Latest / Stephanomics / Covid-19’s Fresh Injustice for Black-Owned American Businesses

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Covid-19’s Fresh Injustice for Black-Owned American Businesses · Stephanomics

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It was a toll of thirty five years that I
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: was in that I was didn't do this like I said.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I started in the Martian and then I begin to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: do four times and I stayed in the same location
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: until the unfortunate closing March twelve of Hello and welcome
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the COVID global economy
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  Speaker 1: to you. And that was Isaac Thomas, who closed the
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  Speaker 1: doors of his taekwondo studio in Atlanta in mid March
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and will not be reopening him. More than three million
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: small businesses have shut in the US since February. The
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  Speaker 1: global tally must run into the tens of millions. In
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  Speaker 1: a little while, I'll be asking Bloomberg chief economist Tom
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Orlick how much of the economic damage we've seen from
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: COVID nineteen is likely to be quick. He reversed, he
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: has some new research suggesting depressingly that nearly one in
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  Speaker 1: three of the jobs lost in the US due to
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  Speaker 1: the crisis may not be coming back. But first, we're
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  Speaker 1: going to hear more about Isaac Thomas, because his experience
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  Speaker 1: also speaks to the particularly high price that African Americans
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  Speaker 1: have paid for COVID nineteen in Atlanta and across the US,
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  Speaker 1: the National Bureau of Economic Research reckons the number of
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  Speaker 1: black entrepreneurs in America fell by forty between February and April.
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  Speaker 1: That's more than twice the decline in the number of
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  Speaker 1: white owned businesses. US Economy reporter in Atlanta, Mike Sasso
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  Speaker 1: has dug deeper into this story, and he's with me now. Mike.
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  Speaker 1: Listeners will remember we last spoke to you back in April,
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  Speaker 1: when the governor of Georgia was reopening the economy well
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  Speaker 1: ahead of everyone else. I'd like to hear that's going.
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  Speaker 1: But first tell me about the story you wrote with
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  Speaker 1: your colleague Sajo Kishan. What did you find out. Well, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: African American businesses have been really hit hard by the
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  Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic, to much greater extent than white
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  Speaker 1: and frankly other uh several other ethnic groups. African American
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  Speaker 1: owned businesses about forty one percent, or more than four
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  Speaker 1: and ten have closed at least temporarily through the pandemic.
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  Speaker 1: That's more than double the rate of white owned businesses.
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  Speaker 1: About seventeen percent of all white owned businesses have shot
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  Speaker 1: at least temporarily during the pandemic. Uh and some even
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  Speaker 1: even more so than in other hard hit groups like
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  Speaker 1: immigrant in Hispanic owned businesses are each around thirty or
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  Speaker 1: thirty five percent, and the numbers involved are enormous. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: we're talking about four hundred and forty thousand black small
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  Speaker 1: businesses closing between February and April. M We know that
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  Speaker 1: a lot of African American owned businesses, that entrepreneurs find
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  Speaker 1: it harder. But what are the factors that researches a
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  Speaker 1: looking at when they try and think why so many
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  Speaker 1: black owned businesses have gone bust? I mean, it is
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  Speaker 1: partly about the sectors they're in. I guess, yeah, there's
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  Speaker 1: a there's a range of of ideas about this one.
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  Speaker 1: They have been hit by this pandemic, partly because you know,
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  Speaker 1: African Americans in general have been hit hard by the pandemic.
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  Speaker 1: You know, just healthwise. Only about thirty two or thirty
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  Speaker 1: five percent of the population of Atlanta is African American,
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  Speaker 1: which is higher than the nation at large, but still
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  Speaker 1: a minority of of Atlanta's population, and yet eighty percent
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  Speaker 1: of the hospitalized patients in the Atlanta area where African
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  Speaker 1: American so a huge disproportionate number of them are being
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  Speaker 1: hit by health wise. Uh. And then there are longer
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  Speaker 1: standing issues with with financing of their businesses. Um, they
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  Speaker 1: have had a historically harder time getting loans. Even recently,
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  Speaker 1: only about twenty nine or thirty percent of African American
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  Speaker 1: in businesses have been able to get a bank loan. UH.
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  Speaker 1: That's meanwhile, white owned businesses are closer about two thirds
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  Speaker 1: able to tap into bank credit. So that's a major issue.
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  Speaker 1: And then there are you know, they do tend to
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  Speaker 1: be in industries that are getting hit harder by this. Basically,
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  Speaker 1: the best small business to be in in America right
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  Speaker 1: now is agriculture. Unfortunately, African Americans are not, you know,
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  Speaker 1: significantly in agriculture in any great numbers. They are in
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  Speaker 1: in what they call this broad category called personal services.
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  Speaker 1: So think of dry cleaners and hair salons and whatnot,
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  Speaker 1: and those are among the most hardest hit businesses. So
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  Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors, both historic and more recent,
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  Speaker 1: contributing to this. Well, I know you looked at a
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  Speaker 1: lot of research, but you also talked to quite a
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  Speaker 1: few local African American business owners, including Isaac Thomas. Let's
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  Speaker 1: there a bit more now, I was still always been
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  Speaker 1: fascinated with this martial arts. So I began to to
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  Speaker 1: study off and on, and then I got very serious
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  Speaker 1: about it in nineteen seventy nine. And when I tell
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  Speaker 1: my black daughter, I always wanted to be a teacher.
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  Speaker 1: That's how Atlanta Tykwandos started back in nineteen What happened
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  Speaker 1: starting take me back to earlier or mid March. On
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  Speaker 1: March fourteenth, I said, I told my wife, I said,
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  Speaker 1: I know my body something's wrong. So I drove myself
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  Speaker 1: to the Veteran's Administrations Hospital and Claremont Road, and that's
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  Speaker 1: when they determined that I had a fever. Uh. They
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  Speaker 1: took X ray blood work me for the COVID nineteen
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  Speaker 1: and I always diagnosed positives. March fourth I got the
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  Speaker 1: results on marching teams. So that was I get the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of the end. My wife herself, she was in
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  Speaker 1: the hospital for eighteen days on a ventrilator for toil
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  Speaker 1: and that was a very trying time there. So but
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  Speaker 1: the the governor and also the the mayor of Atlanta,
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  Speaker 1: the mayor of East Point, they just shut everything down,
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  Speaker 1: so that that caused me not to be able to
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  Speaker 1: make any income. Whatsoever from from my place of business.
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  Speaker 1: So that was again, like I said, that was the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of my end. So we had that Isaac was
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  Speaker 1: one of those business owners that got sick and that
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  Speaker 1: was part of the reason he couldn't keep up the
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  Speaker 1: business and his wife did as well. Yeah, Isaac is
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  Speaker 1: really compelling case. Uh. He he has started his taekwondo
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  Speaker 1: studio in in a predominantly African American area of Atlanta
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  Speaker 1: thirty five years ago. However, he admitted it has been
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  Speaker 1: a labor of love more so than a big money
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  Speaker 1: maker for him. He never was able to get much
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  Speaker 1: in terms of bank loans. He described how on occasion
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  Speaker 1: banks and other lenders would come to him offering money,
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  Speaker 1: but it was at times when he didn't need it,
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  Speaker 1: and at those periods when he did need it, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: they were not willing to come forward with money. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And then you take that historic trouble getting credit and
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  Speaker 1: compounded with his own illness, and it just didn't make
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  Speaker 1: any sense any longer to Isaac to keep going. He
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  Speaker 1: didn't have the money. Financing was a struggle and there
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  Speaker 1: were challenges to business. I mean the social distancing requirements
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  Speaker 1: put on by local governments, how you know he was
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  Speaker 1: not allowed to have more than ten people in his
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  Speaker 1: studio at any time. How do you operate a business
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  Speaker 1: a a tae kwondo studio where you need to have
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  Speaker 1: a number of you know, certain number of clients. How
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  Speaker 1: do you do that when you have to limit it
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  Speaker 1: to ten people? And and we did here, I mean
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  Speaker 1: partly because of that experience with getting credit when he
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  Speaker 1: really needed it in the park, asked he hadn't even
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  Speaker 1: tried to get access to the government loan schemes since
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  Speaker 1: the pandemic struck because he didn't want to get into
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  Speaker 1: more debt. And I guess he wasn't even sure he
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  Speaker 1: was going to get it. And that is something else
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  Speaker 1: that was brought out in your story that there was
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  Speaker 1: quite surveys of black and Hispanic business owners. Most of
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  Speaker 1: them were saying they weren't able to get or they
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  Speaker 1: hadn't yet been able to get assistance from the government.
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  Speaker 1: And you did ask him though, about what he thought
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  Speaker 1: about the future. So maybe let's just hear a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about that, and then I want to hear from
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  Speaker 1: you what you think things are like on the ground
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  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Do you think that they will be able
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  Speaker 1: to rebound quickly when maybe this virus gets under control,
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  Speaker 1: or do you do you foresee a longer, more difficult
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  Speaker 1: come back in most instances is probably going to be
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  Speaker 1: longer because uh, we're probably not gonna be able to
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  Speaker 1: get the amount of fan anything or the amount of
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  Speaker 1: loan they would really need. And it's understandable somewhat because
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  Speaker 1: like I say, they couldn't extend to me just a
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  Speaker 1: uh large amount of loan when I'm not bringing in
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  Speaker 1: that kind of money. So I understand the economics. So
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  Speaker 1: that's why I think that was gonna be a little
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  Speaker 1: bit behind unless you get hopefully you've got those businesses
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  Speaker 1: out there who are making good money and they can
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  Speaker 1: get these loans and get themselves back on their feet.
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  Speaker 1: And I really applaud them, the ones who are hanging
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  Speaker 1: in there to make it through. And what's in your future, well,
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  Speaker 1: that's it's it's it's really uncertain right now. I have
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  Speaker 1: many of my students want me to uh I use
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  Speaker 1: the term like from the mood of Blues Brothers. They
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  Speaker 1: want me to get the band back together and then
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  Speaker 1: uh and I talked to him, and I may start
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  Speaker 1: doing something on a smaller scale, but the the what's
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  Speaker 1: important thing right now as my family, like my wife,
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  Speaker 1: I may do it on a smaller scale, but probably
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  Speaker 1: not to the scale that's before. The last time we spoke,
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  Speaker 1: you had braved the waffle house. When the Georgian governor
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  Speaker 1: had opened up restaurants bars. I think it was tattoo
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  Speaker 1: parlors Neil Salance, way ahead of expert advice. How is
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  Speaker 1: that going and things getting back to normal? Have you
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  Speaker 1: seen um COVID cases continuing to rise as I know
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  Speaker 1: you have in some states in the US. Yeah, you're right.
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  Speaker 1: Georgia was the first American state to open in any
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  Speaker 1: meaningful way back you know, it was late late April.
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  Speaker 1: I will say it's it's fairly you know, seems to
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  Speaker 1: feel like getting back to normal here. There's a restaurant
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  Speaker 1: booking service Open Table, where you go in you book
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  Speaker 1: tables in advance at restaurants, particularly in the South. Bookings
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  Speaker 1: are are increasing at a restaurants, particularly in Florida. I
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  Speaker 1: was just looking about fifty five percent of uh the
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  Speaker 1: Florida restaurants rather have picked up about fifty five percent
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  Speaker 1: of their previous business, so they're only down about forty
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  Speaker 1: I guess I have to ask you you I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to know whether your favorite restaurant had opened yet last time,
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  Speaker 1: and it hadn't opened. Have you been able to go
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  Speaker 1: to your what was it the Korean restaurant that you
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  Speaker 1: talked about? You know, honestly, it's a good question. I
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  Speaker 1: haven't been by there. I have a little seven seven
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  Speaker 1: year old daughter who loves kind of schlocky chain restaurants.
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  Speaker 1: There's uh one called Chilis here in America and Applebee's,
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  Speaker 1: and while they're not my favorite, um she she, she
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  Speaker 1: loves the chains, and so we're kind of dominated by
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  Speaker 1: what my what my seven year old what's in Korean?
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  Speaker 1: Tagos are not yet her favorite. I can just imagine
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  Speaker 1: sitting in lockdown craving your first meal, and then the
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  Speaker 1: first meal is at Chili's. Um. Not that there's anything
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  Speaker 1: wrong with that, Thank you very much, Mike Sass. So
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  Speaker 1: we touched there on a massive question hanging over not
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  Speaker 1: only business owners like Isaac Thomas, but governments around the world,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: well everyone really, as they try to look to the future.
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  Speaker 1: What we all want to know is how many of
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  Speaker 1: the jobs and businesses we've lost in the past few
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  Speaker 1: months will automatically come back as lockdowns are eased, and
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  Speaker 1: how many might be gone for good or at least
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: a long time. Well, our chief economist Tom Warlick, great
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: friend of Stephanomics, just published some work on this with
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: two colleagues beyond Von Roy and Scott Johnson. Tom, welcome back.
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  Speaker 1: I know this was quite a sophisticated model, but can
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  Speaker 1: you briefly explain the approach you took and what some
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: of the key conclusions were. Great to be back, Stephanie. So,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the key question in terms of the unemployment impact of
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  Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen recession is how much of this is
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  Speaker 1: just a supply and demand shock. Jobs that are gone
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  Speaker 1: but which will come back quite quickly once the lockdown
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  Speaker 1: ends and stimulus starts hitting the economy, and what share
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  Speaker 1: of them represent what economists call a reallocation shock, So
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  Speaker 1: a shock that comes because consumers are going to change
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  Speaker 1: their behavior. They're not going to go back to restaurants,
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  Speaker 1: they're not going to go back to nightclubs, they're not
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  Speaker 1: going to go on and fly on airlines, and those
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  Speaker 1: jobs which are the result of the reallocation shock. The
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  Speaker 1: assumption is, well, they might be gone for good, or
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: at least gone for a protracted period of time. So
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: what we did was we looked at flows in and
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: out of the US labor market, of the US labor
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  Speaker 1: market on a sector basis, and what we did was
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  Speaker 1: we said, Okay, if a particular sector has a lot
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  Speaker 1: of job separations, a lot of people getting kicked out
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  Speaker 1: of work, but not a lot of vacancies, that's a
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  Speaker 1: supply and demand shock and those jobs could come back
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  Speaker 1: pretty quickly once the lockdown ends. But if a sector
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  Speaker 1: has a lot of job separations but also a lot
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  Speaker 1: of vacancies, then that's evidence that there's a reallocation shock underway,
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  Speaker 1: and those jobs are going to take longer to come
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: back because people are going to need training, they're going
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to need to build connections with new firms, they might
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: need to move around the country before they find employment.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a it's a compelling model, but really it's
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: only a model, so we have to take the results
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  Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. But what they're suggesting is
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  Speaker 1: that actually we're facing a pretty significant reallocation shock. Around
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: thirty of the jobs in the US which have been
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: lost between February and May are the result of reallocation.
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  Speaker 1: And what that suggests is we're going to see the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of a V shaped recovery in the labor market.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of jobs are going to come back quite quickly,
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  Speaker 1: but for around thirty of the newly unemployed, UM, there's
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: going to be a long slog back to back to employment.
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  Speaker 1: Just just so we have a way of thinking about this.
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  Speaker 1: If you were in a in a retail or restaurant industry,
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  Speaker 1: for example, if you're getting rid of a lot of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: waiters because you think it's going to be quite a
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: long time before you can have people back in the restaurants,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: but you have increased your online business and your delivery
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  Speaker 1: business with that, with that kind of shop, is that
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  Speaker 1: the kind of reallocation shock are we talking about or
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: we're talking about something more lasting than that, right? So, yeah,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: an intuitive way of thinking about it would be the
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Amazon effect. We've got a local grocery store that used
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: to have a bunch of staff dealing face to face
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: with customers who would come in to buy their vegetables
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  Speaker 1: and their milk and so on. But because of COVID,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: people have decided, you know what, I want to minimize
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: my contagion risks. I don't want to go to the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: grocery store. So I'm going to switch my grocery purchases
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  Speaker 1: from the grocery store to Amazon Amazon Prime, and I'm
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: going to get everything delivered. So we see some jobs
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  Speaker 1: disappearing in that local grocery store. We see some jobs
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  Speaker 1: being created in the Amazon warehouse and the delivery company.
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  Speaker 1: That's the reallocation shock. Now that anecdote and the one
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: which you sort of shared about the restaurant switching to online,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: what that suggests is that the reallocation happens, in a
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: sense in a seamless way. Right, So person A walks
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  Speaker 1: out of a job on day one and into another job,
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  Speaker 1: maybe with the same company, in day two. The trouble
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  Speaker 1: is that reallocation rarely happens in such a smooth way.
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  Speaker 1: We see businesses dying, we see other businesses growing and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: other businesses being created. We see people moving from companies
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  Speaker 1: and from between sectors and between locations. But these things
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  Speaker 1: take a considerable period of time. Most people don't stop
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: being a waiter on day one and start being a
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: delivery person on day two. That transition takes weeks, months,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes even longer. What are the most vulnerable sectors? If
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: we I mean we've already mentioned retail. Is that where
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the reallocation looks like it's taken place retail, hospitality, or
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: is it broader than that. We actually took two approaches
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: to looking at this question. The first one I just described,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: that's where we look at flows in and out of
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: the labor market. The second one, and this was the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: work pursued by Scott Johnson, is where we looked at
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the dispersion of equity market returns. And the idea there
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: that if you see equity market investors making a big
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: bet on profits in one sector but getting really cautious
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: or pessimistic on profits in another sector, then that's an
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  Speaker 1: early signal that there's going to be a reallocation taking place.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: So we use both approaches to look at the size
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: of the reallocation shock and where the reallocation shock is
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: going to be biggest. And yes, retail shows up big
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and in both approaches. Hospitality shows up big in both approaches.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: But there's also sectors like oil and gas, for example,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: which are not so directly related to the COVID shock.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: They're not going to be affected by people's preference for
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: face to face contact or not. But because the COVID
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: shock has hammered oil prices. That is also going to
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: lead to a significant reallocation within the oil and gas sector.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: There's going to be some high cost producers that go
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  Speaker 1: out of business, there's going to be some low cost
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: producers that start doing more. And of course, when you're
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: thinking about a sector like that, the reallocation between firms,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the cost to workers of losing their job and finding
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: another one starts to look much higher than in that
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: kind of intuitive example about the shift from the waiter
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  Speaker 1: to delivery person, where you know, one might hope that
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: that happened more quickly. Tom, you said at the start,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: we should take the results of this with a pinch
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: of salt. It's just an economic model. I guess some
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: people would say what you're calling a reallocation shock is
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a behavioral change by consumers that could disappear if we
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: have a vaccine, if we have an end to this
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: crisis sooner than people are expecting. And that's true, right.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: There is a lot of uncertainty here, absolutely, Stephanie, and
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I think I flag a few things. So the first is,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and this is what you just mentioned, if this all
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: comes back under control really quickly, Um, and it turns
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: out people have short memories and they decide this was
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a one off and their behavior essentially goes back to normal.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Then the reallocation shock could well be significantly smaller than
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: our model suggests. But I'd point to a couple of
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: cautions before before jumping to that optimistic conclusion. So the
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: first one is, actually, if we look at what's happening
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: with the disease case cone around the world, that doesn't
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: seem to be how things are playing out UM. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: if we look at how people behave in countries like
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Sweden and Korea UM, which don't have the same type
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: restrictions in place, what we see is that actually, even
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: when lockdown's ease, fear of contagion continues to be a
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: factor that changes behavior. And the second thing is, Okay,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: let's say we have an optimistic scenario where this thing's
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: things come under control and the disease stops being an
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: issue in in three months or in six months time. Well,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of businesses that sadly are just not
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: going to make it that distance. So even if the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: disease gets taken out of the equation, we're still going
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to have reallocation because of what economists call the sort
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of the Matthew effect, to him that hath shall be
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: given to him, that hath not shall be taken away.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And we're seeing that playing out really viciously in this
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: COVID shock. Lots of small bricks and mortar business is
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: going under, lots of big e commerce platforms grabbing more
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: market share. And what that suggests to me is that
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: even when the disease comes under control, there's still going
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to be some significant reallocation that's taken place. Clearly, governments
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: can't hope for the best, even if there is a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: possibility that some of this will turn out to be overstated.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: What are the implications if a third of these job
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: losses give or take, are more structural in nature, at
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: least potentially more lasting. What what should governments be doing
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: to try and mitigate that. Are we talking training programs?
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: What do you think would be most effective. That's a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: great question, um, and it sort of speaks to the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: difficulty which governments have in framing the right policy response. UM.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: If you've got essentially a demand shock where the problem
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: for employment is there's not enough spending taking place, then
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: what government should be doing is very very aggressively supporting demand,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: putting more money into people's pockets, paying businesses to keep
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: hold of their workers through the lockdown. UM. If we're
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: actually looking at a significant reallocation shock, painful though it is, UM,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: what's needed is for governments to get out of the way, UM,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: allow a period of higher unemployment, allow some business bankruptcies
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to take place to speed that reallocation UM. And in
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: that circumstance, massive support for demand would actually create more
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: problems in the longer term. I mean my feeling is
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the complexity is through sequencing. Right now in the lockdown,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: clearly the supply and demand shock is dominating, and that's
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the period for massive government support. Once the lockdown starts
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to ease, will get a clearer picture of the size
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: of the reallocation shock and where it's particularly important, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: that is when governments are going to have to start
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: being a bit more nuanced and differentiating a bit more
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: in terms of where they provide support and where they
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: step out of the way. And that difference is exactly
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the contrast that Jason Furman drew between Europe and the
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: US last week, and I think we've we're seeing it
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: play out in real time, and we are, as you say,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: only just beginning to find out which might be more affective.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: But Tom, thanks very much, thanks for having me on Stephanie.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Please don't reallocate me. Thanks for listening to Stephanis. We'll
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: be back next week with more on how COVID nineteen
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: is turning the global economy upside down. Remember you can
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: always find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website, app or
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and for more news and
• 24:12
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• 24:17
  Speaker 1: episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson, with special thanks to
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Mike Sasso, Segel Kishan, Tom Orlick, Jorn Van Roy, and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Scott Johnson. Lucy Meekin is the acting executive producer of
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Stephanomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Francesca Leading