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We're Built For A Time Like This: New York Life CEO · Bloomberg Intelligence

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Penl podcast on Paul Swing You.
0:05
Speaker 1: Along with my co host Lisa Brahma Wicks, each day
0:07
Speaker 1: we bring you the most noteworthy and useful interviews for
0:10
Speaker 1: you and your money, whether at the grocery store or
0:12
Speaker 1: the trading floor. Find a Bloomberg Penl podcast on Apple
0:15
Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as
0:17
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com. The pandemic that is sweeping the
0:21
Speaker 1: world has raised questions about about a lot of industries,
0:25
Speaker 1: but in particular the insurance industry, as a growing number
0:29
Speaker 1: of businesses seek for some compensation and one insurance CEO
0:34
Speaker 1: saying that this is going to be the worst situation
0:37
Speaker 1: for insurers UH in recent history. Joining us now, we
0:41
Speaker 1: are so pleased to say Ted Math as Chairman and
0:43
Speaker 1: chief executive Officer of New York Life based in New
0:47
Speaker 1: York City, Ted, thank you so much for being with us.
0:50
Speaker 1: I was talking about Lloyd's of London and the chief
0:52
Speaker 1: executive officer coming out and saying that the insurance industry
0:56
Speaker 1: could face losses that are the worst in recent memory,
0:59
Speaker 1: worse than nine eleven two thousand and one, and worse
1:01
Speaker 1: than the Katrina hurricane in the United States. Do you
1:04
Speaker 1: agree with that assessment? Uh? Good morningly. So what I
1:09
Speaker 1: what I would say is this is that there's no
1:10
Speaker 1: question that for all different kinds of insurers, New York
1:14
Speaker 1: Life is a life insurer. This presents some unique challenges
1:17
Speaker 1: in many ways. For life insurers. It's a bit of
1:20
Speaker 1: a triple challenge. You have the fact that UM the
1:24
Speaker 1: prospect of substantial mortality claims as a result of the pandemic.
1:28
Speaker 1: You have the significant market dislocations that are occurring UM
1:33
Speaker 1: and life insurers are very large long term investors. And
1:37
Speaker 1: then you have the impact that all businesses have to
1:40
Speaker 1: today to some degree, which is the operational impact on
1:44
Speaker 1: how do you navigate a world where for most of us,
1:47
Speaker 1: I know New York Life, about of our working population
1:52
Speaker 1: was in offices, with four percent working from home before
1:55
Speaker 1: this crisis, and today that's completely flipped. So those challenges
1:59
Speaker 1: are there, But the life insurance industry in particular is
2:02
Speaker 1: really built for these kinds of situations to be able
2:05
Speaker 1: to provide security for people in these highly uncertain times.
2:09
Speaker 1: So ted what would be characterize would be the biggest
2:12
Speaker 1: risk to your business model, maybe the business model of
2:14
Speaker 1: life insurance in general as we go through this just
2:17
Speaker 1: extraordinary time. UH. This the life insurance business is a
2:22
Speaker 1: highly relationship oriented personal business. We work with people on
2:28
Speaker 1: protecting what matters most to them and in a sense
2:32
Speaker 1: that has been built over decades by people building individual
2:37
Speaker 1: relationships and what we've often described as a face to
2:40
Speaker 1: face environment. Today we all have to, essentially, UM, occupy
2:47
Speaker 1: a world we didn't anticipate, where social distancing makes face
2:51
Speaker 1: to face interaction extremely limited. UM. What we are having
2:55
Speaker 1: to do is navigate how to take the depth of
2:57
Speaker 1: the relationships we've built over the years and translate them
3:00
Speaker 1: into this virtual environment all of us as we are here,
3:04
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you today from my basement on a
3:07
Speaker 1: phone as opposed to sitting with you inside of the studio. UM.
3:11
Speaker 1: That is something that I am highly confident we can navigate.
3:14
Speaker 1: But in many ways, UM, that is one of the
3:17
Speaker 1: bigger challenges today. UM. But leveraging the human relationships, Yeah,
3:22
Speaker 1: Ted Uh. New York Life Insurance Company is the largest
3:26
Speaker 1: life insurance company in the United States, one of the
3:28
Speaker 1: large largest life insurers in the world, and it's also
3:31
Speaker 1: a very big investor. And I'm wondering as an investor
3:35
Speaker 1: in a lot of assets. How much do you think
3:38
Speaker 1: this pandemic will change the focus more to companies doing
3:42
Speaker 1: the right thing rather than just doing the right thing
3:45
Speaker 1: for their balance sheets. I think that's an excellent question.
3:49
Speaker 1: What I would say is, this is what I'm I'm
3:51
Speaker 1: proud about is the fact that New York Life actually
3:54
Speaker 1: is the largest mutual life insurance company. This is our
3:57
Speaker 1: We actually entered this year our hundred and seventy five
4:00
Speaker 1: year And I think that this is a time in
4:02
Speaker 1: a calling for all companies um to really dig deep
4:06
Speaker 1: and ask what is the essence of their mission? What
4:09
Speaker 1: is it? How do they define themselves? And it has
4:11
Speaker 1: to be more than your bottom line and more than
4:13
Speaker 1: your balance sheet. So in New York Life, we knew
4:16
Speaker 1: that we nobody could predict this kind of pandemic occurring,
4:19
Speaker 1: but we knew that they did occur. We have the
4:22
Speaker 1: history to know. We've been through yellow fever epidemics, other
4:26
Speaker 1: war wars, financial crises, the two thousand and eight two
4:29
Speaker 1: thousand nine financial crisis, and throughout all of those, what
4:32
Speaker 1: we've been able to do is make sure that we
4:34
Speaker 1: can live up to the promises we make. And that's
4:37
Speaker 1: because of the inherent value proposition that's embedded with within
4:41
Speaker 1: the company. So we were able to come out and
4:43
Speaker 1: say to all of our employees that we're not going
4:45
Speaker 1: to have any layoffs. That creates unbelievable certainty in a
4:49
Speaker 1: world of great uncertainty. For the twelve thousand men and
4:53
Speaker 1: women that represent us as agents out there, we were
4:55
Speaker 1: able to say to them that we can provide an
4:58
Speaker 1: economic floor to them and help them navigate this world
5:01
Speaker 1: of unprecedented you know, social distancing, um and and and essentially,
5:06
Speaker 1: because we have made decisions with a long term orientation,
5:10
Speaker 1: we don't have to make changes to our overall asset
5:13
Speaker 1: portfolio that backs up those guarantees. And fundamentally, even for
5:18
Speaker 1: our policy owners, many of whom are worried about they've
5:20
Speaker 1: lost their job or they're worried about losing their job,
5:23
Speaker 1: it's an opportunity for them to be able even too,
5:26
Speaker 1: if they have to not make certain premium payments, We've
5:29
Speaker 1: given them the flexibility to defer those payments as we
5:33
Speaker 1: try to figure out where we can find some stability
5:36
Speaker 1: through this crisis. So I think that calling on that
5:39
Speaker 1: value proposition and being able to recognize that this is
5:43
Speaker 1: at its foremost a human tragedy, and it's an opportune
5:46
Speaker 1: time for institutions to lean into their empathy and lean
5:51
Speaker 1: into their humanity. And that's one of the reasons why
5:54
Speaker 1: we have essentially now with partnered with Signa to launch
5:59
Speaker 1: the Brave of Art Fund to help the families of
6:01
Speaker 1: healthcare workers. That's interesting I was looking at that the
6:04
Speaker 1: Brave of Heart Fund partnering with Seeing the Fun will
6:07
Speaker 1: provide financial and emotional support for the foundlis of healthcare
6:10
Speaker 1: workers and volunteers UH nationwide. That's a wonderful offering. Ted
6:15
Speaker 1: math has thanks so much for joining us Tennis Chairman
6:17
Speaker 1: and CEO of New York Life. This is Bloomberg Markets
6:22
Speaker 1: with Lisa Ramo, Weds and Paul's Wheeney on Bloomberg Radio. Well.
6:27
Speaker 1: As the curve of new virus patients begins to bend,
6:32
Speaker 1: everybody's looking towards treatments, potentially vaccines, and they're looking towards
6:37
Speaker 1: big farmer. They're looking towards the biotech companies to deliver.
6:41
Speaker 1: To get a sense of kind of where we are
6:43
Speaker 1: on that path, we welcome our good friend Sam Fazelli.
6:45
Speaker 1: He's a director of research for Bloomberg Intelligence in Europe.
6:48
Speaker 1: But More importantly, his day job is he's a senior
6:50
Speaker 1: healthcare ANALYSTI has been found the farmer industry for decades. Sam,
6:54
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us. Uh, we appreciate it.
6:58
Speaker 1: Gill Lead had some odd news yesterday. I know you're
7:01
Speaker 1: on top of that. As you know, again, investors continue
7:04
Speaker 1: to look for these healthcare companies to deliver at vaccines.
7:07
Speaker 1: What happened to Gilead yesterday? He Paul many nice still
7:12
Speaker 1: to my old friend Paul, Thank you for having me on. Well,
7:15
Speaker 1: basically what happened was there was a leaked um a
7:20
Speaker 1: bit of data on a w h O website that
7:25
Speaker 1: perhaps wasn't even complete in terms of its analysis, and
7:29
Speaker 1: some people saw that if he was the Financial Times,
7:32
Speaker 1: and they then the whole world knew about it thanks
7:35
Speaker 1: to social media. What basically is going on here is
7:38
Speaker 1: that that's a trial that was out of China and
7:42
Speaker 1: worked in pretty severe patients and showed no evidence of
7:47
Speaker 1: activity based on what I have heard, I've not seen
7:50
Speaker 1: the actual paper myself. So the reality there is that
7:55
Speaker 1: these are clinical trials, many of them. This is just one.
8:00
Speaker 1: It's a small one out of a large number of
8:02
Speaker 1: trials that are going on. So very difficult to just
8:05
Speaker 1: read something out of one trial that fails. Sam very
8:09
Speaker 1: good point the idea that this trial may or may
8:12
Speaker 1: not be valuable to determine whether or not Ramdzevier actually
8:16
Speaker 1: is effective. However, what it did highlight was how much
8:20
Speaker 1: the market has a baked in assumption that there will
8:23
Speaker 1: be some sort of remedies or remedies in the near
8:26
Speaker 1: future that will at least mitigate the death rate. We
8:28
Speaker 1: saw the entire market fall yesterday after this study came
8:33
Speaker 1: out or was published. However, problematic it was, how faulty
8:37
Speaker 1: do you think those assumptions are based on the pipeline
8:40
Speaker 1: of drugs and vaccines that you currently are studying. Yeah, well, look,
8:46
Speaker 1: I mean we were. We were in hope. I mean
8:48
Speaker 1: that's what humans live on intentionally, right. But at the
8:51
Speaker 1: end of the day, I thought you said we all
8:53
Speaker 1: need help, and I was like, yeah, that's too But Carriya,
8:56
Speaker 1: so nothing, everyone's hopeful, everyone's hoping, and the following industry
9:00
Speaker 1: is trying its best to throw everything they've got by
9:04
Speaker 1: letting their cupboards, which is what basically some farm farmer
9:07
Speaker 1: companies have done, and also what they've got on the market.
9:10
Speaker 1: So but at the end of the day, we're trying
9:13
Speaker 1: to solve a disease that we've only really known about
9:16
Speaker 1: for six months. I mean, we've learn about cancer for decades,
9:21
Speaker 1: and sometimes it takes time to a decade to find
9:25
Speaker 1: the treatment for a cancer therapy. So infectually disease a
9:28
Speaker 1: little bit easier because the target is easy to test
9:31
Speaker 1: in a test you but but you still have to
9:34
Speaker 1: get the trials done. And I really do worry about
9:38
Speaker 1: um people getting too hopeful on some of this, and
9:42
Speaker 1: and really really think that that I should just everyone
9:45
Speaker 1: should just step back and let the science roll out
9:47
Speaker 1: and then and then we judges as these therapies report. So, Sam,
9:52
Speaker 1: I know you spend a lot of time talking to
9:54
Speaker 1: the companies that you cover in the farming industry, you're
9:56
Speaker 1: the biotech in industry as well. You talked a lot
9:59
Speaker 1: of smart investor sers who are m d s and
10:01
Speaker 1: PhDs like yourself. Um, is it, what's the feeling that
10:05
Speaker 1: the timetable, because what we've heard out of the White House,
10:08
Speaker 1: UH and from others is that twelve to eighteen months
10:11
Speaker 1: for a vaccine, And what's the feeling within you know,
10:15
Speaker 1: your community as to the accuracy or potential accuracy of
10:19
Speaker 1: that time frame. So I think it's possible, as I've
10:24
Speaker 1: said before, if all the stars aligned, and unfortunately though
10:27
Speaker 1: we know that in clinical development the star don't always
10:31
Speaker 1: all align. But it don't depends what you want out
10:35
Speaker 1: of a vaccine. UM. If you want a vaccine that's
10:38
Speaker 1: not been fully tested yet, but you know in juices
10:41
Speaker 1: in a moment a response that might be sufficient to protect,
10:45
Speaker 1: you could always go and create a room of vaccinated
10:49
Speaker 1: people within the health care community that you want to
10:52
Speaker 1: protect first. Those are the sorts of US strategies that
10:57
Speaker 1: that that epidemiologists and governments can use. But if you
11:01
Speaker 1: really want a vaccine that you are as sure as
11:04
Speaker 1: you can be is safe giving it to healthy individuals
11:08
Speaker 1: like you and I, UM, then you just have to
11:12
Speaker 1: spend the time to test it and test it in
11:14
Speaker 1: large numbers, and that will take more than two up
11:16
Speaker 1: t eighteen months. We just had some office you on
11:19
Speaker 1: talking about UM. One of the things that nobody seems
11:22
Speaker 1: to want to talk about is the volume that these
11:24
Speaker 1: vaccines require. If you really hit it right, that's a
11:28
Speaker 1: very big challenge. UM. So you know, and they're working
11:32
Speaker 1: on it right. Well. When you talk about the volume needed.
11:36
Speaker 1: I also wonder the international effort and how much cooperation
11:39
Speaker 1: there has been. Is there an international effort to get
11:43
Speaker 1: a high volume of vaccines to the public to the
11:47
Speaker 1: masses as quickly as possible with nations working together, or
11:50
Speaker 1: is it a really case by case kind of situation.
11:54
Speaker 1: I think I haven't seen any dance of nation nations
11:57
Speaker 1: working together. I've certainly seen evidence have come he's working together,
12:01
Speaker 1: so A that's for example, I made this SNOPHI and
12:03
Speaker 1: Galaxis MTh Klein in Europe, and we just heard today
12:06
Speaker 1: that Johnson and Johnson has teamed up with Emergent Power
12:10
Speaker 1: Solutions for access to manufacturing and that they need to
12:14
Speaker 1: do that because I continue, when the vaccine works well,
12:17
Speaker 1: as we have seen in the case of Merak with
12:20
Speaker 1: Goddess Hill and Gleaxus ms Klein in Shoe Drinks, we
12:23
Speaker 1: quickly hit capacity issues. Both companies are working for the
12:27
Speaker 1: next four years to increase capacity for those vaccines. So
12:31
Speaker 1: God help us. If what I was actually is when
12:33
Speaker 1: he works right, everyone's going to scramble together. That would
12:36
Speaker 1: be interested to see how the nation's behave. Sam Facelli,
12:39
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being with A. Sam Facelli,
12:41
Speaker 1: director of Research for the e m E A region
12:45
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Intelligence, also a very long time analyst of
12:48
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. And now we'll just say
12:51
Speaker 1: Paul I was reading an essay by Joseph Stiglitz of
12:55
Speaker 1: Columbia yesterday which was talking about the need for more
12:59
Speaker 1: coordinate shan in coming up with some of these vaccines
13:02
Speaker 1: is sort of the elimination of the current I P framework.
13:05
Speaker 1: Interesting idea. What an historic week for oil in terms
13:13
Speaker 1: of volatility. We had the May contract earlier this week
13:16
Speaker 1: actually trading in negative territory for the first time. Supply
13:20
Speaker 1: demand dynamics are incredibly challenging right now. To get an update,
13:25
Speaker 1: we welcome Dr Ariel Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council,
13:28
Speaker 1: also a founding principle of International Market Analysis based in Washington,
13:32
Speaker 1: d C. Dr Cohen, thanks so much for joining us.
13:34
Speaker 1: Help us put into context kind of what we experience
13:38
Speaker 1: this week when're looking at w T I crude. First
13:41
Speaker 1: of all, we should not focus on this one May
13:45
Speaker 1: UH futures contract that went into the negative territory. This
13:50
Speaker 1: was a unique situation where we ran out of storage capacity.
13:55
Speaker 1: We see W t I back into seventeen range. We
13:59
Speaker 1: see Brandon twenty one range. Uh. It is a huge
14:03
Speaker 1: blow for the American shale oil patch. But once the
14:08
Speaker 1: economy starts recovering. I went over the future futures projection.
14:14
Speaker 1: We are going to the thirties towards two. So it's
14:19
Speaker 1: it's little little health for for the oil for the
14:22
Speaker 1: oil fields right now. But as the economy will go
14:28
Speaker 1: into recovery territory, hopefully by the full uh, you'll see
14:32
Speaker 1: oil going into the high twenties, thirties, et cetera. Wait, wait,
14:36
Speaker 1: hold on a second. So you said they'll be in
14:38
Speaker 1: the thirties in two. Are you expecting oil prices to
14:43
Speaker 1: remain suppressed for that many years? Well, the question is
14:48
Speaker 1: what is suppressed when you have so much oil slushing around.
14:52
Speaker 1: You have the US production going up and up. You
14:55
Speaker 1: have the Saudias and Russians. You have major oil produced
15:00
Speaker 1: series who are not selling nearly as much as we
15:04
Speaker 1: could Iran, Venezuela, Libya, et cetera. And you have objective
15:10
Speaker 1: structural changes where you have more and more electric cars. Uh.
15:14
Speaker 1: You have, um, this is less of immediate impact on oil.
15:20
Speaker 1: You have renewable still growing up. That's more affective gas.
15:25
Speaker 1: But basically, as long as you don't have robustic and
15:30
Speaker 1: on the growth and massive demand coming from places like China, India,
15:35
Speaker 1: Africa unless so Europe, you will not go back to
15:40
Speaker 1: oil in the seventies or eighties unless some catastrophic, um
15:46
Speaker 1: catastrophic things happening in the middle ees. So Ariel. This
15:49
Speaker 1: is important because the Kansas City Fed has come out
15:51
Speaker 1: with a study showing that of US shell producers would
15:56
Speaker 1: become insolvent if oil prices did not rise above thirty
16:00
Speaker 1: dollar mark, and this would be by the end of
16:02
Speaker 1: this year. I'm just wondering, first of all, whether you
16:05
Speaker 1: agree with that assessment, but second of all, what President
16:09
Speaker 1: Trump could actually due to support some of these companies
16:13
Speaker 1: given the fact that oil prices are unlikely to rise
16:16
Speaker 1: meaningfully in the next month or two. Correct, in the
16:22
Speaker 1: next month or two, they will probably go into the
16:25
Speaker 1: low to mid twenties unless we have a major event
16:31
Speaker 1: such as an approval of an effective vaccine, and that
16:38
Speaker 1: will indicate that by the fall early one uh, we
16:43
Speaker 1: probably have aero buzz growth in the economy. As for
16:48
Speaker 1: the shale patch, look uh these um uh, these oil
16:54
Speaker 1: patches are economically efficient. UH hends on the field depends
17:01
Speaker 1: on the well um it varies. If the smaller producers
17:07
Speaker 1: go billy up, the bigger producers have deep enough pockets
17:12
Speaker 1: the excess of the BPS to pick them up and
17:15
Speaker 1: have this capacity. It doesn't mean they will produce at five,
17:20
Speaker 1: but these resources will be available. And to my to
17:25
Speaker 1: my my research, thirty and up thirty five and up
17:31
Speaker 1: um the oil shale wells, oil shell fields are economically effective.
17:38
Speaker 1: So I totally understand and feel the pain of people
17:42
Speaker 1: who lose their jobs and lose their businesses. On the
17:45
Speaker 1: other him, remember creative destruction in the market economy, UH
17:52
Speaker 1: has this Darwinian process in which some of these companies
17:55
Speaker 1: will be picked up by bigger and more aggressive players.
18:00
Speaker 1: So Dr Colemen, I wonder if you could help me
18:01
Speaker 1: with the strategy being pursued by the saluities. In terms
18:04
Speaker 1: of yesterday in the Russia cut supply by nine point
18:07
Speaker 1: seven million barrels. But that doesn't seem to be enough
18:10
Speaker 1: given that the demand their destruction we've seen, are they
18:13
Speaker 1: just strategically trying to push the US shale operators just
18:19
Speaker 1: completely out of business and to get to the U
18:20
Speaker 1: s out of the UH oil business. The original idea
18:26
Speaker 1: of putting US shell out of the business was Russian. UH. Specifically,
18:30
Speaker 1: the the chairman of CEO of the Russian state owned
18:34
Speaker 1: beheam of called rosnip uh Ego session. Uh. He was
18:38
Speaker 1: running round with this idea for a long time. UH.
18:41
Speaker 1: They made their move in March. UH the oil talks
18:46
Speaker 1: fell apart. But what you see now the Saluities are
18:50
Speaker 1: selling their oil at a great discount in Europe. So
18:54
Speaker 1: it is as much a struggle to take the market
18:58
Speaker 1: share away from the Russians as it is to put
19:00
Speaker 1: our guys in the shell pnch art in business. So
19:05
Speaker 1: just quickly, here are all going forward? Do you think
19:08
Speaker 1: that Saudi Arabia and Russia are going to cut a
19:11
Speaker 1: meaningful additional amount of the oil produced given the fact
19:15
Speaker 1: that their current cuts that they've promised that still haven't
19:18
Speaker 1: gone into effect are considered insignificant compared to the lack
19:21
Speaker 1: of demand that we're seeing. Well, let's take a look
19:24
Speaker 1: at supply and demand. Uh. The supply UH was it
19:28
Speaker 1: about ninety plus million barrels a day. It's collapsed by
19:35
Speaker 1: about uh the of thirty. Uh. They're cutting twins, They're
19:42
Speaker 1: talking about cutting twenty uh so the marginal price may
19:47
Speaker 1: go up, but we don't see it yet. In the
19:50
Speaker 1: future contract. I would say, let's wait till May and
19:54
Speaker 1: see how this cuts are being implemented. But it's important
19:59
Speaker 1: to remember his story. Really every time I'll pet agreed
20:02
Speaker 1: on cut. Everybody cheated. Everybody is selling a tonker, a
20:06
Speaker 1: tanker or two or five from the back door, so
20:10
Speaker 1: to speak. I cross my desk more offers of selling
20:15
Speaker 1: oil and deep discounts over the years that I can.
20:19
Speaker 1: You know, I can count on a real code. You
20:23
Speaker 1: live an interesting life. I've missed those offers to buy
20:26
Speaker 1: cheap tankers of oil. They are not crossing my desk,
20:29
Speaker 1: they are crossing yours. Ariel coh and thank you so
20:32
Speaker 1: much for being with us. Ariel Co and senior fellow
20:34
Speaker 1: at the Atlantic Council, also founding Principle of International Market Analysis,
20:39
Speaker 1: joining us from Washington, d C. Paul, you've gotting those.
20:43
Speaker 1: I am not occasion. You'll get that email looking too
20:46
Speaker 1: if I want to buy some barrels of oil, but
20:48
Speaker 1: not recently. Seriously, yeah, you would think that that would
20:52
Speaker 1: be getting them all the time, because nobody can sell
20:55
Speaker 1: their oil right now. Yeah, although you can't just story
20:57
Speaker 1: it in your kid's room. I've looked into it just can't.
21:00
Speaker 1: It's it's not particularly safe. I'm sure that, uh, I'm
21:03
Speaker 1: sure that a CS would come and and file a complaint.
21:09
Speaker 1: One of the more I think ominous developments from this
21:12
Speaker 1: coronavirus really taking shape over the last several days has been, uh,
21:16
Speaker 1: the security of the food supply chain within the United States,
21:20
Speaker 1: particularly on the beef and pork uh. Michael Hurtzer, agricultural
21:25
Speaker 1: reporter for Bloomberg, joins US now. He's based in Chicago. So, Michael,
21:29
Speaker 1: I've seen about some news command of Bloomberg News about
21:31
Speaker 1: a quarter of American pork production, maybe ten percent of
21:34
Speaker 1: beef output has now been shuttered and farmers are actually
21:38
Speaker 1: slaughtering their own pigs. What's going on here? And how
21:40
Speaker 1: bad is could this get? I guess we don't know
21:44
Speaker 1: how bad it's going to get yet. Um. Some of
21:47
Speaker 1: these plants that have closed, there's been eight major kind
21:50
Speaker 1: of pork and beef plants have closed across kind of
21:53
Speaker 1: the central US, and one of the plants in in Greeley,
21:57
Speaker 1: Colorado is actually restarting. So I guess it will depend
22:01
Speaker 1: on just how quickly the workers can get better and
22:04
Speaker 1: then the plants can resume operations and then they can
22:07
Speaker 1: start to wrap their their arms around the sick employees. So,
22:12
Speaker 1: just to sort of put this into perspective, what's been
22:14
Speaker 1: going on is that farmers usually rely on meat processing
22:18
Speaker 1: plants to slaughter and process the meat and then distributed
22:21
Speaker 1: that to restaurants and to big box grocery stores. What's
22:26
Speaker 1: happened is Tyson in a number of other plants, there
22:29
Speaker 1: have been illnesses that have forced the plants to shut
22:32
Speaker 1: down correct and as a result, there hasn't been the
22:35
Speaker 1: slaughtering and processing capabilities. So farmers are just facing an
22:40
Speaker 1: overpopulation of their animals and slaughtering them themselves. Do we
22:44
Speaker 1: have a sense of how common that is for farmers
22:47
Speaker 1: to be doing that? Usually, you know, if there's there's
22:51
Speaker 1: a sick animal that will get cold, but actually at
22:55
Speaker 1: the call either market ready animals that are kind of
22:58
Speaker 1: at the desired wait for the accessing or to to
23:02
Speaker 1: kill out the younger animals. It's it's quite rare, and
23:05
Speaker 1: it hasn't happened, you know, at any scale for years. Um,
23:09
Speaker 1: we're kind of being told that this is still relatively isolated. Um,
23:14
Speaker 1: but it could get worse if if the situation at
23:18
Speaker 1: the plant doesn't improve. And part of the problem is
23:20
Speaker 1: is that just like the grocery stores, the meat plants,
23:23
Speaker 1: they kind of need a ready supply of animals moving
23:27
Speaker 1: through there pretty quickly. And the animals, you know, they're
23:30
Speaker 1: they're moving out of the barns and then there's another,
23:33
Speaker 1: you know, group of animals coming into the barn and
23:36
Speaker 1: into the processing plant. So it's kind of a just
23:38
Speaker 1: in time inventory and and that's really what's kind of
23:42
Speaker 1: under pressure right now. So, Michael, are we seeing higher
23:46
Speaker 1: beef end pork prices at the supermarket now? If not, now,
23:51
Speaker 1: is that something we should be planning on. If you're
23:54
Speaker 1: reading your sale papers, which kind of are, you know,
23:56
Speaker 1: the papers that come in the mail are dropped on
23:58
Speaker 1: your doorstep, you can still probably see some sales for
24:02
Speaker 1: some meat items, uh, you know, supplies going into the
24:06
Speaker 1: pandemic were we're nearly a record and um, so the
24:10
Speaker 1: retail level probably hasn't seen quite the pressure yet outside
24:14
Speaker 1: of maybe some some gouging that that people may be experiencing.
24:19
Speaker 1: But the market, the wholesale markets, which we have a
24:22
Speaker 1: gouge every day from from the U. S. D A
24:25
Speaker 1: has been surging for both pork and beef, and those
24:28
Speaker 1: prices will will eventually transfer down to the consumer. Michael,
24:32
Speaker 1: do we have a sense of the proportion of meat
24:35
Speaker 1: processing plants that have had to close as a result
24:38
Speaker 1: of worker illness. We had one of the major kind
24:42
Speaker 1: of unions estimating that for pork it was about um.
24:47
Speaker 1: We're hearing, you know, might be fifteen and again on
24:51
Speaker 1: the beef about um so far, and some plants have
24:56
Speaker 1: started to get closer to resuming operation. And although there
25:01
Speaker 1: have you know, Tyson shut down two plants on pork
25:05
Speaker 1: and one on beef just this week. So, Michael, are
25:09
Speaker 1: processing plants are they geographically dispersed throughout the country or
25:13
Speaker 1: they kind of particular geography that may be more at
25:16
Speaker 1: risk to the virus. Some of the sticking points have
25:20
Speaker 1: been like they'll generally are in more rural areas, but
25:24
Speaker 1: the workforce is much of it our immigrants and some
25:29
Speaker 1: of those people you know will travel obviously, and we're
25:33
Speaker 1: traveling prior to kind of the lockdowns, and so it's
25:36
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just like the world. It's these plants.
25:40
Speaker 1: They could be in the middle, middle of nowhere, but
25:42
Speaker 1: the workers, you know, travel here and there and and
25:46
Speaker 1: uh and then concentrate at the plant or or sometimes
25:50
Speaker 1: because they are immigrants or maybe not having the most
25:53
Speaker 1: highest paying jobs, they do live in culser quarters than
25:57
Speaker 1: then might be ideal for for something like this, pand
26:00
Speaker 1: make Michael Hurts her thank you so much for being
26:02
Speaker 1: with us. Michael Hurts, or agricultural reporter for Bloomberg News,
26:06
Speaker 1: talking about something that's gotten a lot of attention, the
26:08
Speaker 1: possibility of a meat shortage, in particular pork as a
26:13
Speaker 1: number of these meat processing plants closed down in the
26:16
Speaker 1: wake of the coronavirus, other people saying that we're far
26:19
Speaker 1: away away from a meat shortage. Nonetheless, what it highlights
26:22
Speaker 1: to me, Paul, is the incredibly complex supply chain, especially
26:26
Speaker 1: for something that is just in time type of fulfillment
26:30
Speaker 1: such as the meat industry. Yeah, that's that was new
26:33
Speaker 1: news to me from Michael, kind of that just in
26:35
Speaker 1: time aspect to it, and you know, you just get
26:37
Speaker 1: a little bit of a disruption and it flows through
26:39
Speaker 1: the system. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg pan L podcast.
26:44
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts
26:47
Speaker 1: or whatever. Podcast platform you prefer Paul Sweeney. I'm on
26:50
Speaker 1: Twitter at pt Sweeney. I'm Lisa abram Woids. I'm on
26:52
Speaker 1: Twitter at Lisa A. Bramwod's one before the podcast. You
26:55
Speaker 1: can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio. It is
27:00
Speaker 1: a belated