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Cumberland's Kotok: Not Seeing Inflationary Forces Yet · Bloomberg Intelligence

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney. Alongside
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Speaker 1: up every year at Camp ko Talk to UH to
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Speaker 1: cast a Rod. I don't know if that's even how
0:38
Speaker 1: you say it, but um David KO Talk joins us
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Speaker 1: himself right now, Chairman and chief investment Officer at Cumberland Advisors. David,
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Speaker 1: I feel like McKee has gone, Rid Holtz has gone.
0:49
Speaker 1: Kathleen Hayes, I've never gotten invite to Camp COO Talk
0:53
Speaker 1: might be a reason. Officially and in the presence of
0:57
Speaker 1: anybody who's listening in care, you are invited this August,
1:03
Speaker 1: and we would love to have you. They made I
1:07
Speaker 1: can actually go home now, but I want to ask
1:09
Speaker 1: you a couple of questions. David, first, about the state
1:12
Speaker 1: of the U S economy, especially in light of today's
1:15
Speaker 1: jobs report, it looked great, but there's still millions of
1:18
Speaker 1: people without jobs. We talked about the high savings rate,
1:21
Speaker 1: but there's so many people who can't even afford to
1:23
Speaker 1: pay rent. Is this is this K shaped recovery a
1:28
Speaker 1: problem for the FED? For example, it appears so um.
1:34
Speaker 1: J Pal said so um. Others in the FED continue
1:38
Speaker 1: to say so. And we shouldn't be deceived by the
1:44
Speaker 1: six percent or so official unemployment rate. When you recomputed,
1:49
Speaker 1: to reflect some technical differences, it's closer to say ten percent.
1:55
Speaker 1: So you think about that. You say, see, there were
1:58
Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifty five million, hundred and fifty
2:01
Speaker 1: two millions something like that non farm payrolls before COVID started,
2:07
Speaker 1: and there's fifteen million people out of that group that
2:12
Speaker 1: are not employed today. Some of them have dropped out,
2:16
Speaker 1: some of them are in the unemployment rate. That the
2:18
Speaker 1: picture is recovery which is robust, but it's coming off
2:22
Speaker 1: a very deep bottom. So I wouldn't get sanguine that
2:27
Speaker 1: everything's going back to normal and everything is wonderful. I
2:31
Speaker 1: don't think we're there yet, but the trend is good, David.
2:35
Speaker 1: You know, we again, the trend is good, there's also
2:38
Speaker 1: been some I guess the murmur starting to build here
2:41
Speaker 1: over the last couple of weeks about inflation and and
2:43
Speaker 1: maybe not the good kind of inflation. How are you
2:47
Speaker 1: thinking about kind of what we're seeing maybe in the
2:48
Speaker 1: commodities markets, we're seeing the treasuries tenure over one point
2:52
Speaker 1: six percent even earlier this morning. How do you think
2:55
Speaker 1: about inflation? Well, we we look at inflation expectation. They
3:00
Speaker 1: are building, there's various ways to estimate them, and they're
3:05
Speaker 1: all saying that the expectation is rising. My colleague Jung
3:10
Speaker 1: Whoso talks about that all the time. The problem is
3:14
Speaker 1: expectations are one thing. Delivering a change in the price
3:19
Speaker 1: level of a strategic elevation is something else. Again, hard
3:26
Speaker 1: to see it when you have a true unemployment rate
3:31
Speaker 1: somewhere around ten percent in the country. So maybe down
3:34
Speaker 1: the road it comes. But we're more mild or sanguine
3:40
Speaker 1: about higher inflation risk than some of the others. Actually
3:45
Speaker 1: spoke yesterday with Scott Minerd of Guggenheim. He's well, I mean,
3:50
Speaker 1: he's an outlier, right, he thinks the tenure yield could
3:53
Speaker 1: go negative. But his point was that disinflationary um forces
3:59
Speaker 1: are much stronger than what he sees as transient inflation.
4:03
Speaker 1: He says, you always see a spike in yields like this,
4:07
Speaker 1: but it's um you know, but but it doesn't stay.
4:10
Speaker 1: Do you look at historically and come of the same
4:13
Speaker 1: conclusion pretty much? So I saw the U I saw
4:18
Speaker 1: the interview with Scott and and the you know their
4:21
Speaker 1: two camps. Now there's the camp that says, jee, the
4:26
Speaker 1: FETE is printing all this money, we're having all this
4:28
Speaker 1: defic set spending, We're going to get a big inflation.
4:31
Speaker 1: Well sometimes that happens, but there's a lot of history
4:34
Speaker 1: it says that doesn't happen. And I raised a different perspective.
4:38
Speaker 1: I say, to get inflation, you need two things. You
4:42
Speaker 1: need rising labor income, which is robust. We don't have
4:48
Speaker 1: that yet. We're in a recovery, but it's not robust yet.
4:52
Speaker 1: And the second thing is you need private sector credit multipliers,
4:57
Speaker 1: and that's the monetary piece. We don't have that either.
5:00
Speaker 1: So if you create a lot of bank reserves and
5:02
Speaker 1: they sit there and they're sterilized, and the transfer payments
5:08
Speaker 1: coming from the federal government are not capital investments, but
5:13
Speaker 1: what they're doing is ridging gaps across the valley to
5:17
Speaker 1: keep people surviving. I don't see the inflation forces yet
5:23
Speaker 1: in place, and I don't believe you you treager inflation
5:28
Speaker 1: by looking at a change in an oil price. The
5:31
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve can drill for oil. It's in monetary and
5:35
Speaker 1: banking multipliers, and the multipliers aren't there yet. And it
5:39
Speaker 1: doesn't look like you're coming so quickly to us, all right, David,
5:44
Speaker 1: If if inflation is not at least a near term
5:48
Speaker 1: concern here, it seems like the bulls have kind of
5:52
Speaker 1: the runway here, given the backdrop they're seeing with the
5:54
Speaker 1: FED and with the potentially reopening trade here. Where are
5:58
Speaker 1: you finding the best opportunities right now? In the stock market,
6:04
Speaker 1: we think you have to be in it all. You
6:06
Speaker 1: have to be in it. We're looking at maybe SMP
6:10
Speaker 1: five hundred earnings at around a two hundred dollar level
6:13
Speaker 1: in the recovery and trending upward. In the bond market,
6:18
Speaker 1: you you know, we favor the municipal bond sector, the
6:22
Speaker 1: tax free bond yields and structure, and the tax free
6:25
Speaker 1: market are ignoring part of the value of the arbitrage
6:30
Speaker 1: in the US tax code. I, for one, don't see
6:33
Speaker 1: how tax rates go down. They may stay the same
6:38
Speaker 1: or they may go up. But there's a value in
6:41
Speaker 1: the tax free sector. It has to be understood. It's
6:44
Speaker 1: a different kind of market than a corporate bird treasury
6:47
Speaker 1: bond market. So we like that as well. David, I
6:53
Speaker 1: just want to uh uh talk for a moment about
6:57
Speaker 1: the kind of fraud that you're seeing and if it's
6:58
Speaker 1: worrying you, because it is in your latest note you
7:01
Speaker 1: go through some state by state cases. Is it concerned
7:04
Speaker 1: you think or should we be focused on the bigger picture? No,
7:10
Speaker 1: I think there's a serious concern about flaws in the
7:13
Speaker 1: state by state data. And we see it in Florida.
7:19
Speaker 1: Now it's going to cost the state of Florida millions
7:22
Speaker 1: to redo their unemployment system. We see it in Ohio,
7:25
Speaker 1: we see it in California, we see it Arinzona, we
7:28
Speaker 1: see bits and pieces everywhere. I published that piece and
7:32
Speaker 1: I had a response from a friend and said, we
7:35
Speaker 1: have two hundred people in our company who were advised
7:39
Speaker 1: that their initial unemployment claims were processed and none of
7:43
Speaker 1: them applied for it. So the fact is there's a problem,
7:47
Speaker 1: and the problem has two implications. Number one, how do
7:51
Speaker 1: you rely on data when you know it's flawed and
7:54
Speaker 1: the flaws are changing, so I'm not consistent. And number two,
7:58
Speaker 1: it gives fuel to the people who don't want to
8:02
Speaker 1: help people the ones who needed to get across the valley.
8:07
Speaker 1: So it's a problem. Hey, David, thanks so much for
8:10
Speaker 1: joining us. We always appreciate chatting with you. David Kotalk,
8:13
Speaker 1: chairman and chief investment officer of Kumbling Advisors, also the
8:16
Speaker 1: author co author of the book Adventures in Muni Land.
8:20
Speaker 1: We'll have more coming up. This is Bloomberg. We're just
8:26
Speaker 1: talking about tech Stox. Greg jeb was talking about text
8:28
Speaker 1: stocks and Tesla. When you think about tech stocks, met
8:30
Speaker 1: One of our faves is Dan I. He's a managing
8:33
Speaker 1: director equity research at wed Bush Securities. Dan, thanks so
8:37
Speaker 1: much for joining us, really timely here. You've been, you know,
8:40
Speaker 1: very bullish on your tech sector for a long time.
8:43
Speaker 1: You've been very right tech Stox getting the short end
8:46
Speaker 1: of this rotation trade. If you will, Let's step back
8:50
Speaker 1: and I'd love you to share your thoughts on kind
8:52
Speaker 1: of some of the big tech names which have been
8:54
Speaker 1: so good for so long. How are you thinking about
8:56
Speaker 1: that that sector now? Sure? And it's great to be
8:59
Speaker 1: on well. Right now, it's a white knuckle period with
9:02
Speaker 1: what you're seeing in a ten year in the rotation trade,
9:05
Speaker 1: and you're seeing some of these crowded names hit the
9:09
Speaker 1: sell button. But to me, this is short term. I
9:12
Speaker 1: believe tech stocks go up another this year and we
9:16
Speaker 1: are in the midst We're in the middle of what
9:18
Speaker 1: I've used a multi year bull rally for tech stocks,
9:22
Speaker 1: and that doesn't change with the forty bits moving the tenure.
9:27
Speaker 1: So what kind of valuations do you think are healthy then,
9:31
Speaker 1: because some of them are really high. I mean, I
9:35
Speaker 1: guess it's not fair to look at earnings for Tesla
9:38
Speaker 1: but a thousand times look, I think right now the conundrum,
9:44
Speaker 1: almost say, the quagmire for investors is how do you
9:47
Speaker 1: value five trillion dollars of growth over the next decade.
9:51
Speaker 1: And that's really what the ev market is of course
9:53
Speaker 1: right now, Tessa Math, we lead in that market. I
9:56
Speaker 1: think that's that's the question. Right now. You see in
9:58
Speaker 1: the digestion period, and of course valuation is going to
10:02
Speaker 1: be a nice right here. But to me, these are
10:05
Speaker 1: stocks that are going to grow into their evaluation. Tassa
10:08
Speaker 1: Fernt and Center and re rate higher, and I view
10:10
Speaker 1: this is just it's a timbercent pullback that we've seen
10:14
Speaker 1: a lot of high gripthmes anywhere from and Paul I
10:17
Speaker 1: view this as a golden buying opportunity in tech. I
10:20
Speaker 1: think we probably get this. You know, this could be
10:23
Speaker 1: our shot in terms of this year. Just just checked
10:25
Speaker 1: in OR or e V s. I mean, Folkswagen is
10:28
Speaker 1: coming on strong. They're targeting at e V share in
10:34
Speaker 1: China and the US by thirty. They're targeting a sevent
10:38
Speaker 1: EV share in Europe and they have you know, seventy
10:42
Speaker 1: billion dollars to invest to make it happen. Yeah, and
10:46
Speaker 1: it speaks to what GM's done and Marry, I mean
10:48
Speaker 1: they're diving into the deep end of the pool and evs,
10:51
Speaker 1: but we're do you like? But do you like folks Wagen? Now?
10:55
Speaker 1: To me, I like GM in particular in terms of
10:59
Speaker 1: one that's going to have success. I think volkswagging. The
11:02
Speaker 1: key with them is what they're doing on the MOBU
11:05
Speaker 1: or build out of EV and their quantums gave ownership.
11:08
Speaker 1: I think that's came from the battery technology. And I
11:10
Speaker 1: think EV we're talking about probably the most transform national
11:14
Speaker 1: opportunity that I've seen twenty plus years of covering tack
11:17
Speaker 1: and disruptive technology. All Right, Dan, let's back away from
11:22
Speaker 1: the Tesla EV a little bit. Talk to us a
11:24
Speaker 1: little about five G. That's another big theme that we
11:27
Speaker 1: hear coming out of technology companies, telecommunications companies. How should
11:33
Speaker 1: we be thinking about five G and and what are
11:35
Speaker 1: the names that you like as a play on five G. Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: in five G we're still probably the first inning of
11:42
Speaker 1: this all building out In China, they've been ahead, but
11:45
Speaker 1: when you look what's happened in US from a five
11:48
Speaker 1: G perspective, this is really building out the infrastructure from
11:51
Speaker 1: a hotelcom services perspective over the next decade. And our
11:56
Speaker 1: best five G play continues to be Apple because of
11:59
Speaker 1: the supercycled it's playing out in real time, and I
12:02
Speaker 1: think that's still gonna be a three trillion dollar mark
12:04
Speaker 1: ap this year. And then you look at some of
12:06
Speaker 1: the supply chain please like a qual Calm as well
12:09
Speaker 1: as across Semis, which is why we're bullish on Semis
12:14
Speaker 1: as well as just the overall sector with five G
12:17
Speaker 1: as a tall in Apple clearly the biggest beneficiary there.
12:21
Speaker 1: What do you think I read a story today about
12:23
Speaker 1: China laying a cable that goes um, I think from Pakistan,
12:28
Speaker 1: then around the Horn of Africa and then up onto
12:32
Speaker 1: a beach in Marseille. It's gonna deliver um in one second,
12:37
Speaker 1: the ability to play nine thousand Netflix movies. I mean
12:42
Speaker 1: just super fast internet. Um. But I instantly thought, wow,
12:45
Speaker 1: I wonder where the backdoors are built in, Like cybersecurity
12:48
Speaker 1: must be a huge issue. Well right now cyber security
12:53
Speaker 1: continues to where we've seen post Sowar Wind's attacked as
12:56
Speaker 1: well as across the board. This is probably the biggest
12:58
Speaker 1: tame point facing enterprise and governments today especially is more
13:02
Speaker 1: and more moved to the cloud, and that's why there's
13:04
Speaker 1: names like a Z scale or a power out, a
13:08
Speaker 1: style points cybersecurity, that basket that that continues to probably
13:12
Speaker 1: be one of our most bullish areas of tech. And
13:14
Speaker 1: I think half those companies could get acquired in terms
13:17
Speaker 1: of consolidation and will give a step back. It's a
13:20
Speaker 1: fourth generation industrial revolution going on. That's why what I
13:24
Speaker 1: look in terms of the trillions spent, we trust it's
13:28
Speaker 1: to pound the table moment unpacked. Despite some of the
13:30
Speaker 1: white knuckles that we're seeing in many bears who've been
13:34
Speaker 1: hibernation mode the last year now calling fire in a
13:36
Speaker 1: cloud theater. So, Dan, when you talk to institutional investors,
13:41
Speaker 1: I don't you don't get to visit them anymore in
13:42
Speaker 1: this in this water, in but any you do lots
13:44
Speaker 1: of phone calls and things like that. What do you
13:46
Speaker 1: what's kind of them? Dude? Clients don't do zoom my
13:50
Speaker 1: mom guessing it's hard enough to get him on the phone.
13:52
Speaker 1: But Dan, what are they? What's the pushback you're getting
13:56
Speaker 1: from people that maybe have changed their minds on tech
13:59
Speaker 1: and in fact have turned negative on tech. I think
14:03
Speaker 1: the pushback is, are you are you catching the following night?
14:06
Speaker 1: Are these stocks that are going to continue to move
14:08
Speaker 1: high down in terms of valuation? Reading the other way?
14:13
Speaker 1: And what gives you that confidence? And that's where I
14:16
Speaker 1: think where you're going to start to see in terms
14:18
Speaker 1: of the fundamentals. I think street numbers move up another
14:20
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen percent this year. But I think what
14:23
Speaker 1: we're gonna see is over the next week, I believe
14:26
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a massive bounce back in tech. And
14:29
Speaker 1: that's where you start to see some of the green
14:31
Speaker 1: lights and the technic goals start to improve, but right now,
14:34
Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest war. No one wants to
14:36
Speaker 1: be the first to jump into the pool. In terms
14:40
Speaker 1: of this market, I saw an awesome story the other day.
14:43
Speaker 1: Bill Gates and the actor Robert Downey Jr. Are investing
14:48
Speaker 1: in a company called turn Tide. It's still small, it's
14:50
Speaker 1: not publicly traded yet, but they make it a motor
14:53
Speaker 1: that is able to produce the same amount of power
14:55
Speaker 1: as another electric motor with thirty less electricity. It's not
14:59
Speaker 1: all about bad right there are other improvements that can
15:01
Speaker 1: be made in e vis. It's a green title that
15:05
Speaker 1: that I believe is going to happen. The U S
15:08
Speaker 1: Bodens driven, especially with a blue cent, and we're talking
15:11
Speaker 1: something that's really gonna change the whole ecosystem, not just
15:14
Speaker 1: auto but sore and really across the whole, not just
15:18
Speaker 1: domestic but globally. And I think there's a massive impact
15:22
Speaker 1: here for the coming years. That's why I just cost
15:24
Speaker 1: him with investors. When you're playing ev and you're playing
15:27
Speaker 1: the basket, I think that this continues. Probably one of
15:30
Speaker 1: the most unique opportunities to the sector that I've seen
15:34
Speaker 1: in dectide. I hope someone figures out a way for
15:38
Speaker 1: evis to make a sweet noise I like, I like
15:42
Speaker 1: a good V eight exhaust note, but I don't know
15:44
Speaker 1: if fake is going to cut it anyway, Dan, thanks
15:47
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Always a pleasure talking to you.
15:49
Speaker 1: Dana Eyes, Managing director for Equity Research at wed Bush Securities.
15:53
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. Your jobs number came out today. The
15:59
Speaker 1: headline were certainly impressive, seventy jobs at unemployment rate officially
16:05
Speaker 1: ticking down yet again. Uh, let's get a sense of
16:09
Speaker 1: what's going on at street level, at the company level.
16:12
Speaker 1: We do that with Tom Gimble. He's a founder at
16:14
Speaker 1: CEO of LaSalle Network, based in Chicago's lasal Network is
16:18
Speaker 1: one of the leading staffing and recruiting firms in the country. Tom,
16:22
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us here. Again that the
16:24
Speaker 1: numbers we got today were certainly certainly positive. What are
16:28
Speaker 1: you hearing and seeing from the clients that you talked
16:30
Speaker 1: to on a daily basis? Positives and understatement, I mean,
16:34
Speaker 1: we should be throwing parties in the street like it's
16:36
Speaker 1: Mardi Gras. I'm with you. I'm as optimistic as it
16:40
Speaker 1: gets on this kind of stuff. But I didn't think
16:43
Speaker 1: it was going to be this big. And what I've
16:45
Speaker 1: been seeing is companies of all shapes and sizes, non hospitality,
16:50
Speaker 1: non restaurants, have been hiring. I didn't think we were
16:53
Speaker 1: going to get this bump until the weather really got
16:56
Speaker 1: good in April or May. Job numbers. UM. So this
17:00
Speaker 1: is really a sign that the second and third quarter
17:03
Speaker 1: are really going to be fantastic. But companies are hiring
17:05
Speaker 1: at all, all levels of positions across the board right now.
17:09
Speaker 1: There was an awesome chart tom this morning showing that
17:13
Speaker 1: investors are really betting on summer vacation at least um
17:17
Speaker 1: here in Europe, and we don't even have the vaccines.
17:20
Speaker 1: Um that you guys have the S and T the
17:23
Speaker 1: stock six hundred Travel and Leisure Index just absolutely soaring. Um.
17:29
Speaker 1: Do you think we're gonna see business travel keep up
17:32
Speaker 1: with um? You know, the trips were all planning down
17:35
Speaker 1: to New Orleans for example. I think that will be
17:39
Speaker 1: the last one, at the last thing to come back. Actually,
17:42
Speaker 1: because the the economy is going to grow organically and
17:46
Speaker 1: innately in the second and third quarter, because of the vaccine,
17:51
Speaker 1: because of summer in hospitality coming back, that business travel
17:56
Speaker 1: won't need Businesses will think they don't need to do
17:58
Speaker 1: business travel of the second and third quarter. And what
18:01
Speaker 1: we'll start to see is eventually that's when the small
18:05
Speaker 1: scrappy companies put people on airplane because they know that
18:08
Speaker 1: if they get in front of people, they'll be able
18:10
Speaker 1: to differentiate. I think it'll be a real emergence of
18:13
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurial company because they will travel and big companies
18:17
Speaker 1: to keep earnings being positive, we'll pull back on TNE
18:21
Speaker 1: because that's where they met a lot of their profit numbers.
18:24
Speaker 1: So Tom again, the headline numbers were very good. You
18:28
Speaker 1: dig down a little bit deeper, there were some issues
18:30
Speaker 1: for concern. The African American unemployment rate actually ticked up
18:34
Speaker 1: a little bit. What's the concern that as we come
18:38
Speaker 1: out of this pandemic and out of this jobless issue,
18:41
Speaker 1: that it's going to be perhaps more unequal than many
18:45
Speaker 1: would like. Well, I think what we're really gonna have
18:49
Speaker 1: well on on the racial issue. You know, as you
18:53
Speaker 1: saw during the elections like the last year, is as
18:56
Speaker 1: the former administration went to out how great things were
18:59
Speaker 1: from minority hiring because of the a lot of the
19:03
Speaker 1: lack of education and poverty areas that that tends to
19:06
Speaker 1: be one of the laggers, which is a shame. I
19:08
Speaker 1: think an education forward thinking administration should help that. Where
19:13
Speaker 1: I'm really concerned about UH into the future is the
19:17
Speaker 1: white collar blue collar service level divide. And what I
19:21
Speaker 1: mean by that is what we've seen over the past
19:23
Speaker 1: year is that white collar jobs can be done remotely,
19:26
Speaker 1: but obviously blue collars job plus truck drivers plus cash
19:31
Speaker 1: register workers cannot. And eventually, whether you're black, brown, white, orange,
19:36
Speaker 1: or green, it doesn't matter. There's gonna be resentment of
19:39
Speaker 1: why are you working from home when I'm going into
19:41
Speaker 1: the factory every day or driving the truck, And we're
19:44
Speaker 1: gonna have some real sociological issues that go beyond gender
19:48
Speaker 1: and or race into deeper, deeper issues than that. That's
19:52
Speaker 1: going to be an interesting economic and job problem that
19:55
Speaker 1: we faced. Tom. What do you think about the minimum
19:59
Speaker 1: wage debate? It looks like, you know, it's done for
20:01
Speaker 1: now unless Kamala Harris kind of jumps in and does
20:05
Speaker 1: something last minute, or the government's table to do something separately,
20:09
Speaker 1: But is it just too hard for people in Middle
20:13
Speaker 1: America to imagine paying fifteen dollars an hour? How does
20:17
Speaker 1: it shake out? Yeah, that's the problem is that several
20:20
Speaker 1: minimum wage is a floor and and I think too
20:24
Speaker 1: many people look at it as what everybody's gotta gotta
20:27
Speaker 1: be making, and it really is a geographic uh issue.
20:32
Speaker 1: So should somebody in New York be getting fifteen an hour? Maybe?
20:35
Speaker 1: Should somebody in Tulta maybe not? And I think if
20:38
Speaker 1: they could compromise somehow, it's become seven, seventy five or
20:42
Speaker 1: fifteen and nothing in between. And maybe it's time for
20:45
Speaker 1: a ten or eleven dollar an hour minimum wage federally,
20:48
Speaker 1: but most of the municipalities are drawing that line up anyways.
20:52
Speaker 1: And I think you're looking at small retail businesses. Listen,
20:55
Speaker 1: I work in downtown Chicago. We have uh Sundurys slash
21:00
Speaker 1: convenience store in our lobby that was run by an
21:03
Speaker 1: Indian immigrant for twenty years. He's not a business now.
21:07
Speaker 1: And even if he could come back, it's vacant. He's been.
21:09
Speaker 1: He's gone because nobody was coming into the office. Even
21:12
Speaker 1: if he could, he couldn't have afforded to keep it
21:14
Speaker 1: running by paying somebody fifteen dollars an hour to work
21:17
Speaker 1: with him. So we've got real problems to think that
21:19
Speaker 1: that's what's gonna be the stagger to keep the economy going.
21:25
Speaker 1: It's not You've got to get people working and help
21:27
Speaker 1: people and and paying them more isn't going to help
21:30
Speaker 1: the entrepreneur in the small business owner, It's gonna hurt him. Hey, Tom,
21:34
Speaker 1: thanks so much. We appreciate that as always. Tom Gimble,
21:38
Speaker 1: founder at CEO of LASAL Network. We love talking to
21:40
Speaker 1: Tom on these jobs days. Uh, Tom is you know, Matt,
21:44
Speaker 1: you know, we've been talking to Tom for a long time.
21:45
Speaker 1: He's been, you know, pretty consistently bullish on the whole
21:49
Speaker 1: labor situation in his country, you know, really confident that
21:52
Speaker 1: jobs would come back as uh, you know, the vaccines
21:55
Speaker 1: get into the marketplace. I think it's pretty fascinating the
21:57
Speaker 1: point he made about travel, Paul, you know, be big companies,
22:01
Speaker 1: not only are the bean counters saying, look, we made
22:03
Speaker 1: so much money cutting back travel, let's keep it. Let's
22:06
Speaker 1: keep it down. But you've got big HR offices also
22:10
Speaker 1: who are saying not yet, let's let's wait a couple
22:13
Speaker 1: more weeks, a couple more months because they don't want
22:15
Speaker 1: their employees getting infected. That's when the small businesses are
22:18
Speaker 1: going to be able to get a leg up. Yeah,
22:19
Speaker 1: I think that's a good that's a good point. So,
22:22
Speaker 1: but light at the end of the tunnel, as we
22:24
Speaker 1: like to say. I am here in Berlin. Germany has
22:30
Speaker 1: said it's loosening the lockdown, but you really can't do
22:33
Speaker 1: anything except for go to the barber, which is no
22:36
Speaker 1: use to me, and uh and go to the flower shop.
22:40
Speaker 1: It's weird, isn't it that those are the two things
22:42
Speaker 1: they open. Hopefully by the end of the month they'll
22:45
Speaker 1: start opening my favorite stores and restaurants in the US
22:49
Speaker 1: many states are doing that. But is it a good idea?
22:53
Speaker 1: Let's bring in Lauren sour right now from Johns Hopkins University,
22:57
Speaker 1: where she is an associate professor of emergency Medicine in Lauren, Connecticut,
23:02
Speaker 1: now joining Texas and Mississippi in reopening the state lifting restrictions.
23:07
Speaker 1: Is it too soon? I mean Germany is like nowhere
23:10
Speaker 1: near that. Yeah. I mean my personal opinion, and I
23:14
Speaker 1: think the opinion of many of my colleagues is it
23:16
Speaker 1: is a bit too soon. It sort of feels like
23:18
Speaker 1: we've put in all this hard work we've done on
23:21
Speaker 1: all of this staying home and wearing the masks and
23:24
Speaker 1: and participating in all these restrictions. That have been challenging
23:27
Speaker 1: for everyone, and we're watching all of that hard work
23:30
Speaker 1: potentially crumble. Um, just because of a few weeks of
23:34
Speaker 1: good numbers. You know, we have a little bit more
23:36
Speaker 1: of a ways to go, and I think we were
23:38
Speaker 1: all sort of hoping that we would see these states
23:40
Speaker 1: maintained for just a bit longer. Lauren, give us a
23:43
Speaker 1: sense of how things are on the ground. Um. We
23:47
Speaker 1: know the headline numbers generally are are trending very much
23:49
Speaker 1: in the right direction in terms of vaccinations and so on.
23:52
Speaker 1: But at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, how
23:56
Speaker 1: are things going. Yeah, the numbers are definitely looking better.
24:00
Speaker 1: It's still you know, everything has to be in contact, right,
24:03
Speaker 1: So you still have to remember that while the numbers
24:04
Speaker 1: look good and they're going down, it's still from a
24:07
Speaker 1: very high place, right. So, Um, we had some of
24:10
Speaker 1: the highest numbers UM so far in the pandemic just
24:13
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, and so that downward trend
24:15
Speaker 1: is great to see, UM, But our hospitals are still stressed.
24:19
Speaker 1: We're still seeing patients with covid UM. We have seen
24:22
Speaker 1: a couple of reinfections, and I think all eyes are
24:26
Speaker 1: on what happens over the next few weeks to a
24:28
Speaker 1: month when as vaccine you know, sort of trickles through
24:32
Speaker 1: through the state. I mean, the US is crushing it
24:36
Speaker 1: in terms of vaccines. You guys are up to like
24:39
Speaker 1: almost two million vaccines a day, right and here in Germany,
24:43
Speaker 1: which is the largest economy in Europe by the way,
24:46
Speaker 1: and I don't know what's going on. Very good at
24:48
Speaker 1: building cars and stuff. They've vaccinated like forty eight people
24:51
Speaker 1: in the past couple of weeks. Um, what is the
24:54
Speaker 1: US done right in that sense? Lauren? I think one
25:00
Speaker 1: of the things that has been done right in in
25:02
Speaker 1: distribution of vaccine is UM really a push to make
25:06
Speaker 1: decisions to get vaccine into people's arms. So the second
25:09
Speaker 1: we get hands on vaccine, UM, we push it through
25:11
Speaker 1: these systems. It has been challenging because those systems are disconnected. UM.
25:16
Speaker 1: They felt sluggish at first, but we leveraged global national
25:21
Speaker 1: level infrastructure to really put vaccine into the hands of
25:24
Speaker 1: local vaccinators and that's huge. So the next steps are
25:28
Speaker 1: improving access to those hard to reach communities UM, which
25:31
Speaker 1: many would argue, myself included that should have been done
25:34
Speaker 1: up front. But we have a lot more work to
25:36
Speaker 1: do UM to make sure that people who can't you know,
25:39
Speaker 1: simply drive up to their hospital, wait in line or
25:42
Speaker 1: wait on the computer to get that to get that appointment,
25:44
Speaker 1: UM and walk in and get it safely. UM still
25:47
Speaker 1: have access. So if they don't have technology access that
25:50
Speaker 1: they don't have someone who can transport them to get vaccine.
25:52
Speaker 1: All those things or where we really need to focus
25:55
Speaker 1: right now. But you're right where we're doing. We're putting
25:59
Speaker 1: a lot of vaccine into a lot of people right now.
26:01
Speaker 1: If I want to point out, if Germany were nearly
26:05
Speaker 1: as efficient um and smart about this as the US,
26:10
Speaker 1: if Germany was vaccinating at the same rate as you,
26:12
Speaker 1: we'd be done. We would have vaccinated every single man
26:17
Speaker 1: and woman over the age of what fifteen. I don't
26:19
Speaker 1: know if they're vaccinating kids anywhere, but all of us
26:22
Speaker 1: would be finished if we had done in the US way. Yeah,
26:26
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's just hopefully you guys can get the
26:28
Speaker 1: momentum there, Matt. But Lauren, you know, one of the
26:31
Speaker 1: concerns that we all had and we still have obviously,
26:34
Speaker 1: is the folks that just don't get vaccinations. They don't
26:37
Speaker 1: trust vaccinations in general, and maybe in particular, or they
26:39
Speaker 1: don't trust this COVID vaccination for a variety of reasons.
26:44
Speaker 1: Are you having those conversations with those people and how
26:46
Speaker 1: are they going? Yeah? Absolutely, I think a lot of
26:49
Speaker 1: work is being done right now to improve UM that
26:52
Speaker 1: vaccine conversation, particularly in vaccine hesitant group, and a lot
26:56
Speaker 1: of that means working with community members, working with both
27:00
Speaker 1: from vaccine hesitant communities who UM really can tell the
27:04
Speaker 1: story to the vaccine distribution planners and the the access
27:08
Speaker 1: personnel about why there is this hesitancy. And I think
27:12
Speaker 1: that hesitancy gets sort of convoluted when you additionally add
27:15
Speaker 1: access issues, and so those have to be addressed in
27:18
Speaker 1: tandem UM making sure that communities that have high levels
27:21
Speaker 1: of hesitancy don't have high levels of inaccessibility UM so
27:25
Speaker 1: that as people come on board to getting vaccine and
27:29
Speaker 1: they make their decision Okay, I'm gonna go get this vaccine,
27:32
Speaker 1: they should then be able to get the vaccine. And
27:34
Speaker 1: that is a huge piece of the puzzle, because if
27:36
Speaker 1: you have them for a moment to get vaccine, they
27:39
Speaker 1: may change their mind if it's just too hard. By
27:42
Speaker 1: the way I've been I've spent the last year collecting masks.
27:47
Speaker 1: I've got Ducati masks, BMW masks, I've got Grateful Dead masks.
27:53
Speaker 1: Am I gonna be able to keep using these? Or
27:55
Speaker 1: are we going to be done pretty soon? I think
27:58
Speaker 1: we're going to see masks in various degrees of use
28:02
Speaker 1: for quite some time to come. I mean, I think
28:04
Speaker 1: as we're seeing already in the US MAX that mask
28:07
Speaker 1: mandates are being um taken away, But that doesn't mean
28:10
Speaker 1: you can't use them. And so in circumstances where people
28:14
Speaker 1: may you may feel less safe as an individual, or
28:16
Speaker 1: you may be going to a place where you feel
28:18
Speaker 1: more vulnerable, UM, we can You'll be able to use
28:21
Speaker 1: those master as long as you want. UM. But I
28:23
Speaker 1: do think there will be a reduction of mask usage
28:26
Speaker 1: as we get more people vaccinated. Hey, Lauren, thank you
28:29
Speaker 1: so much. We always appreciate this weekly check in helping
28:32
Speaker 1: us stay as smart as we can on this topic.
28:34
Speaker 1: Laurence Sour, Social Professor of Emergency Medicine at the John's
28:36
Speaker 1: Hopkins School of Medicine, I should not that the Bloomberg
28:39
Speaker 1: School of Public Health support about michaelare Bloomberg's now or
28:41
Speaker 1: Bloomberg LP of Blooberg to lamp. Thanks for listening to
28:45
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to
28:49
Speaker 1: interviews of Apple podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer.
28:53
Speaker 1: I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three.
28:58
Speaker 1: Put on false wwhiney. I'm on Twitter at at Sweeney
29:00
Speaker 1: Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at
29:03
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio