as cases increase around the world, the system of testing for coronavirus in the unites states has been described as inadequate by the leading american public health official, dr anthony fauci. that is in sharp contrast with president trump's assertions that the country has a tremendous testing set—up, and that anyone who wants a test gets a test. the outbreak has pushed global stock markets into spectacular falls. it was the worst day on wall street since 1987, and japan's nikkei index plunged more than 10%. the hang seng in hong kong opened 7% down. ajudge has ordered the immediate release from prison of the former intelligence analyst chelsea manning. she has been detained since last may after she refused to appear at an inquiry into wikileaks. according to her lawyers, she is recovering in hospital from a suicide attempt.

now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk with me, zeinab badawi. the covid—19 crisis is not only a threat to people's health and wellbeing, it is already having severe financial consequences, which many fear will result in a crisis of the kind we saw more than a decade ago. my guest today professor on globalisation and development, who's also worked extensively in and governments, including in his own native south africa. he is ian goldin, and six years ago he predicted that the next financial crash would be caused by a pandemic. will his prophecy come to pass, that a public health emergency will lead to a global recession? or will this be averted?

ian goldin, welcome to hardtalk. it's a pleasure to be here. so, what made you predict six years ago that the next global financial crash would be caused by a pandemic? it's almost inevitable that as we connect more, as more and more people live in big cities close to airports, which are not only the super spreaders of the goods of globalisation but also the bads, that contagion would cascade around the world. we've seen many pandemics in the past, they've always been the biggest killers of humanity, and i believed this continued to be a major threat that was being ignored. and so i felt very strongly, and still do, that this is likely to be not only the biggest threat to our lives but also to our financial systems and economies.

you said that the coronavirus shows how globalisation spreads contagion of all kinds, so you're attributing it to globalisation there, but i have to put it to you that during the spanish flu outbreak in 1918, when eventually 50 million people died, there wasn't globalisation then in the sense that we talk about it today. no, there wasn't. and that was spread largely through troops returning home from europe after the war. shipping was the way it... that's why it was so slow. it affected one third of the world's population in some way — 50 million died. now we have this but in a much more virulent form given our connectivity, and the threat is much more instantaneous. we've seen in cyber that it can instantly spread around the world. we've seen in the financial crisis that overnight there was cascading risk. and with pandemics, near big airport hubs,

anything can be anywhere in the world in 36 hours. and you attribute that to globalisation? yes, it is a result of globalisation, which has brought immense benefits, i'm a huge believer in it, it's brought better things for more people more quickly than anything in the world, which is why 2 billion people have been lifted out of poverty while you have these rapidly—growing cities, these airport hubs, but globalisation is also very bad and very ugly and it needs to be managed so we can sustain it. you've been making comparisons between the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 and what we are seeing now, and attributing it, as we said, to globalisation, but you're not really comparing like with like. one is a health emergency, and another one was born of finance. what i analyse in my book, the butterfly defect, is how these integrated, complex systems and lead to interdependency, and in that sense it's very similar. it's about something that starts somewhere in a hub, spreading around the world rapidly through the arteries of globalisation.

in that case it was financed, in this case it's airports and airlines and travel. but they are similar both in the way that they originate and travel, but also that we need to think about their management in similar ways. we need to think about the need to co—ordinate to stop these things. all right, so there was a crash then more than a decade ago, real financial crisis, are you saying we're now heading towards a global recession? or are we already in one? can you clarify what you think? i think we're on the cusp... on the cusp. ..a cliff edge, and it's really up to us and our government that we decide whether we're heading over it or we are able to reverse our actions. i think concerted actions by governments nationally and globally could avert a major crisis, a collapse equivalent to 2008, but if we don't do more quickly, i think we're heading for that and it could be much severe. i'll ask you what we think we should do in a moment, but let's just examine the severity

of what you think will happen. angel talavera at oxford economic said, "it's pretty difficult to avoid a recession in the first half of the year. the spread of the disease in europe is a game—changer, the questions are how deep will be and how long it will last." so if you say we're on the cusp, just elucidate. i mean, when will we get into it and how long do you think it would last? is it a given it's going to happen? i think we're definitely going to have a major, major slowdown in the world economy. we could well see negative growth in much of europe, even in the us, and we could see much, much slower growth... it's been at over 6%, down to 2% in china. so this will slow things down. if countries respond by rapidly addressing the crisis, by transferring money to those that most need it, to helping those that can't get to work, to trying to sustain

businesses so that they don't go bankrupt, through underwriting their loans, extending their loans in other ways, and if there's a co—ordinated global activity, to give money to those countries that are going to desperately need it, including italy and many other developing countries that are already on the verge of bankruptcy, then we might avoid the worst effects but yes, we are heading towards recession. let's be honest, you don't really know. no—one knows. mohamed el—erian, chief economic advisor to aliianz. .. good friend. ..says the negative affects will be with us for a while, fasten your seatbelt hard. the british chancellor of the exchequer, rishi sunak, says there will be a significant impact on the uk economy but it will be temporary. it's all words like this, "a while", "temporary", it's all a bit obfuscatory language, isn't it? i don't think it's obfuscatory. we just don't know, we don't know how extreme the pandemic‘s going to be in britain. is it going to be like italy or is it going to be much milder? are we going to bounce back

quickly, as in fact china and hubei province has? is it going to linger longer? is it going to transfer to the southern hemisphere as winter comes there? there's many questions we don't and experts don't know the answers to and they have dramatic implications for the economic impact. we know it's going to be a big knock, we know it's probably going to be be equivalent to 2008... for sure? i think it will be, yes. but i don't know how it's going to play out around the world because we don't know the response from governments. you just said we know there's going to be an economic impact, so what kind of impact are we talking about? is it going to affect people's livelihoods, are they going to be compromised, are there going to be widespread shortages of consumer and industrial goods? impact on people's social lives? what kind of impact are you talking about? all of the above.

all of the above, yeah. we're already seeing a dramatic on people who are vulnerable. people's pensions have gone down dramatically after the stock market crash, they have less to spend. people on hourly work, over 5 million in the uk, over 15 million in the us, people around the world on hourly work depend on going to work to get their income, they don't have sick pay, they don't have unemployment benefit, who are supporting their families, migrant workers but also domestic workers. people in the travel industry, people work in hospitality of different types — restaurants, hotels — all of these people are extremely vulnerable. either their workplace will be closed down or the airline, as british airways is telling people, "don't come to work" to certain staff in italy, for example, or they'll be quarantined because they know someone who's been somewhere, and that is their livelihood. so i think this will exacerbate inequality, i think it will slow economic growth. that means the businesses that

are producing things we consume, whether it's restaurant meals or clothing, we don't go to the shops anymore, whatever it is, all of the businesses go out of work and then the supply chains are disrupted as well, we can't get the components and so the auto factories and start closing down, otherfactories start closing down. so people's cars and start breaking down and they can't fix them? or they can't buy a new one because it's not in stock. public transport vehicles are going to be compromised. this then leads to a decline in demand, a decline in supply and we're going into a downward spiral of consumer confidence and declining economic activity. that's how the 2008 crash happened and that's how crashes generally happen. you get this downward spiral and a much lower level of activity at the end. you said it would also exacerbate inequality, is that within countries and also between countries? that basically poorer nations and poorer communities within countries are going to bear the brunt harder? within our countries it will exacerbate inequality. if there's a strong safety net, that will reduce it. but many countries, including the us, and many poor countries,

don't have safety nets. so if people lose theirjob or whatever, they can't get it, people don't have access to medical care. in the us, there's over 20 million people who don't have access to medical care and are uninsured, these people can't get tested and won't be able to go to hospitals though it exacerbates the inequalities within countries dramatically. it makes people who depend on things like retirement savings much worse off. although obviously the virus doesn't discriminate against people depending on their wealth... no, that's the difference between a pandemic and other shocks. the industrial north of italy is the one most severely affected, with 10,000 cases there. but within that, the rich have savings, the rich have the ability to withstand this crisis but poor people, when they lose their income, can become destitute, they can become homeless if they can't pay the rent. that's also between countries because poorer countries don't have the resources, they don't have the health systems and other systems in place. professor goldin, though, i mean,

are you not scaremongering a bit? because the director general of the world health organization, doctor tedros ghebreyesus, says, "panic and fear is the worst". are you not doing that with all the things you are saying? the scientists are saying, "look, by the end of the year, we might have a vaccine which we'll be able to be roll out...", and so on and so forth. i hope we will. well, i mean, that's what we are saying. professor sarah gilbert from oxford university has said hopefully by the end of the year, she's one of the scientists involved. i hope that my worst fears are not realised, and as roosevelt said in 1933, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". but you're scaremongering was my point. i'm not scaremongering, i'm saying we need... you've depicted this massive apocalyptic vision of what's going to happen. i'm saying there could be a massive crash coming out of this. all the outcomes of systemic risk are about what we do about them. the reason to raise the red flags, or at least the orange lights, is because you want people to act.

i want governments to act, i want them to stop this. i want the international community to act to stop the next pandemic, to learn from this, which it never did in financial crisis. they are doing that, both in terms of mitigation and containment against covid—19. the european union commission has set up a 25 billion euro fund. giuseppe conte, the prime minister of italy, said we're going to have 7.5 billion euro of spending measures. these numbers are tiny compared to what was given to solve the financial crisis. alistair darling set aside 500... a former labour politician who was chancellor at the time of the financial crisis. he set aside £500 billion to bailout the banks. the us treasury secretary set aside $750 billion to bailout the us banks. you're saying that they should pay more?

i'm delighted the chancellor today set aside £30 billion and what he's advocating for in the uk is very sensible, but compared to the response in the financial crisis, this is tiny. so, what, you're talking about finding money of that order? hundreds of billions? yes, if needed. we should have the ammunition that's going to be required. but, i mean, i put it to you that containment and mitigation measures have been undertaken, and they're having some success. dr tedros at the who has raised china for its containment, so they've now got fewer cases. south korea has seen a decline in cases. singapore also. and you know, he has said, doctor tedros ghebreyesus, the bottom—line is we are at the mercy of the virus, so things are working without these vast injections of funds that you're advocating. i would say it is too early to say. it has worked in china, dramatic, dramatic action — one third of the population

quarantined or stopping movement. it worked in south korea, singapore... in italy, we have an absolute clampdown. that is not what is happening in other countries, not least in the uk, with germany and the us. it is too early to tell how this virus is going to spread, how many people will be affected, and what the impact on economies. what i am signalling is that it could be dramatic, we should be prepared for that and we should be prepared to react dramatically to stop that happening. and you have said that we have to act dramatically to stop that happening, lots of money, new ways of working, you've also said greater cooperation because this is a global threat and you can'tjust have nation states responding in that way. but i mean, what are you advocating? what should nations be doing? working through what structures? i think what has compounded the risks now is that, in 2008, the world was relatively harmonious. george bush called a meeting immediately after the 2008 crisis, and he had 20 heads of state, including the chinese participating. china threw more money in a coordinated action than the rest of the world put together, to mitigate the impact

of the 2008 crisis. now the world has turned its back on international activity... you don't want everybody to gather at some big summit, do you? you don't have to gather at a summit but you do need is coordinated action, what you do need is a us which is not fighting the country that was its key ally in 2008, china. whether that is on climate change, whether it's on pandemics, whether it's on cyber, whether it's on finance, whether it's any of the big risks we face, we need to work together as nations. through what structures though? what worries me now... we've got the world health organization... but the world health organization has been starved of resources, of legitimacy, of authority. it is not up to 21st century purposes. the reasons we're having these pandemics... it's not fit because it does not have the resources... it doesn't have the resources... ..because lots of countries don't pay their contributions. pandemics are unusual and different

to finance or climate in that a pandemic can come from anywhere. the poorest countries are a big risk, whereas in climate, a small group of countries could solve most of the problem, and the same is true in finance. but it doesn't have the surveillance monitering capability around the world to identify pandemics at source and, when they arise, to act on them and stop them, and that is what you need with a pandemic. once it is in a major airport, it is really everywhere in the world. should there be new structures? i think we need to be reinvigorate them, reform them, give them the resources and put our will behind them to stop the next pandemic. all right. the british journalist and commentator in the financial times, robert armstrong says, "coronavirus is a global crisis, not a crisis of globalisation and that globalisation provides the solution" and that is what you are saying but, as you know, there's been a lot of retreat from globalisation across the world. a lot of voters have

said we're not reaping the benefits of globalisation. we have seen politicians, such asjeremy corbyn, the labour party leader here in the uk, railing against it, bernie sanders, the us democratic presidential hopeful, has also said that globalisation has "left far too many people behind" — were his exact words. so that's not exactly a big vote of confidence for globalisation, is there? no, and i think it is right to see that globalisation has been not only a major source of progress — which undoubtedly it has — but also it has brought rising inequality and new risks. pandemic spreading is one but clearly climate change has accelerated because of it, and in many other risks — the financial crisis was an underbelly of globalisation. the answer though is not to build higher walls. there is no wall high enough that's going to keep out climate change, a pandemic or a financial crisis. the answer is that we need to manage this system that we have built, we need to ensure that we co—ordinate actions, we need to ensure that we understand the bads, and that we build the institutions and the capabilities to manage it, whether it is climate change, whether it is finance, whether it is cyber, or whether it is pandemics — we can do it but we have to have the will to do it and we have to understand it...

so the origins of the problem become also part of the solution, are the vehicle through which you have to fix it... absolutely. ..despite scepticism that you see against it? that's right and part of the reason there's the scepticism is because the experts and authorities got it dramatically wrong. they led a liberalisation, a deregulation that resulted in the financial crisis so, when people say, we don't trust the experts, we don't trust the authorities, after the financial crisis, they become populist and nationalist, we have to say to them, you were right not to trust them because they did not manage the system. well, i mean, bernie sanders in the united states has said "unfettered free trade has allowed multinational corporations to enjoy rich profits and make the rich even richer, while workers are sucked into a race for the bottom." could what we're seeing now have an impact on trade? because you have said the epidemic will also prompt a re—examination of the world's central reliance on china as ground zero for manufacturing. could china cease to be a big

trader, a big exporter...? i think we will continue to see incredible growth of global economic. remember that, increasingly, the centre of gravity is moving to asia and asia is very enthusiastic in general about this integration. so we are in the us, in north america, in europe, increasingly marginal to this whole globalisation trend. it will continue, it will be increasingly asia—centric, but i think we have reached peak—supply chain fragmentation. and it's not only because of this coronavirus — i think that will accelerate it — but other things are happening. there's increasing automation in robotics which is bringing systems back home. it will not be workers that are building our things at home but it will be machines, increasingly, whether it is call centres, or whether it's auto—manufacturing and then we have increasing customisation — we want things modelled to our bodies, and we want instant delivery.

now, you can't do that from the other side of the world so all these things are coming together. and coronavirus will be an accelerator. that's right. i think coronavirus will accelerate it but it is a trend that was underlying already. does that also apply to other ways of living? for example people have really rolled back on their travel, businesses are holding videoconferences, people are saying they are going to holiday at home and not go abroad, and so on — so do you think that this could have long—term consequences? i think it will have some long—term consequences but on an upward trend. you see the growth in tourism and travel globally has been at almost 10% a year for the last ten years. let's say it comes out a couple percentages, it does not mean it stops growing, it means it does not grow as rapidly. and increasingly that's been driven by travel and tourism out of asia. that will not stop growing as people get wealthier and wealth will increase incomes as asia grows on average of over 4% per year... but people have seen... people will travel. people have seen in china, for instance, with fewer people travelling now because of the coronavirus, that carbon dioxide emissions have gone down... there are some silver lining is out of this. could that really be a wake—up call

for people that actually that the coronavirus will transform people's habits? i do not think it's going to transform it in that dramatic way. i think we will see some easing off. but when we look back and we see how quickly people have rebounded to old habits. what we need to instil in societies is that we need to manage these risks. nationally and internationally. the other thing that's happened, of course, is that oil prices have collapsed so transport is going to become much cheaper. i worry about that in the context of climate change. our push to get off fossil fuel, which is absolutely essential, is going to be reduced by the fact that oil is now so cheap and competitive. one idea as well, that has been discussed, is could it encourage the free flow of information in countries which are a bit authoritarian? because we saw the tragic death of the doctor, dr li wenliang, in china who raised the alarm online, earning him a visit from the police who told him to stop spreading rumours and he died of the disease, of course, and he said on his deathbed, "i think ahealthy society should not only have one kind of voice." and that went viral.

could it have that kind of impact? i hope so but i think what the chinese might also be saying is our way of managing this has been extremely effective and i don't think they're going to be taking away from this that they were not doing the right thing. of course, it was picked up too late, there was not the communication around it, but their actions afterwards, which have been draconian, have dramatically helped the slowing of the spread and, of course, what they've done is they've had a big hit on their economy so china has taken a big hit as a result of trying to protect itself and the world. so we have already seen the financial impact of coronavirus.... absolutely, absolutely. professor ian goldin, i ask you finally, you foretold

that there would be a global economic crisis as a result of some pandemic. we are now looking at coronavirus. you must hope that you are wrong? i absolutely do but i hope also that we learn the lesson from this, that we do not become complacent as happened in the run—up to the financial crisis, that we thought we knew we were doing and so we failed to manage the system. i hope i'm wrong and that this is a massive wake—up call to stop the next pandemic which is inevitable and could be more severe, to stop financial crisis, to stop climate change, to stop other cascading risks. if we can learn from this that that we are interdependent, that we all depend on people around the world to be doing the right thing, to be taking the cautions in the right way, to be stopping risks, if we can do that internationally and nationally, it would have been worthwhile. thank you very much indeed, ian goldin. i should take the precaution of not shaking hands with you and we can... thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. well, the weather's been quite unsettled really, often quite windy with a number of showers around. we certainly have plenty of these on thursday and this was one of those shower clouds spotted in the skies around the wolverhampton area. the satellite picture shows showers swirling around an area of low pressure that is moving out to the north sea at the moment but that's not the last of the lows. we have another couple of swirls of cloud, another coming in late on friday and another one working in just in time for the weekend. if you're out and about for the next few hours, across northern areas,

there will be further showers and at times, those will be falling as snow over the hills of scotland. elsewhere, it's going to stay quite windy. temperatures of the most part keeping above freezing but with a nip of frost in scotland, perhaps northern england, where we could see if few icy stretches where we see those showers fall. the rest of friday morning, showers get driven down the north sea by these cold northerly winds and we could see cloud thicken and outbreaks of rain across wales and south—west england. in these two areas, we'll see areas of sunshine that is when moves across wales combined with winds coming across the north sea, we will get this line of moisture which will generate showers, more from merseyside down through the midlands to the greater london area. it could be quite slow—moving and could turn cloudy for a time as well. we got rains on the day across wales and south—west england. the aim becomes more extensive overnight and for the weekend, slow—moving weather front pushes its way eastwards across the uk so we will see rain at times across this weekend. the rain will be followed by showers. so it is an unsettled looking weekend and often it's

going to be pretty windy as well. we'll take a look at more detailed forecasts and on saturday, a strip of cloud, the rain quite heavy in scotland, easing off later in the day but that's only because the next weather system will be racing its way in, bringing more rain across northern ireland and the return of wet weather for western scotland, north—west england and wales across the day. the rain could turn quite heavy across the hills across northern england overnight. and on into sunday as well. with some fairly large rainfall totals. given how what it's been recently, this could provide a risk of some further localised flooding. as it moves into east anglia and south—east england, it will then be followed by showers and eventually, we will start to drag in some cool air across north—west areas as well. looking beyond that, we could see some high pressure develop towards the south, so it could become drier in london but it will become rather unsettled further north.

hello — this is the briefing. i'm susannah streeter. our top stories: share prices in asia plunge again as fear over the coronavirus pandemic grips global financial markets. as the french president announces new measures to try to curb the spread, we take a look at one of the regions affected. the president has announced that all schools will close from next week. the travel industry warns up to 25% of global travel could be affected and up to 50 million jobs are at risk. as cases continue to grow in the us, all major sport is suspended and broadway performances are cancelled