaker 1: Businesses that were shuttered can reopen. That type of growth
Speaker 1: can happen very very quickly, and that's why you'll see
Speaker 1: fast growth in the third quarter. That's why you'll see
Speaker 1: tremendous job growth, um and the like. I think, though
Speaker 1: I'm underlying all of this, there will be parts of
Speaker 1: the economy that continue to be affected by the virus,
Speaker 1: whether it's travel or restaurants and the like. There also
Speaker 1: will be a lot of reallocation companies that decided they
Speaker 1: don't need to rehire everyone, or a company that was
Speaker 1: already having troubles before this, say department store, that goes
Speaker 1: bankrupt as a result to it. So you might get
Speaker 1: halfway back very quickly, but then you'll still be halfway
Speaker 1: um from where you started. In the United States, that
Speaker 1: would mean you're still you know, ten million jobs in
Speaker 1: the whole the equivalent of the financial crisis, and that
Speaker 1: next phase where you need to find jobs at new employers,
Speaker 1: maybe even worse, you need to find a job in
Speaker 1: a new industry, is a process that's never been very quick,
Speaker 1: and so I view that more as a slog. Don't
Speaker 1: expect us to get back to our per capita incomes
Speaker 1: that we had before the crisis until maybe three huge
Speaker 1: amount of uncertainty around that, but I think it could
Speaker 1: be many years before we even begin to get back
Speaker 1: to where we were before all of this. When you
Speaker 1: look to the next phase, what are the risks in
Speaker 1: the US? I guess, particularly around the election, the US
Speaker 1: fiscal response was huge. It's hard to compare across countries.
Speaker 1: It appears to be the the largest of any country. UM.
Speaker 1: One success of that, as you noted in the question
Speaker 1: you're asking Stephanie, is that in the month of April,
Speaker 1: households actually saw their disposable personal incomes rise even though
Speaker 1: there was massive job loss, and that's because of the
Speaker 1: transfers they got through unemployment insurance and UM through checks.
Speaker 1: I'm I think it's a real open question as to
Speaker 1: whether the US system, where an employer can furlow you
Speaker 1: and then you get a check from the government, or
Speaker 1: the European system where you continue to get a check
Speaker 1: from your employer and your employer gets a check from
Speaker 1: the government UM as to which of those will be
Speaker 1: better UM in the long term, I think to a
Speaker 1: first approximation, they might be more similar than everyone thinks.
Speaker 1: If Macy's reopens its stores, it's going to call back
Speaker 1: the employees that it furloughed. It won't not reopen a
Speaker 1: store because it can't find the people that work in
Speaker 1: that store and have to do a fresh new hiring process.
Speaker 1: So if you can reopen in the United States, I
Speaker 1: think you will bring UM your employees back. I think
Speaker 1: it gives you a little bit of an extra option
Speaker 1: on flexibility to handle the reallocations shock. The tricky thing
Speaker 1: over the next couple of months is that everything I've
Speaker 1: just talked that I think has been to some degree
Speaker 1: successful ends at the end of July, and you know,
Speaker 1: Congress came together quickly for the first round. UM. There's
Speaker 1: much more acrimony, much more polarization right now as people
Speaker 1: are talking about UM and debating re upping that round.
Speaker 1: States governments are cutting, which is counter productive to the
Speaker 1: overall for the recovery. Unemployment insurance I don't think should
Speaker 1: be extended exactly as it is, but I think if
Speaker 1: it comes to an end entirely UM, that would mean
Speaker 1: you know, some downward pressure on the economy going into
Speaker 1: the fall, and you know, for that reason alone, my
Speaker 1: guesses Republicans and Democrats will come together to agree on
Speaker 1: something another round. So now I wanted to talk about Africa.
Speaker 1: Something different we've seen in this crisis in the advanced
Speaker 1: economies is that though that output of the economy has
Speaker 1: shrunk further and faster than we've ever seen before, government
Speaker 1: spending has also come in and expanded by an unprecedented
Speaker 1: amount to support businesses and households, to the point where
Speaker 1: when you look at total incomes across the economy, they've
Speaker 1: barely fallen at all. In many cases, the government support
Speaker 1: has matched the decline in the economy, at least on paper,
Speaker 1: and that gives us some hope about the potential for
Speaker 1: a quick recovery out of this, at least for for
Speaker 1: many parts of the economy. But that's in the rich countries.
Speaker 1: The story in large parts of the developing world is
Speaker 1: very different, and we heard the economist Jeffreys talk about
Speaker 1: his worries on that score a few weeks ago. So
Speaker 1: our sub Saharan Africa economists b Haslawe has done the
Speaker 1: numbers for a number of African economies. Um. She's sitting
Speaker 1: in Johannesburg. B great to have you on. Stephanomics. Explained
Speaker 1: to us the calculation you've done and what the results were.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Stephanie. And I looked at six African economies,
Speaker 1: the sixth largest in terms of their presence in the
Speaker 1: commercial dead markets, private capital markets, and what I did
Speaker 1: there was I looked at the growth forecast that we
Speaker 1: had for them in October last year. I am a
Speaker 1: growth badcast, and then I compare them to the deterioration
Speaker 1: and that growth forecast that we have now in April
Speaker 1: twenty and then I used that difference to get a
Speaker 1: sense of what the last income or last output might
Speaker 1: be in those economies, and then to determine how much
Speaker 1: of that gap has been filled. I looked at three numbers.
Speaker 1: The first was sort of automatic stabilizers in those countries,
Speaker 1: and that's just to get a sense of, by virtue
Speaker 1: of the fact that output has fallen, UM, what are
Speaker 1: the safety nets embedded in the system that will make
Speaker 1: up for that gap. Now, unfortunately, Africa, unlike most of
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of advanced economies, and we have very
Speaker 1: little safety nets and taxes as a share of revenue
Speaker 1: account for a very small share of GDP, so that
Speaker 1: number was quite small. Then the next number that I
Speaker 1: looked at was discretionary fiscal measures, and that is over
Speaker 1: and above UM, what will automatically take place, What have
Speaker 1: government's done or announced um in order to supplement that
Speaker 1: or to try and cushion the fallen output. And then
Speaker 1: the last number was then to look at, Okay, on
Speaker 1: top of these two fiscal measures that have been announced,
Speaker 1: what is the I M have done to try and
Speaker 1: help cushion or bolster that response, um, I guess a
Speaker 1: broad conclu usion is just the funding gap or the
Speaker 1: income loss is massive. The stimulus in Africa has been
Speaker 1: less than a tenth of what developing countries have been
Speaker 1: able to do. And the obvious conclusion is then that, well,
Speaker 1: the recovery is going to be quite delayed, but also
Speaker 1: the falling output this year will be quite massive. We
Speaker 1: like you to see probably the largest contraction um on
Speaker 1: record this year as a result of cod And of
Speaker 1: course I guess that I mentioned at the start the
Speaker 1: differences that you're also seeing the largest ever decline and
Speaker 1: output at least ever short period for the advanced economies.
Speaker 1: But they, as you say, what the difference is that
Speaker 1: you've not had the capacity for government to really jump
Speaker 1: in the way they have in most of these economies.
Speaker 1: If we just want to put it in perspective, how
Speaker 1: does the potential economic impact of COVID compared to say,
Speaker 1: the global financial crisis of two thousand and eight nine
Speaker 1: for Africa. Sure, definitely the impact is a lot more
Speaker 1: devastating one just because of how quick it's been. The
Speaker 1: impact has been quite immediate, whereas so the impact of
Speaker 1: a financial crisis on Africa is a bit more of
Speaker 1: a slow burner, but also in terms of how the
Speaker 1: countries were positioned to respond or even absorb the shock,
Speaker 1: there are a lot weaker or more vulnerable this time around.
Speaker 1: Going into the financial crisis, we'd literally just come off
Speaker 1: the high of the commodity um price boom. A lot
Speaker 1: of countries had a lot more fiscal space and dead
Speaker 1: levels were a lot lower, so there was a lot
Speaker 1: more fiscal space to respond to the crisis this time around,
Speaker 1: not as much. You had growth pre the global financial
Speaker 1: crisis in the region averaging about six percent overall, and
Speaker 1: then after the crisis about three percent growth and debt
Speaker 1: levels then around and that's almost doubled now to about
Speaker 1: six The profile of it as well is also a
Speaker 1: lot more risky, which means um that there's a lot
Speaker 1: less scope to increase borrowing to make up for that
Speaker 1: short form. We've talked on the podcast before about this
Speaker 1: sort of big change in the attitude to government in
Speaker 1: a time of crisis. You know, we've had years of
Speaker 1: saying that the private sector should be left to do things,
Speaker 1: but when you have an emergency, the government has stepped
Speaker 1: right back in and people have been reminded of that
Speaker 1: core government sort of safety net function. But in Africa,
Speaker 1: as you say, has also been We've been told that
Speaker 1: private investment was the solution to Africa and there was
Speaker 1: lots of exciting talk about frontier markets and growth coming
Speaker 1: out of that for some of the more successful economies.
Speaker 1: Rwanda has been touted in some cases a lot of places,
Speaker 1: but they haven't got that safety net that that core
Speaker 1: government is just not there in the same way, and
Speaker 1: it it doesn't seem like there's an international replacement for that.
Speaker 1: What's also yeah, I don't think there's going to be
Speaker 1: a little there's gonna be any more support. And then
Speaker 1: even the support that has been given, um, if we
Speaker 1: just think about it, it's been mostly or let me
Speaker 1: split it one. Africa was completely unprepared from a health
Speaker 1: perspective coming into the crisis. So whatever money there was
Speaker 1: or whatever space there was, a lot of those resources
Speaker 1: have been diverted to preparing the health sector as opposed
Speaker 1: to bolstering the economy as what you've seen in advanced economies.
Speaker 1: That's the one thing. The second thing, um, in terms
Speaker 1: of the additional international support that you might see. UM,
Speaker 1: the debate so far has centered around dead relief UM
Speaker 1: or you know, UM stalling dead payments for this year.
Speaker 1: That has helped a lot, but that still falls short
Speaker 1: given the fact that a lot of countries actually didn't
Speaker 1: have dead payments do this year. UM So that's still
Speaker 1: not wanting. And then in terms of the loans and
Speaker 1: the external support that I've spoken about that hasn't really
Speaker 1: come through and what that has done, I think, UM
Speaker 1: in terms of affecting Africa's response to the crisis is
Speaker 1: that you've been forced to choose between containing the virus
Speaker 1: and allowing livelihoods UM and people to just go out
Speaker 1: and continue by themselves. UM. So in Africa, I think
Speaker 1: one thing that's been different is well, one we were
Speaker 1: quite quick to respond to lockdown or to we were
Speaker 1: quite quick to respond to the virus. But we've also
Speaker 1: been very quick to lift the lockdowns that we had,
Speaker 1: and I think that's been necessitated by the fact that
Speaker 1: governments actually don't have much to offer. And so then
Speaker 1: you then I guess I have to allow people to
Speaker 1: go out and continue to fend for themselves. Um. A
Speaker 1: lot of the population UM is engaged in informal activity,
Speaker 1: and in that sense, even if you did have some
Speaker 1: kind of safety in it, it's difficult to deploy it.
Speaker 1: So I think we've been lived in a position where
Speaker 1: governments have just how don't know, you just let people
Speaker 1: go out and try and mitigate however they can. It's
Speaker 1: such a stark trade off that these governments are facing
Speaker 1: and you're living with it, uh to some extent around
Speaker 1: you in in Johannesburg. You just moved back there, um,
Speaker 1: having joined Bloomberg at the beginning of the year. I mean,
Speaker 1: how how have you found it the last few months
Speaker 1: during the COVID crisis. To some extent, I've been shielded
Speaker 1: from it. But one that highlights, I guess the gross
Speaker 1: inequality of how differently the virus has been impacting people. UM.
Speaker 1: But one thing I think that's been very clear to
Speaker 1: me is just the fact that government, how limited government
Speaker 1: is in the ability to respond. UM. Government has been
Speaker 1: quite slow to you know, roll out or respond and
Speaker 1: with the stimulus package that they've that they've given, and
Speaker 1: I think it shows to you the additional headwinds I
Speaker 1: think that African countries have to contend with during UM,
Speaker 1: during I guess this pandemic, And how do you how
Speaker 1: do you feel about going out of your house, your friends.
Speaker 1: I don't leave my house at all, just one because um,
Speaker 1: the virus is still ramping up. I would not like
Speaker 1: to find myself in hospital anyway, UM during this time
Speaker 1: UM And I think that's generally been the approach of
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends. But again, that speaks somehow
Speaker 1: to a level of privilege. There are some people who
Speaker 1: don't have, um, the privilege of making the choice. They
Speaker 1: do have to go out again, because you either go
Speaker 1: out to make a living or you stay home and
Speaker 1: you have absolutely nothing. And so that's been tough, but overall,
Speaker 1: from the comfort of my home, comfortable and scary. But
Speaker 1: I think concerning UM, given who bears or who's most
Speaker 1: impacted UM, and that government is unable to mitigate the
Speaker 1: impact of that, I think that's perhaps in the starkest
Speaker 1: thing for me to contend with, and your numbers make
Speaker 1: it very stark as well. A tenth of the response
Speaker 1: that governments have been able to do relative to the
Speaker 1: shop compared with advanced economies, UM be hassi lawa, we
Speaker 1: will come back to you. I fear this is one
Speaker 1: part of the COVID story that's going to be with
Speaker 1: us for a long time. But thank you very much.
Speaker 1: It's it's a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Stephanomics. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with more on how COVID nineteen is transforming the global economy.
Speaker 1: Remember you can always find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website, app,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, and you can also
Speaker 1: get more news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics by following
Speaker 1: at Economics on Twitter. This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson,
Speaker 1: with special thanks to Matthew Bosler, Jason Furman, l Nett,
Speaker 1: Startup Nation Central, be Hassi Lawe, and Mike McKee. Lucy
Speaker 1: Meekin is the acting executive producer of Stephanomics and the
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg podcast is francesco leag