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Corona virus, COVID 19

Season 2, Episode 10, Transcribed: Coronavirus Crisis Continues, Expect ‘Rolling Recessions’

Moderator 0:02
Welcome to the Contrarian Investor Podcast. We give voice to those who challenge the prevailing sentiment in global financial markets. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Nothing on this podcast should be taken as investment advice. guests were not compensated for the appearance, nor do they supply payment in order to appear. Individuals on this podcast may hold positions in the securities that are discussed, listeners are urged to educate themselves and make their own decisions. Now, here’s your host, Mr. Nathaniel E Baker.

Nathaniel E. Baker 0:36
The situation around the corona virus continues to escalate. Markets are apparently at the whim now of policymakers in the US who are debating a congressional bailout of sorts to help the public in the US as well as corporations. And to that extent, I have a guest today, Rachel Ziemba. She is the founder of Ziemba Insights here in New York and a professor at NYU. Among other things that she’ll tell us about later.

Rachel Ziemba You are the founder of Ziva insights, a professor at NYU, and a geo economic and country risk expert. We are here of course to talk about the corona virus, which is wreaking havoc in financial markets and to the global economy. Of course, the health issues are paramount and we hope everybody stays healthy or gets health He, as the case may be, but for our purposes and now having you on the podcast, I wanted to get your views a little bit on your assessment of the economic impact of this coronavirus.

Rachel Ziemba 3:15
Thanks for having me on the podcast. It’s time you know, given the unfolding interlinked crises that we’re now experiencing, it’s an ideal time to sort of recognize what we know and what we still don’t know. What we know is that the economic impacts of not only the virus but the mitigation policies are incredibly dire. From day one when it was or not day, one, maybe day 30 as it was evolving in China. What became clear to me as an economist was that this was very different than past health crises and pandemics as soon as China put 50 million people on lockdown and shut down economic activity in Wuhan province that of course has manifested to rolling, lockdowns, quarantines and shut down quite a lot of economic activity around the rest of the world, even as the Chinese economy is reviving. So this has been, you know, economists like myself, until recently engaged in a debate over was this more a demand shock or a supply shock? I think it’s very clear now it is a very deep demand shock for oil and commodities for a wide range of goods, and also a shift in demand. And so I think this is going to mean some form of of rolling, rolling recessions. every data point we look at right now almost looks historic and are not reflecting the situation on the ground today. Even this from a week ago. You had several hundred thousand people filing for unemployment. When we think ahead to next week, it will probably be even greater. These will be people who still have cost to pay bills to pay, they might be sequestered. But their bills are not sequestered. And so that’s why the measures we’ve seen in the global from global policymakers are so important to keep element individuals and elements of the economy on a lifeline, so that we can try to evolve so that we can try to kill the virus, right? We’re shutting down parts of the economy to try to kill the virus, that obviously has collateral damage, but having millions and millions of people dead would be not only a massive human cost, but a major economic one.

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Season 2, Episode 9, Transcribed: The Medical View of Coronavirus

Moderator 0:02
Welcome to the Contrarian Investor Podcast. We give voice to those who challenge the prevailing sentiment in global financial markets. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Nothing on this podcast should be taken as investment advice. Guests were not compensated for the appearance, nor do they supply payment in order to appear. Individuals on this podcast may hold positions in the securities that are discussed. Listeners are urged to educate themselves and make their own decisions. Now, here’s your host, Mr. Nathaniel a baker.

Nathaniel E. Baker 0:36
Okay. Dr. Robert Bednarz, thank you so much for joining us here. It’s my pleasure to have an actual bona fide doctor on the show. I’ve been trying to get somebody who can actually professionally legitimately speak to this coronavirus Covid-19, also known as the Chinese virus if you’re going to quote a certain president, but let’s not go there. What investors want to know, and what you may or may not be able to answer are a couple things: First of all, just how serious of a health crisis is this? And more importantly, how long will this persist? And interesting maybe could also start us with the interesting little detail that you are right now as we speak in self quarantine. Right?

Dr. Robert Bednarz 1:29
Right. Yes. So I can start with all that I can first start with the self quarantine thing, which is why I have time to do all these interviews and podcasts. So last week, as you can hear, I have a cough as well, too. But last week, I had a week off from work where I spent my time in Poland visiting my family and then on returning to Scotland I was ready to go back to work but I started developing this new continuous cough and a runny nose which aren’t the runny nose isn’t as simple Have a Corona virus but the cost is so instead of just testing me the guidelines at the time which have changed now is for just to stay home for seven days. So they told me to stay home for seven days and now I’m home and I there’s no obviously there’s no cop or somebody or some government official outside my door I can I can leave by wanting to but just for my own causes and not put anyone else at risk just in case I do have coronavirus. I am now stuck at home for the week, day and night. This is this is day six. So I’m really excited to finally go out and do some grocery shopping tomorrow. Whatever is left out there.

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Season 2, Episode 8, Transcribed: Assessing Economic Damage From Coronavirus With Political Economist Marc Chandler

Moderator 0:02
Welcome to the Contrarian Investor Podcast. We give voice to those who challenge a prevailing sentiment in global financial markets. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Nothing on this podcast should be taken as investment advice. Guests were not compensated for their appearance, nor do they supply payment in order to appear. Individuals on this podcast may hold positions in the securities that are discussed. Listeners are urged to educate themselves and make their own decisions. Now, here’s your host, Mr. Nathaniel E Baker,

Nathaniel E. Baker 0:35
Marc Chandler, you are an economist, and you have a website marctomarket.com, mark with a “c.” And I want to talk about your background later. But the first the thing that is kind of vexing everybody, obviously, these days is this Corona virus. And of course we hope everybody stays healthy. But beyond that, what people are trying to figure out now is the economic and earnings impact that is coronavirus is going to have in the US and across and across the globe. And so I’m very pleased to have you on the podcast to hopefully put into context a little bit, what types of things we’re seeing economically. how bad the damage you expect to be, how quickly we should rebound or could rebound. And yeah, just your general take on things from an economic perspective.

Marc Chandler 1:33
Sure, thanks. Yeah, what a shocker. Hmm, you know, all the things that we thought about, like what could hurt us. Many people, I mean, pandemics, Sandys, viruses. Of course, this is like, they make great Netflix series. But at the end of the day, I think that I’m hesitant to call it a black swan event. Because it’s like the third or fourth kind of virus we’ve gotten in recent years, I think about SARS. I think about MERS, even, you know, so. So on one hand, I think we’re ill prepared for this kind of shock. And ill prepared socially, institutionally and psychologically, I think that this is this is the real thing. I mean, if we’ve been saving money for a rainy day, this is a rainy day. This is the emergency that we’ve that we probably haven’t seen so much in our lifetimes. I know people talk about some man, some very clearly man made and specifically man made disasters like World War One, World War Two. in our lifetimes, you think about these other big events, maybe 9/11 here in the US, but this and maybe even some of us still have a scar tissue from the global from the great financial crisis. Well, we don’t know nine, but this is bigger and bigger than bigger than these bigger than these kind of events that we’re familiar with. I think the closest thing can be the Spanish flu, early part of the century. So so the First thing I’d make is that a lot of people I think are confused, because we kind of talk ourselves into this into these like myths. And one of these myths is that the Fed kills economic recoveries. And that that’s the cause of the last few sessions we’ve had. And I look at those other recessions, great financial crisis, the tech bubble, and it seems that loan crisis earlier in my career, these are financial crises that lead over to an economic crisis and have a business cycle. But this what we’re dealing with now, this is an economic crisis, it’s going to spill over and hitting the financial sector. So what we’ve seen around the world but also in the US, central bank’s ease monetary policy, so they cut interest rates, buying assets, like the QE versions that we saw before, but other countries are doing their own versions of it. And we’ve got the federal the federal government, slowly responding. I think at first the US was very far behind the curve still in denial. I think we were in denial up to about two days ago. So until like March 13 or so. And I think that I think that sort of now I think we’re getting more serious. And, you know, a couple weeks ago when Congress was proposing about an $8 billion spending package, it was criticized for having a lot of ideological goodies in it. And now, as of this morning, the White House to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is talking about an 850 billion dollar package. So this is like we’re going on to war footing.

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