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tv   Bulls Bears  FOX Business  April 18, 2020 11:00am-12:00pm EDT

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a.m. eastern monday through friday with "mornings with maria." right here on fox business, set the tone. that'll do it for us. thank you so much for joining me a great rest of the weekend, and i'll see you again next time. ♪ ♪ gerry: hello and welcome to the "wall street journal at large." well, we received some good news and some bad news this week in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak. the good news is that medical experts are saying we may be near a peak. white house adviser dr. anthony fauci expressed cautious optimism that the disease is slowing and that we're starting to see a leveling off of cases. the bad news, of course, is that thousands of americans are still getting sick and dying from covid-19, and the economy -- which has been virtually shut down for more than a month to try to stop the spread -- is
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taking a real beating. for the fourth week in a row, first-time jobless claims were in the multimillions taking the total number to 22 million. retail sales plunged 8.7% in march, the worst ever in history of data. and the federal reserve reported economic activity has fallen sharply during the crisis. mindful of the damage to the economy, president trump announced on thursday guidelines to begin reopening the country soon, leaving the actual decision making to state governors. meanwhile, the country is being subjected to what is essentially a rather pointless daily battle between the media and mr. trump plaided out during his coronavirus briefings. reporters seem to think that their main job is to apportion blame, and they spend endless hours accusing president trump of failing to do enough to address the virus. and, of course, president trump being president trump, he accuses them of fake news, and he hurls himself back at them. a good example came monday in this exchange with paula reid of
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cbs. >> the argument is you bought yourself time, you didn't use it to prepare hospitals or ramp up testing -- >> you're so, you're so disgraceful. it's so disgraceful -- >> what did your administration do in february -- >> a lot. a lot. a lot. >> what? gerry: i'm not sure what purpose this all serves. clearly, mistakes have been made, there always are mistakes, many mistakes in the early stages of a government response to a crisis. we saw that from some of our greatest leaders in times such as the civil war and, indeed, world war ii. but there is a lot we don't really yet know about this crisis and how it's unfolding, how lethal it is, how long we're going to be fighting it. and it's a little premature to make judgments about who's to blame until we much more eviden. in the meantime, there is real, proper work to be done. dreaging the spread of the virus and dealing with the enormous economic fallout. no one benefitses from this
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daily cock fight. we need to learn from past experience. to do that, we can look at the history of these kinds of events which we've had many of. the worst pandemic ever was the 1918 spanish flu which broke out during world war i. now, that outbreak lasted almost three years, and half a billion people got sick. that was about one-third of everyone loving on the planet at the time. tens of millions of people died including almost are 700,000 here in america. so what are the lessons that we might learn from previous epidemics, and particularly how people responded to that one? what could we do better to prepare for the next pandemic? to get those answers, i want to welcome historian john barry, author of what is widely considered to be one of the most important books ever written about the 1918 spanish flu entitled "the deadly influenza." john barry joins me live via skype from new orleans. professor barry, thanks for joining us.
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>> of course. thanks for invite aring me. gerry: let's start, if we could, if you could remind us about the scale of the 1918-1920 so-called spanish flu, just about how extraordinary, just how extensive, how lethal, how damaging it was to humanity. >> well, i think two numbers will pretty much encapsulate that. number one is the death toll, estimated 50-100 million people. if you adjust for population, that would equal 220-440 million people today. roughly two-thirds of them died in an extraordinarily short period of about 14, 15 weeks from september to december 1918. the second is that the peak age for death was 28. unlike coronavirus. roughly two-thirds of the dead
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were aged 14-35, so the target demographic was quite different. gerry: you mentioned that peak of a few weeks which occurred in the fall of 1918, and i think in terms of relevance and of concern to this particular crisis, that was actually the second wave, wasn't it which turned out to be much more lethal than the initial wave which happened right around the same time of year this one is happening. >> well, that's correct. the first wave was very spotty, did not distribute itself widely around the world at all. for example, los angeles didn't have a single influential death in the spring. new york did have a pronounced pandemic. western europe did get a more widespread outbreak in the spring, but much of the world escaped almost entirely. travel, of course, then was quite a bit different. the virus did turn much more virulent, however, there were
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plenty in the spring that had that capability. right now there is no evidence anywhere in the world of the slightest hint that this virus will do anything like that. so i'm not at all concern of that particular part of the problem. gerry: so you think, actually, that's unlikely, that we don't face the risk of a second wave, especially a more lethal second wave in the fall. >> well, the virus is going to be around, but it's not going to turn more lethal. the key really is not so much seasonality, but susceptibility. you know, cold and influenza viruses are more common in winter because they survive longer outside the body in cold than they do in higher temperatures and higher humidity. also people on the tend to be
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inside more, so it spreads more easily in winter. but in this cause the susceptibility, whether it's 80%, 95%, we don't know the exact number but certainly the overwhelming majority of people are not yet been exposed, this is an easily-spread virus, so i don't expect seasonality to be as important as it is in a normal influenza or cold season. i think, you know, for example, even in 1919 australia was the last part of the world to be hit by that second wave because they had a very rigid quarantine. it was finally leaked in january which is dead winter -- excuse me, dead summer for australia. it spread widely there. right now in singapore, tropical, the virus coming back. so i think susceptibility to population is more important than the seasonality.
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gerry: what were the economic consequences of the spanish flu as it was called at the time? we've shut down our economy here along with many, many countries, effectively shut down large parts of the economy. what happened in -- it was the end of the first world war for the first year, what happened economically between 1918 and 1920? >> well, of course, none of the finish most of the cities in the united states banned public gatherings, you with, from church services to saloons and theaters, but they did not take the more extreme measures that we're actually doing now. and i think the social distancing that is going on is going to be and has already demonstrated that it's much more effective than what was done in 1918 because it is more extreme. by the same token, one of the big differences between influenza and the coronavirus is the incubation period.
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influenza's 1-4 days, most people get sick in 2 days. covid-19 is 2-14 days, most people get sick 5-6 days. -- in 5-6 days. that sprech stretches everything out and makes management much more difficult. you know, the total time frame was 14 or 15 weeks in the fall for influenza, but in any given community it would be 6-10 weeks and then it was essentially gone. there was a third wave that came later, but for all intents and purposes, disappeared from that community. they could get back to normal in quite a short period of time -- gerry: professor, we -- forgive me for interrupting, we've got to take a quick break. coming up, i want to talk more, obviously, about what happened 100 years ago, but also, critically, about what we learned and didn't learn from that flu outbreak. stay with us. ♪ ♪
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♪ ♪ gerry: i'm with john barry, author of "the great influenza." mr. barry, or thank you again. professor, as you look at what we're going through now and with your depth of knowledge of what happened 1918-1920, what do do you see in terms of our response to this? what are we getting -- let's start, if we may, what are we getting right in terms of how we are responding that perhaps enables us to avoid some of the worst outcomes of a hundred years ago? >> well, clearly the social distancing measures we're getting right. here and many other, most other places in the world although not everywhere. of mexico, brazil are outlie iers -- outliers on a negative side. but the social distancing clearly is having an impact. gerry: how did the, how did the flu in 1918, how did it end? it went up til 1920.
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how did we finally get beyond that? >> well, again, it did last until 1920, but remember the overwhelming majority of deaths were in that incredibly compressed time period. you know, number one, i would say people's immune systems were better able to respond to it when they saw it again and again. that's number one. and number two, the virus itself, the influenza virus, decays very, very rapidly. and it seemed to tend toward mildness, not the lethality that that second wave had. coronavirus, while all of them also mutates, covid-19 mutates a lot more slowly than influenza, which is a good thing. otherwise we had greater difficulty developing vaccines.
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gerry: what about this idea you really have to let these things essentially burn themselves out, until a significant number of the population have had it, that protects the remaining population, and there really isn't a way until a vaccine comes online, what finish how could that work? do we just have to wait until, essentially, enough people have had this disease and developed immunity that we can then move on? >> well, as you possibly know, sweden is essentially taking that approach, trying to protect the elderly and those with underlying conditions, but other than that they're largely decided to let the virus run free. much of the world is looking at that. in this virus to get herd immunity, you would need the vast majority of the population to have been infected, well over 50. and that percent, obviously,
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presents some very serious problems in terms of death toll. gerry: that's the figure that overwhelms our medical capacity to deal with it. >> correct. among other things, yeah. but even if the medical system was able to handle the numbers, you would still have very many deaths. i don't think we're ready to pay that price. gerry: just quickly, in your book you talk a lot about the importance of communication and one of the reasons i think obviously one of the failures of governments back in 1918, 1920 was a failure to communicate and to doing it honestly with their people, was it that important then and how important is it now? >> well, i think it was crucial then. i think, you know, or we were at war and pretty close to outright lies about the disease initially which led to almost a breakdown, certainly, a fraying of society and many cities and the few places where the local leaders
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did tell the truth, those cities -- like san francisco which had very high excess mortality, but it functioned. other cities began to fall apart. you'd see people starving to death. gerry: professor, we've got to take one more quick break, if we may, and then we'll discuss more of the lessons we should be learning from the great flu of 1918. stay with us. ♪ ♪ in these uncertain times, look after yourself, your family, your friends. but know when it comes to your finances, we are here for you. what can i do for you today? we'll take a look at the portfolio and make adjustments. i'm free to chat if you have any more questions. our j.p.morgan advisors are working from home to help guide you through this. for more than 200 years, we've helped our clients navigate historic challenges.
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of course, in many ways the thing that strikes you is how common they are in occurrence they are, and the odd thing that what surprises you that we should be surprised by them. and yet when they come along, as they have done this time, we don't seem to have been prepared, we seem to have been surprised by it. do you think that's fair? >> well, question and no. finish -- yes and no. there's a certain community of virologists and preparedness people who were not at all surprised. they've been, california santa-like, screaming how old by for decades -- loudly for decades. so the experts aren't surprised. it's difficult to get governments or for that matter hospitals in the priest sector to make -- in the private sector to make the investment to prepare. because then you're talking about money that seem to be inefficiently used.
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same thing for supply chains, just in time inventories is very efficient but creates all sorts of problems when there's an interruption. they don't like slack. gerry: do you think that, as you look at the way in which we responded to this, i mean, first of all, beginning china, you know, it started in china, there's some dispute about whether it started in a wet market or maybe even possibly in a lab, china was, it seems, was very slow in both responding directly and certainly communicating the scale of the threat to the rest of the world. do you agree with that? >> i would. the one thing china did do that was extremely helpful was get the genome out there pretty early. that's hugely important. but on many other things, i would agree that china was not acting as responsibly as they should have. we thought they had learned their lesson from sars.
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a lot of improvements came after that but, unfortunately, i don't think they performed very well in this. gerry: and what do you think needs to change? obviously not just in china, but with the rest of the world, the way in which governments prepare. again, we have had so many warnings of these things. as you said, epidemiologists are warning about it all the time. what do we need to do to insure that we don't suffer in the way that we are, both in human and economic terms, as much as we're suffering right now? >> well, there are a lot of viruses out there in the wild. all of them -- not all of them, but many of them could potentially jump species from animals to people p. so the research community needs to be better funded, the whole preparedness community needs to be better funded. emerging viruses, particularly viruses but there are other pathogens as well, are a threat. i think after in that will happen. after this, that will happen. this is not something people will forget or pass over in the
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way sars, which seemed like a threat but turned out to be containable, mers is not spread widely at all, so it's easy not to take them seriously. this everyone is taking seriously. gerry: and we've certainly learned to take it seriously. again, the book is called "the great influenza," and my great thanks to john warily. thank you very much, in-- john barry. up next, why time is really of the essence now in getting the country back to normal. stay with us. ♪ ♪ hey, can i... hold on one second... sure. okay... okay! safe drivers save 40%!!!
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♪ ♪ gerri: while clearly hopeful signs are emerging in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic, the economic damage from the shutdown continues to get much worse. this week the international monetary fund said that the u.s. economy is likely to shrink by 5.9% this year. that'll be among the worst annual declines this country's faced since the great depression with unemployment likely to rise as high as 20%. but many economists believe that when the crisis is over, the economy will recover most of that lost ground and quite quickly. financial markets also reflect that optimism. the dow jones industrial average has made up more than half the loss it incurred on hopes of an early so-called v-shaped recovery. but this outlook is actually
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highly uncertain and, i think, maybe much too optimistic. the longer the lockdown goes on, the greater the long-term economic damage it will do. businesses will be more reluctant to hire. workers will lose key skills. consumer confidence will be weakened further, and debt levels will place a much larger burden on governments and companies. that is why it's so critical that we are able to return to some semblance of normality soon. those workers who can safely return should be back at work without delay. a staged reopening of the economy must be implemented quickly. it's too soon, obviously, to declare victory e over this epidemic, but if we don't find a smart way to restart our economic engine soon, the ultimate damage will be even greater than a what we now fear it will be. well, that's it for us this week. be sure to follow me on twitter, facebook and instagram, and i'll be back next week when my guest will be michael lev visits who helped lead president george w.
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bush's efforts to prepare for pandemics like the one we're facing now. that's it "the wall street journal at large." that's it for this us, have a great weekend. >> barron's round table sponsored by: ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to barron's round table, i'm jack otter. we begin with what we think are the three most important things investors should be thinking about right now. stocks took a big hit in response to the coronavirus, but the s&p 500 and big tech are showing surprising resilience. health care companies at the center of the pandemic, which stocks to watch and the impact of the crisis on automakers. how the entire auto ecosystem might function in our new reality. we spoke to ford ceo jim hackett. on the barron's round table, ben
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leveson, jack howe. ben, we saw stunningly horrible economic numbers last week, really unbelievable, but the market actually was higher on the week. what is happening? >> yeah. i mean, this data was just terrible. retail sale, industrial production, empire state manufacturing, you name it, it was probably the worst ever on record. unemployment, the jobless claims continued to rise another 5 million people lost their jobs. i mean, it's just bad. but we knew it was going to be bad, and there's also two rays of hope out there. one was a new set of treatments that gilead is working on for covid actually might be work. we don't have all the data on it yet, but that provided a boost for stocks x. then there's talk of reopening the economy, and that's also helped too because it signals perhaps there is a light at the end of this tunnel. jg jon so, jack howe, i know you're looking at valuations, and as ben pointed out, there is
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light at the end of the tunnel, but still stocks look a little pricey given what we do know, no? >> they do. i mean, look, jobs matter most right now, and i'm hopeful that this stimulus will get the economy going again. look at the s&p 500, it's now 17 times last year's earnings. i don't know many people who expected us to bounce back to last year's earnings level right away. i think you have to hold them for the long term. i'm saying is anyone worried that the stimulus will have a faster and strongerfect on the stock market -- effect on the stock market than it does the economy and before long we'll be talking about new highs, melt-ups, maybe bubbles. jack: so, ben, tell us whew -- why the s&p 500 is a little different from other global indexes. >> yeah. i think it's not to confuse -- important not to confuse the s&p 500 with the economy. it's got tech and health care really working now. big tech, the fangs are back, amazon and netflix hit new highs
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earlier this week. they're both up more than 10%. and then you have, and then you have health care which is doing great as well. and then you have this little middle area, banks and industrials and energy, that if the economy does start to do better, they're going to do okay. so the s&p's up 2% or so this week, maybe a little bit less, but the small caps in the u.s. are down 3. so if you look everywhere else, they're not saying great things. it's really about the composition of the s&p 500. jack: you mentioned health care. i know, carlton, you've taken a look at health care. barron's is doing a big package on health care. i know there's some sort of second derivative effect. of course, there's the search for a cure, but there's more than that going on. >> absolutely. and i urge everyone to pick up a copy or to read it online, so, of course, while gilead is getting a lot of attention, you need to look at the broader
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base, and that's what we're doing this weekend. you look at the managed care companies. a not of elective procedures are not happening, you know, the knee replacements, things like that, united health cares, humanas, you're going to see lower costs for them. this is going to be a tricky spot because we do have the election year going, so companied tend to face headwinds in those sorts of situations. but outside of the gileads, you want to look at the other pharmaceutical companies. we're examining potential opportunities in your mercks, your pfizers, eli lilly. they make most of the u.s.' stock of tylenol -- i should say the sup is element, not supplement, but generic, excuse me. and other generics that people are using right now as they're treating or potentially stocking up on. and then finally you've got to look at the teledoc space. it's kind of like the zoom for medicine. people aren't going to the doctor's office right now.
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they're seeing their doctors remotely, and there's also some plays to be making for some of these medical device companies, some of these monitoring devices so people can still get health care even if it's not safe for them to go into the doctor's office or hospital. jack: like a lot of things we're seeing right now, there's a decent possibility that this has changed for good, that even after this crisis passes, we may very well see more teledocs and seeing your doctor virtually rather than literally. >> exactly. and i think this has kind of accelerated that dynamic. telemedicine has existed, but it was always more of a curiosity. and i think now we're going to see that acceleration to a new normal for certain types of issues. jack: so, jack howe, you have taken a look at a very different industry, the automobile manufacturers. what do you see there? >> well, the business is so important to employment, i mean, millions of people work in this industry. we want these people to remain employed as much as possible. but the business is going to
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change going forward. i mean, we're looking at what's going to be different. i think you're going to see consolidation among dealers, that's inevitable. it could help some of the larger chains like auto nation. there may be more digital and touchless service offered by the car dealers and the service stations. you can actually see a younger fleet of cars. adam jonas at ohio morgan stanley is calling for a cash for clunkers program, we might get one that's more than three times the size of the one we saw during the great recession. i'm going to call that clunkers humonkers until i find a better name -- jack: try to find a better name. [laughter] >> i'll work on it. we've got a tblut of used cars, so we have to find a way to get people to buy cards. i did speak with jim hackett at ford, and he said ford learned a lot during that downturn. let's have a listen. >> remember, ford didn't take any bailout money. it was able to manage itself.
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it was really tough and a big challenge, but it did it. well, think of that influence that said if you ever face a challenge again, you really want to be ready. we are really ready this time. >> and, jack, jim hackett even said -- i found this interesting -- he talked about how ford is exploring new material for vehicle interiors that can kill viruses on contact. jack: wow, that's interesting. and, you know, i do think on a consumer note we are going to see deals in used cars. i don't think that's taking advantage of the situation. anyone spending money will be good for the economy right now. coming up, the fed taking extraordinary measures to keep the economy afloat, but are we helping the right people? former
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♪ ♪ jack: the sba's paycheck protection program, or ppp, has run out of funds to help small businesses. how the federal reserve may be able to help, is that the right move? joining me now, former fdic chair sheila bair. i want to make sure viewers know your track record. way back in 1992 you warped against loosening rules -- a decade later, enron proved you right. and just a year ago you warned that during the next cats few, we have to focus -- catastrophe, we have to focus on main street rather than wall street. so so here we are. tell me --? >> here we are. i think they're trying. i think they're trying. i think they're absolutely trying. but the problem is they're just not equipped to do this. they're a big bank and they lend to other big banks.
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that's how they're set up. even when they try to get money to main street, they've got to use the banks to be their intermediary, and that creates a lot of issues. you know, there's some issues with some of the facilities they're setting up. i think "the wall street journal" has rightly called them out on imposing more conditions on the smaller businesses and the large corporate and large financial institutions who are also being helped. so i do think they need to make sure that the restrictions and programs are consistent and even across the board, and it's not clear that's being done. jack: you told my colleagues that you thought maybe the money was actually going to the wrong people. what did you mean by that? >> yeah. well, that was a very early on conversation because initially when this started, they just pumped a lot of money into the banks and the primary dealers, and that was the playbook in 2008. just pump a lot of liquidity into the big banks, and that doesn't work. bailing out wall street does not help main street. i think that was the key lesson of the 2008-2009 crisis.
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so since that time they've launched which gives authority to nonbanks, non-regulated banks, and they've tried to -- they've announced interventions in the corporate debt market. i think that's necessary, frankly, just to keep credit flowing and keep the larger employers funded. i think that's important though, again, these programs should come with restrictions, i think particularly buybacks and dove depends. -- dividends. some companies are fine, but the one withs that are needing help i think they should be restricting capital distributions. they should be putting their capital into operations and payroll right now. it would be nicer to see the restrictions apply across the board. but again, the fed is trying to get more money into non-financial employers large and small, but the way it's doing it is uneven, and i think it's kind of plugging up the works for the smaller employers and businesses. jon jon just to be clear, so when the banks reported earnings, some of them made a
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point of, hey, we can afford these dividends, but you're saying, no, banks should not pay dividends right now. >> no, i don't think so. we don't know how bad this thing's going to get. they've said they're so highly capitalized, the fed said they're so highly capitalized, but they've been providing all these reductions in their capital minimums, so i wonder why that's necessary if they've got so much capital. [laughter] we don't know how bad this thing is going to get -- seriously, we don't know how bad it's going to get. they need capital to absorb losses and keep lending, so at the same time tells us they can go ahead and pay dividends just doesn't make any sense. they should be conserving that capital. if i'm wrong and it turns out they didn't need capital, fine, they can invest it later. there respect many shareholders, but the ones that need the cash, they could sell the shares on
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the secondary market. it doesn't compromise your balance sheet or weaken your balance sheet. if you let the cash out the door, it does. jack: you've written about what you feel is the over-financialization of the economy. i suspect you're going to say we want to avoid that. >> we are. obviously, we're down on it now because this is what we do, we get in crisis e, we fault the fed. the fed pumps a lot of liquidity into the financial sector, and it creates a bigger financial sector, more debt. so i think the good news is that congress has -- [inaudible] funding certainly to households. the small business loans are forgivable if you support payroll, so i think there's a trend to get away from that model. but once we get past this going forward, we have got to get off this financialization carousel where we just, you know, we get boo trouble, we lower rates, the economy levers up. we never really delevered after the great financial crisis that
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just moved from mortgage debt to non-mortgage consumer debt and business debt and, of course, government debt. so it's not sustainable. debt is not a good way to drive your economy. it's not sustainable, and, you know, absolving companies, we're doing that more now, it's just a drag, and i hope we can break out of that after this terrible crisis is over. jack: this time i hope everyone is listening. thank you very much, sheila. as the market tries to recover, which sectors are likely to come out on top? investor strategist
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♪ ♪ jack: as the market makes huge moves in response to government stimulus and coronavirus news, which economic indicator should we be watching, and which sectors are likely to perform best? charles schwab chief investment
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strategist liz and sawshedders -- liz and saunders joins the panel now. we've seen economic numbers that are literally worse than anything we've seen in our lifetime. the market is kind of manic-depressive. help us make sense out of all this first thing you're looking at, you say, health care. >> well, absolutely. as much as the virus defines when and the magnitude of the shutdown, i think it will define how and when we open the economy back up which is paramount to understanding the depth of the economic hit here. we know some to have higher frequency economic indicators that are leading in nature pick this up first, notably initial unemployment claims and now continuing claims and four week average of claims now that we have about a month's worth of call it post-shutdown data. and i think those will still be very valuable metrics. but i think we need to focus mostly on the so-called high frequency measures of growth. not the backwards looking quarterly or maybe even monthly
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numbers, but some of these more -- [inaudible] to get a sense of the depth of recession we're going to see. jack: what one or two of those did you like the most? >> in addition to claims, we can look at a number of other staffing-related indicators, job opening-related indicators. we can see the percentage when we get the next payrolls report of how many people have been laid off temporarily versus permanently. as of the most recent payrolls report, it was about 85% were temporary layoffs. for now that's good news, it means when we open the economy back up, most of them should go back on payroll. but i think we can also look at shorter term measures of consumer confidence and, in turn related to the stock market, measures of investor confidence as well. i would focus more on those daily and weekly measures. >> liz ann, you spoke about what we do know, the data points like the job figures and things like that, what are some of the unknowns that maybe worry you
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right now? >> well, certainly, as it relates to the virus when we will fully have the economy back open. the guidelines that have been put forth by the administration and the approach that states and localities are taking is to do it on a rolling basis, and then even within a particular state that might say, okay, we're ready to start opening up, even there it will be done sort of industry by industry, segment by segment. so there's no moment in time where we're going to have a sense of this. we're going to have to look at the data on a rolling basis, and i think the risks and unknowns, number one, are do we get a resurgence in incidence after the start of opening things up. that would be one kind of negative case scenario. the other one would be even if we don't get a resurgence in the virus, what is going to happen to demand. are we going to see that pent-up demand meaning the recovery's going to happen a fatherly quickly, or is there going to be enough caution that the demand maybe doesn't come back as quickly as many hoped for.
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i think those are the unknowns and questions to which we just don't have answers at this point. >> so the fed moves really seem to have given investors a lot of confidence. do you think that's a well-placed confidence? >> well, i think the combination of what congress and the fed have done, which is an extraordinary amount of money relative to the size of the overall economy just on the fiscal side it's about 12% of gdp, and then you add what the fed has done, it's clearly not the elixir for what ails us. it's not a vaccine or a treatment for the virus. it can't open the economy back up or can't sort of force demand to come back. it hopefully prevents an chick if crisis which we're -- economic crisis from becoming a financial system crisis. jack: let's talk about sectors briefly. at the top of the show, ben mention tech and health care. i think that aligns with your analysis of what might come out stronger. >> so health care is the one sector on which we have an outperform rating, and that was
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placed pre-the economic shutdown. and sure during this period of time both on the way down and on the way back up, health care's been a relative leader. some of the reasons are obvious given the focus by pharma, by biotech on coming up with treatments and vaccines or, you know, purchases of personal care. and i think within tech a focus on those companies that are high quality, dominant in their tries, have strong cash flows and earnings streams, and those are the factors that are going to perform well both in this environment and when we get back to some semblance of normalcy. jack: i know you guys are worried about small caps, we don't have time to talk about that now, so we'll have you back. thank you so much for joining us, liz ann. up next, round table members give their investment ideas for the coming week, so stay right there. ♪
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♪ muck if. ♪ jack: so, jack, as you shelter in place, i understand you are channeling your inner grease monkey. [laughter] >> it's been a little while since i got under the hood, i got that tell you. i want investors to look at autozone and o'reilly's this week, these are auto parts chains. earlier we talked about the possibility of a big cash for clunkers program, what if it doesn't work? what if we have clunker keeper es because people are feeling strapped for cash? that can work out well for some of these auto parts chains that cater to do do it yourselfers. right now stores are closed, but once the economy reopens, i think these chains are going to be among the first in the car sector to bounce back. jack: as always, we want one actionable idea from carlton.
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carlton, i'm going to start with you speak of channeling, though you're going crazy cleaning that house every hour. >> i really am. [laughter] and i have to admit, i do feel a little repetitive, but i'm looking at chlorox right now. a lot of people have bought into it recently, but even when we hook at reopening the economy, there's going to be a new normal, new standard for how offices and homes have to be maintained. so i'm looking at chlorox right now. jack: and, ben, i'm not going to make a joke here, goldman sachs. why is it looking good to you right now? >> well, carlton has a great article in this weekend's magazine about the banking sector, and goldman really stands out to me. the earnings this week that all the big banks released earnings, they weren't really taken very well. all the banks dropped. goldman dropped less. it's got a lot of investment banking, a lot fewer loans to go bad. i think in this environment just with the trading going well, it's just going to be ad good stock to own. jack: thanks, ben, jack,
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carlton. great ideas with. to read more, check out this week's edition at barrons.com and follow us on twitter. that's all for us. wash your hands, wear your masks. see you next week on (announcer) the following is a sponsored program for prostagenix, furnished by prostatereport.com. (upbeat music) ♪ hi, this is larry king. over 30 million men in america have prostrate problems. i know, i was one of them. and all these natural prostate supplements like the ones i have here in front of me are everywhere. drugstores, health food stores, on the internet, and all over tv, selling millions of bottles every year.

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