Latest / Trumponomics / Covid-19’s Fresh Injustice for Black-Owned American Businesses
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: It was a toll of thirty five years that I
- 0:02Speaker 1: was in that I was didn't do this like I said.
- 0:04Speaker 1: I started in the Martian and then I begin to
- 0:11Speaker 1: do four times and I stayed in the same location
- 0:15Speaker 1: until the unfortunate closing March twelve of Hello and welcome
- 0:30Speaker 1: to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the COVID global economy
- 0:33Speaker 1: to you. And that was Isaac Thomas, who closed the
- 0:36Speaker 1: doors of his taekwondo studio in Atlanta in mid March
- 0:40Speaker 1: and will not be reopening him. More than three million
- 0:44Speaker 1: small businesses have shut in the US since February. The
- 0:47Speaker 1: global tally must run into the tens of millions. In
- 0:51Speaker 1: a little while, I'll be asking Bloomberg chief economist Tom
- 0:54Speaker 1: Orlick how much of the economic damage we've seen from
- 0:57Speaker 1: COVID nineteen is likely to be quick. He reversed, he
- 1:01Speaker 1: has some new research suggesting depressingly that nearly one in
- 1:05Speaker 1: three of the jobs lost in the US due to
- 1:07Speaker 1: the crisis may not be coming back. But first, we're
- 1:12Speaker 1: going to hear more about Isaac Thomas, because his experience
- 1:15Speaker 1: also speaks to the particularly high price that African Americans
- 1:18Speaker 1: have paid for COVID nineteen in Atlanta and across the US,
- 1:22Speaker 1: the National Bureau of Economic Research reckons the number of
- 1:25Speaker 1: black entrepreneurs in America fell by forty between February and April.
- 1:31Speaker 1: That's more than twice the decline in the number of
- 1:34Speaker 1: white owned businesses. US Economy reporter in Atlanta, Mike Sasso
- 1:39Speaker 1: has dug deeper into this story, and he's with me now. Mike.
- 1:43Speaker 1: Listeners will remember we last spoke to you back in April,
- 1:45Speaker 1: when the governor of Georgia was reopening the economy well
- 1:49Speaker 1: ahead of everyone else. I'd like to hear that's going.
- 1:51Speaker 1: But first tell me about the story you wrote with
- 1:54Speaker 1: your colleague Sajo Kishan. What did you find out. Well, Yeah,
- 1:58Speaker 1: African American businesses have been really hit hard by the
- 2:02Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic, to much greater extent than white
- 2:07Speaker 1: and frankly other uh several other ethnic groups. African American
- 2:11Speaker 1: owned businesses about forty one percent, or more than four
- 2:15Speaker 1: and ten have closed at least temporarily through the pandemic.
- 2:20Speaker 1: That's more than double the rate of white owned businesses.
- 2:23Speaker 1: About seventeen percent of all white owned businesses have shot
- 2:27Speaker 1: at least temporarily during the pandemic. Uh and some even
- 2:31Speaker 1: even more so than in other hard hit groups like
- 2:34Speaker 1: immigrant in Hispanic owned businesses are each around thirty or
- 2:37Speaker 1: thirty five percent, and the numbers involved are enormous. I mean,
- 2:41Speaker 1: we're talking about four hundred and forty thousand black small
- 2:46Speaker 1: businesses closing between February and April. M We know that
- 2:51Speaker 1: a lot of African American owned businesses, that entrepreneurs find
- 2:55Speaker 1: it harder. But what are the factors that researches a
- 2:59Speaker 1: looking at when they try and think why so many
- 3:03Speaker 1: black owned businesses have gone bust? I mean, it is
- 3:05Speaker 1: partly about the sectors they're in. I guess, yeah, there's
- 3:09Speaker 1: a there's a range of of ideas about this one.
- 3:13Speaker 1: They have been hit by this pandemic, partly because you know,
- 3:16Speaker 1: African Americans in general have been hit hard by the pandemic.
- 3:21Speaker 1: You know, just healthwise. Only about thirty two or thirty
- 3:24Speaker 1: five percent of the population of Atlanta is African American,
- 3:29Speaker 1: which is higher than the nation at large, but still
- 3:32Speaker 1: a minority of of Atlanta's population, and yet eighty percent
- 3:36Speaker 1: of the hospitalized patients in the Atlanta area where African
- 3:40Speaker 1: American so a huge disproportionate number of them are being
- 3:44Speaker 1: hit by health wise. Uh. And then there are longer
- 3:48Speaker 1: standing issues with with financing of their businesses. Um, they
- 3:52Speaker 1: have had a historically harder time getting loans. Even recently,
- 3:57Speaker 1: only about twenty nine or thirty percent of African American
- 4:00Speaker 1: in businesses have been able to get a bank loan. UH.
- 4:03Speaker 1: That's meanwhile, white owned businesses are closer about two thirds
- 4:07Speaker 1: able to tap into bank credit. So that's a major issue.
- 4:12Speaker 1: And then there are you know, they do tend to
- 4:14Speaker 1: be in industries that are getting hit harder by this. Basically,
- 4:19Speaker 1: the best small business to be in in America right
- 4:22Speaker 1: now is agriculture. Unfortunately, African Americans are not, you know,
- 4:27Speaker 1: significantly in agriculture in any great numbers. They are in
- 4:32Speaker 1: in what they call this broad category called personal services.
- 4:36Speaker 1: So think of dry cleaners and hair salons and whatnot,
- 4:41Speaker 1: and those are among the most hardest hit businesses. So
- 4:44Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors, both historic and more recent,
- 4:49Speaker 1: contributing to this. Well, I know you looked at a
- 4:52Speaker 1: lot of research, but you also talked to quite a
- 4:54Speaker 1: few local African American business owners, including Isaac Thomas. Let's
- 5:00Speaker 1: there a bit more now, I was still always been
- 5:02Speaker 1: fascinated with this martial arts. So I began to to
- 5:07Speaker 1: study off and on, and then I got very serious
- 5:11Speaker 1: about it in nineteen seventy nine. And when I tell
- 5:14Speaker 1: my black daughter, I always wanted to be a teacher.
- 5:17Speaker 1: That's how Atlanta Tykwandos started back in nineteen What happened
- 5:23Speaker 1: starting take me back to earlier or mid March. On
- 5:29Speaker 1: March fourteenth, I said, I told my wife, I said,
- 5:32Speaker 1: I know my body something's wrong. So I drove myself
- 5:36Speaker 1: to the Veteran's Administrations Hospital and Claremont Road, and that's
- 5:41Speaker 1: when they determined that I had a fever. Uh. They
- 5:45Speaker 1: took X ray blood work me for the COVID nineteen
- 5:50Speaker 1: and I always diagnosed positives. March fourth I got the
- 5:55Speaker 1: results on marching teams. So that was I get the
- 5:58Speaker 1: beginning of the end. My wife herself, she was in
- 6:04Speaker 1: the hospital for eighteen days on a ventrilator for toil
- 6:08Speaker 1: and that was a very trying time there. So but
- 6:11Speaker 1: the the governor and also the the mayor of Atlanta,
- 6:15Speaker 1: the mayor of East Point, they just shut everything down,
- 6:19Speaker 1: so that that caused me not to be able to
- 6:21Speaker 1: make any income. Whatsoever from from my place of business.
- 6:25Speaker 1: So that was again, like I said, that was the
- 6:27Speaker 1: beginning of my end. So we had that Isaac was
- 6:32Speaker 1: one of those business owners that got sick and that
- 6:35Speaker 1: was part of the reason he couldn't keep up the
- 6:37Speaker 1: business and his wife did as well. Yeah, Isaac is
- 6:41Speaker 1: really compelling case. Uh. He he has started his taekwondo
- 6:47Speaker 1: studio in in a predominantly African American area of Atlanta
- 6:51Speaker 1: thirty five years ago. However, he admitted it has been
- 6:55Speaker 1: a labor of love more so than a big money
- 6:57Speaker 1: maker for him. He never was able to get much
- 7:01Speaker 1: in terms of bank loans. He described how on occasion
- 7:06Speaker 1: banks and other lenders would come to him offering money,
- 7:09Speaker 1: but it was at times when he didn't need it,
- 7:11Speaker 1: and at those periods when he did need it, Uh,
- 7:13Speaker 1: they were not willing to come forward with money. Uh.
- 7:16Speaker 1: And then you take that historic trouble getting credit and
- 7:21Speaker 1: compounded with his own illness, and it just didn't make
- 7:24Speaker 1: any sense any longer to Isaac to keep going. He
- 7:27Speaker 1: didn't have the money. Financing was a struggle and there
- 7:31Speaker 1: were challenges to business. I mean the social distancing requirements
- 7:36Speaker 1: put on by local governments, how you know he was
- 7:39Speaker 1: not allowed to have more than ten people in his
- 7:41Speaker 1: studio at any time. How do you operate a business
- 7:45Speaker 1: a a tae kwondo studio where you need to have
- 7:48Speaker 1: a number of you know, certain number of clients. How
- 7:51Speaker 1: do you do that when you have to limit it
- 7:52Speaker 1: to ten people? And and we did here, I mean
- 7:55Speaker 1: partly because of that experience with getting credit when he
- 7:58Speaker 1: really needed it in the park, asked he hadn't even
- 8:02Speaker 1: tried to get access to the government loan schemes since
- 8:07Speaker 1: the pandemic struck because he didn't want to get into
- 8:09Speaker 1: more debt. And I guess he wasn't even sure he
- 8:11Speaker 1: was going to get it. And that is something else
- 8:13Speaker 1: that was brought out in your story that there was
- 8:15Speaker 1: quite surveys of black and Hispanic business owners. Most of
- 8:20Speaker 1: them were saying they weren't able to get or they
- 8:22Speaker 1: hadn't yet been able to get assistance from the government.
- 8:26Speaker 1: And you did ask him though, about what he thought
- 8:29Speaker 1: about the future. So maybe let's just hear a little
- 8:31Speaker 1: bit about that, and then I want to hear from
- 8:32Speaker 1: you what you think things are like on the ground
- 8:34Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Do you think that they will be able
- 8:38Speaker 1: to rebound quickly when maybe this virus gets under control,
- 8:43Speaker 1: or do you do you foresee a longer, more difficult
- 8:47Speaker 1: come back in most instances is probably going to be
- 8:51Speaker 1: longer because uh, we're probably not gonna be able to
- 8:56Speaker 1: get the amount of fan anything or the amount of
- 9:00Speaker 1: loan they would really need. And it's understandable somewhat because
- 9:05Speaker 1: like I say, they couldn't extend to me just a
- 9:08Speaker 1: uh large amount of loan when I'm not bringing in
- 9:12Speaker 1: that kind of money. So I understand the economics. So
- 9:17Speaker 1: that's why I think that was gonna be a little
- 9:20Speaker 1: bit behind unless you get hopefully you've got those businesses
- 9:25Speaker 1: out there who are making good money and they can
- 9:28Speaker 1: get these loans and get themselves back on their feet.
- 9:30Speaker 1: And I really applaud them, the ones who are hanging
- 9:33Speaker 1: in there to make it through. And what's in your future, well,
- 9:40Speaker 1: that's it's it's it's really uncertain right now. I have
- 9:44Speaker 1: many of my students want me to uh I use
- 9:47Speaker 1: the term like from the mood of Blues Brothers. They
- 9:49Speaker 1: want me to get the band back together and then
- 9:52Speaker 1: uh and I talked to him, and I may start
- 9:55Speaker 1: doing something on a smaller scale, but the the what's
- 10:00Speaker 1: important thing right now as my family, like my wife,
- 10:05Speaker 1: I may do it on a smaller scale, but probably
- 10:09Speaker 1: not to the scale that's before. The last time we spoke,
- 10:14Speaker 1: you had braved the waffle house. When the Georgian governor
- 10:20Speaker 1: had opened up restaurants bars. I think it was tattoo
- 10:24Speaker 1: parlors Neil Salance, way ahead of expert advice. How is
- 10:29Speaker 1: that going and things getting back to normal? Have you
- 10:31Speaker 1: seen um COVID cases continuing to rise as I know
- 10:36Speaker 1: you have in some states in the US. Yeah, you're right.
- 10:41Speaker 1: Georgia was the first American state to open in any
- 10:44Speaker 1: meaningful way back you know, it was late late April.
- 10:50Speaker 1: I will say it's it's fairly you know, seems to
- 10:54Speaker 1: feel like getting back to normal here. There's a restaurant
- 10:59Speaker 1: booking service Open Table, where you go in you book
- 11:03Speaker 1: tables in advance at restaurants, particularly in the South. Bookings
- 11:09Speaker 1: are are increasing at a restaurants, particularly in Florida. I
- 11:14Speaker 1: was just looking about fifty five percent of uh the
- 11:19Speaker 1: Florida restaurants rather have picked up about fifty five percent
- 11:23Speaker 1: of their previous business, so they're only down about forty
- 11:26Speaker 1: I guess I have to ask you you I wanted
- 11:29Speaker 1: to know whether your favorite restaurant had opened yet last time,
- 11:31Speaker 1: and it hadn't opened. Have you been able to go
- 11:33Speaker 1: to your what was it the Korean restaurant that you
- 11:36Speaker 1: talked about? You know, honestly, it's a good question. I
- 11:39Speaker 1: haven't been by there. I have a little seven seven
- 11:42Speaker 1: year old daughter who loves kind of schlocky chain restaurants.
- 11:48Speaker 1: There's uh one called Chilis here in America and Applebee's,
- 11:52Speaker 1: and while they're not my favorite, um she she, she
- 11:56Speaker 1: loves the chains, and so we're kind of dominated by
- 11:59Speaker 1: what my what my seven year old what's in Korean?
- 12:02Speaker 1: Tagos are not yet her favorite. I can just imagine
- 12:07Speaker 1: sitting in lockdown craving your first meal, and then the
- 12:11Speaker 1: first meal is at Chili's. Um. Not that there's anything
- 12:14Speaker 1: wrong with that, Thank you very much, Mike Sass. So
- 12:25Speaker 1: we touched there on a massive question hanging over not
- 12:28Speaker 1: only business owners like Isaac Thomas, but governments around the world,
- 12:32Speaker 1: well everyone really, as they try to look to the future.
- 12:35Speaker 1: What we all want to know is how many of
- 12:38Speaker 1: the jobs and businesses we've lost in the past few
- 12:40Speaker 1: months will automatically come back as lockdowns are eased, and
- 12:44Speaker 1: how many might be gone for good or at least
- 12:46Speaker 1: a long time. Well, our chief economist Tom Warlick, great
- 12:49Speaker 1: friend of Stephanomics, just published some work on this with
- 12:52Speaker 1: two colleagues beyond Von Roy and Scott Johnson. Tom, welcome back.
- 12:56Speaker 1: I know this was quite a sophisticated model, but can
- 12:58Speaker 1: you briefly explain the approach you took and what some
- 13:01Speaker 1: of the key conclusions were. Great to be back, Stephanie. So,
- 13:05Speaker 1: the key question in terms of the unemployment impact of
- 13:09Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen recession is how much of this is
- 13:13Speaker 1: just a supply and demand shock. Jobs that are gone
- 13:17Speaker 1: but which will come back quite quickly once the lockdown
- 13:20Speaker 1: ends and stimulus starts hitting the economy, and what share
- 13:24Speaker 1: of them represent what economists call a reallocation shock, So
- 13:30Speaker 1: a shock that comes because consumers are going to change
- 13:33Speaker 1: their behavior. They're not going to go back to restaurants,
- 13:36Speaker 1: they're not going to go back to nightclubs, they're not
- 13:38Speaker 1: going to go on and fly on airlines, and those
- 13:41Speaker 1: jobs which are the result of the reallocation shock. The
- 13:44Speaker 1: assumption is, well, they might be gone for good, or
- 13:47Speaker 1: at least gone for a protracted period of time. So
- 13:51Speaker 1: what we did was we looked at flows in and
- 13:53Speaker 1: out of the US labor market, of the US labor
- 13:57Speaker 1: market on a sector basis, and what we did was
- 14:01Speaker 1: we said, Okay, if a particular sector has a lot
- 14:05Speaker 1: of job separations, a lot of people getting kicked out
- 14:09Speaker 1: of work, but not a lot of vacancies, that's a
- 14:12Speaker 1: supply and demand shock and those jobs could come back
- 14:15Speaker 1: pretty quickly once the lockdown ends. But if a sector
- 14:19Speaker 1: has a lot of job separations but also a lot
- 14:23Speaker 1: of vacancies, then that's evidence that there's a reallocation shock underway,
- 14:29Speaker 1: and those jobs are going to take longer to come
- 14:31Speaker 1: back because people are going to need training, they're going
- 14:34Speaker 1: to need to build connections with new firms, they might
- 14:37Speaker 1: need to move around the country before they find employment.
- 14:41Speaker 1: So it's a it's a compelling model, but really it's
- 14:45Speaker 1: only a model, so we have to take the results
- 14:48Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. But what they're suggesting is
- 14:51Speaker 1: that actually we're facing a pretty significant reallocation shock. Around
- 14:56Speaker 1: thirty of the jobs in the US which have been
- 14:59Speaker 1: lost between February and May are the result of reallocation.
- 15:04Speaker 1: And what that suggests is we're going to see the
- 15:07Speaker 1: beginning of a V shaped recovery in the labor market.
- 15:09Speaker 1: A lot of jobs are going to come back quite quickly,
- 15:12Speaker 1: but for around thirty of the newly unemployed, UM, there's
- 15:16Speaker 1: going to be a long slog back to back to employment.
- 15:20Speaker 1: Just just so we have a way of thinking about this.
- 15:23Speaker 1: If you were in a in a retail or restaurant industry,
- 15:27Speaker 1: for example, if you're getting rid of a lot of
- 15:30Speaker 1: waiters because you think it's going to be quite a
- 15:32Speaker 1: long time before you can have people back in the restaurants,
- 15:35Speaker 1: but you have increased your online business and your delivery
- 15:40Speaker 1: business with that, with that kind of shop, is that
- 15:42Speaker 1: the kind of reallocation shock are we talking about or
- 15:44Speaker 1: we're talking about something more lasting than that, right? So, yeah,
- 15:48Speaker 1: an intuitive way of thinking about it would be the
- 15:51Speaker 1: Amazon effect. We've got a local grocery store that used
- 15:57Speaker 1: to have a bunch of staff dealing face to face
- 16:00Speaker 1: with customers who would come in to buy their vegetables
- 16:03Speaker 1: and their milk and so on. But because of COVID,
- 16:06Speaker 1: people have decided, you know what, I want to minimize
- 16:10Speaker 1: my contagion risks. I don't want to go to the
- 16:12Speaker 1: grocery store. So I'm going to switch my grocery purchases
- 16:16Speaker 1: from the grocery store to Amazon Amazon Prime, and I'm
- 16:21Speaker 1: going to get everything delivered. So we see some jobs
- 16:24Speaker 1: disappearing in that local grocery store. We see some jobs
- 16:28Speaker 1: being created in the Amazon warehouse and the delivery company.
- 16:32Speaker 1: That's the reallocation shock. Now that anecdote and the one
- 16:36Speaker 1: which you sort of shared about the restaurant switching to online,
- 16:40Speaker 1: what that suggests is that the reallocation happens, in a
- 16:43Speaker 1: sense in a seamless way. Right, So person A walks
- 16:48Speaker 1: out of a job on day one and into another job,
- 16:51Speaker 1: maybe with the same company, in day two. The trouble
- 16:55Speaker 1: is that reallocation rarely happens in such a smooth way.
- 17:00Speaker 1: We see businesses dying, we see other businesses growing and
- 17:05Speaker 1: other businesses being created. We see people moving from companies
- 17:10Speaker 1: and from between sectors and between locations. But these things
- 17:14Speaker 1: take a considerable period of time. Most people don't stop
- 17:19Speaker 1: being a waiter on day one and start being a
- 17:21Speaker 1: delivery person on day two. That transition takes weeks, months,
- 17:26Speaker 1: sometimes even longer. What are the most vulnerable sectors? If
- 17:30Speaker 1: we I mean we've already mentioned retail. Is that where
- 17:33Speaker 1: the reallocation looks like it's taken place retail, hospitality, or
- 17:37Speaker 1: is it broader than that. We actually took two approaches
- 17:41Speaker 1: to looking at this question. The first one I just described,
- 17:45Speaker 1: that's where we look at flows in and out of
- 17:47Speaker 1: the labor market. The second one, and this was the
- 17:51Speaker 1: work pursued by Scott Johnson, is where we looked at
- 17:55Speaker 1: the dispersion of equity market returns. And the idea there
- 18:00Speaker 1: that if you see equity market investors making a big
- 18:04Speaker 1: bet on profits in one sector but getting really cautious
- 18:09Speaker 1: or pessimistic on profits in another sector, then that's an
- 18:12Speaker 1: early signal that there's going to be a reallocation taking place.
- 18:17Speaker 1: So we use both approaches to look at the size
- 18:20Speaker 1: of the reallocation shock and where the reallocation shock is
- 18:23Speaker 1: going to be biggest. And yes, retail shows up big
- 18:27Speaker 1: and in both approaches. Hospitality shows up big in both approaches.
- 18:33Speaker 1: But there's also sectors like oil and gas, for example,
- 18:37Speaker 1: which are not so directly related to the COVID shock.
- 18:41Speaker 1: They're not going to be affected by people's preference for
- 18:43Speaker 1: face to face contact or not. But because the COVID
- 18:46Speaker 1: shock has hammered oil prices. That is also going to
- 18:50Speaker 1: lead to a significant reallocation within the oil and gas sector.
- 18:54Speaker 1: There's going to be some high cost producers that go
- 18:57Speaker 1: out of business, there's going to be some low cost
- 19:00Speaker 1: producers that start doing more. And of course, when you're
- 19:03Speaker 1: thinking about a sector like that, the reallocation between firms,
- 19:08Speaker 1: the cost to workers of losing their job and finding
- 19:11Speaker 1: another one starts to look much higher than in that
- 19:15Speaker 1: kind of intuitive example about the shift from the waiter
- 19:18Speaker 1: to delivery person, where you know, one might hope that
- 19:21Speaker 1: that happened more quickly. Tom, you said at the start,
- 19:29Speaker 1: we should take the results of this with a pinch
- 19:31Speaker 1: of salt. It's just an economic model. I guess some
- 19:33Speaker 1: people would say what you're calling a reallocation shock is
- 19:37Speaker 1: a behavioral change by consumers that could disappear if we
- 19:43Speaker 1: have a vaccine, if we have an end to this
- 19:45Speaker 1: crisis sooner than people are expecting. And that's true, right.
- 19:49Speaker 1: There is a lot of uncertainty here, absolutely, Stephanie, and
- 19:53Speaker 1: I think I flag a few things. So the first is,
- 19:56Speaker 1: and this is what you just mentioned, if this all
- 19:59Speaker 1: comes back under control really quickly, Um, and it turns
- 20:03Speaker 1: out people have short memories and they decide this was
- 20:06Speaker 1: a one off and their behavior essentially goes back to normal.
- 20:10Speaker 1: Then the reallocation shock could well be significantly smaller than
- 20:14Speaker 1: our model suggests. But I'd point to a couple of
- 20:17Speaker 1: cautions before before jumping to that optimistic conclusion. So the
- 20:22Speaker 1: first one is, actually, if we look at what's happening
- 20:26Speaker 1: with the disease case cone around the world, that doesn't
- 20:29Speaker 1: seem to be how things are playing out UM. And
- 20:32Speaker 1: if we look at how people behave in countries like
- 20:35Speaker 1: Sweden and Korea UM, which don't have the same type
- 20:40Speaker 1: restrictions in place, what we see is that actually, even
- 20:45Speaker 1: when lockdown's ease, fear of contagion continues to be a
- 20:49Speaker 1: factor that changes behavior. And the second thing is, Okay,
- 20:54Speaker 1: let's say we have an optimistic scenario where this thing's
- 20:57Speaker 1: things come under control and the disease stops being an
- 21:00Speaker 1: issue in in three months or in six months time. Well,
- 21:04Speaker 1: there's a lot of businesses that sadly are just not
- 21:06Speaker 1: going to make it that distance. So even if the
- 21:10Speaker 1: disease gets taken out of the equation, we're still going
- 21:13Speaker 1: to have reallocation because of what economists call the sort
- 21:18Speaker 1: of the Matthew effect, to him that hath shall be
- 21:21Speaker 1: given to him, that hath not shall be taken away.
- 21:25Speaker 1: And we're seeing that playing out really viciously in this
- 21:28Speaker 1: COVID shock. Lots of small bricks and mortar business is
- 21:31Speaker 1: going under, lots of big e commerce platforms grabbing more
- 21:36Speaker 1: market share. And what that suggests to me is that
- 21:39Speaker 1: even when the disease comes under control, there's still going
- 21:42Speaker 1: to be some significant reallocation that's taken place. Clearly, governments
- 21:46Speaker 1: can't hope for the best, even if there is a
- 21:48Speaker 1: possibility that some of this will turn out to be overstated.
- 21:52Speaker 1: What are the implications if a third of these job
- 21:55Speaker 1: losses give or take, are more structural in nature, at
- 22:00Speaker 1: least potentially more lasting. What what should governments be doing
- 22:04Speaker 1: to try and mitigate that. Are we talking training programs?
- 22:08Speaker 1: What do you think would be most effective. That's a
- 22:11Speaker 1: great question, um, and it sort of speaks to the
- 22:13Speaker 1: difficulty which governments have in framing the right policy response. UM.
- 22:18Speaker 1: If you've got essentially a demand shock where the problem
- 22:21Speaker 1: for employment is there's not enough spending taking place, then
- 22:26Speaker 1: what government should be doing is very very aggressively supporting demand,
- 22:31Speaker 1: putting more money into people's pockets, paying businesses to keep
- 22:35Speaker 1: hold of their workers through the lockdown. UM. If we're
- 22:38Speaker 1: actually looking at a significant reallocation shock, painful though it is, UM,
- 22:43Speaker 1: what's needed is for governments to get out of the way, UM,
- 22:48Speaker 1: allow a period of higher unemployment, allow some business bankruptcies
- 22:52Speaker 1: to take place to speed that reallocation UM. And in
- 22:57Speaker 1: that circumstance, massive support for demand would actually create more
- 23:02Speaker 1: problems in the longer term. I mean my feeling is
- 23:06Speaker 1: the complexity is through sequencing. Right now in the lockdown,
- 23:10Speaker 1: clearly the supply and demand shock is dominating, and that's
- 23:14Speaker 1: the period for massive government support. Once the lockdown starts
- 23:18Speaker 1: to ease, will get a clearer picture of the size
- 23:21Speaker 1: of the reallocation shock and where it's particularly important, and
- 23:25Speaker 1: that is when governments are going to have to start
- 23:27Speaker 1: being a bit more nuanced and differentiating a bit more
- 23:30Speaker 1: in terms of where they provide support and where they
- 23:33Speaker 1: step out of the way. And that difference is exactly
- 23:36Speaker 1: the contrast that Jason Furman drew between Europe and the
- 23:40Speaker 1: US last week, and I think we've we're seeing it
- 23:43Speaker 1: play out in real time, and we are, as you say,
- 23:45Speaker 1: only just beginning to find out which might be more affective.
- 23:48Speaker 1: But Tom, thanks very much, thanks for having me on Stephanie.
- 23:53Speaker 1: Please don't reallocate me. Thanks for listening to Stephanis. We'll
- 23:59Speaker 1: be back next week with more on how COVID nineteen
- 24:02Speaker 1: is turning the global economy upside down. Remember you can
- 24:06Speaker 1: always find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website, app or
- 24:09Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and for more news and
- 24:12Speaker 1: analysis from Bloomberg Economics, follow at Economics on Twitter. This
- 24:17Speaker 1: episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson, with special thanks to
- 24:20Speaker 1: Mike Sasso, Segel Kishan, Tom Orlick, Jorn Van Roy, and
- 24:25Speaker 1: Scott Johnson. Lucy Meekin is the acting executive producer of
- 24:29Speaker 1: Stephanomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Francesca Leading