we are having a conversation with lord mervyn king.aying it shouldn't be voluntary -- you were saying it shouldn't be monetary policy that takes the brunt of everything, but we have seen fiscal policy, furloughs come through because of the pandemic. do you think these were not enough, or do they need to be in tandem, or do politicians look at 2008 and say banks will deal with that? >> it is going to be a terrible mistake for governments to leave it to banks. i do not like to use the word recession because this is not recession at all, this is a downturn. resulting from government shutdowns of the economy or individuals too frightened. [no audio] francine: we are having a couple of technical difficulties. you., we briefly lost some of these technologies we are using. i think we can hear you again. lord king: i hope so. i was saying that the main -- the role of government is to support businesses. because of the short downs for economy for good health reasons, the market economy has been put into a state of temporary suspension. we can't

on this panel was janet yellen come strongly to agree. , and mervyn king had slightly different views what the response was. i think it was fiscal when it came to janet and summers, as opposed to the others. if you had heard that years ago you would have thought the argument had moved. governor king to about this, "the end of alchemy," one of the greatest books about the disaster we are in. how close are we to wage outright nominal or real wage deflation? >> in different places we are seeing different things. the search for wage inflation has been on for years. we thought maybe we would see it more this year, and then we had the pandemic. to be a focus, one of the things we try to get into as a panel is whether central banks make clear to people that that is what they are focused on. main street, wages, and not so much wall street, which is of course the dynamic when we see them propping up stock prices. francine: good morning. how much power do they think central banks have left? how much of a tool do they have? >> these are people who talked repeatedly about the limits of central ba

economic panel officials, janet yellen, larry summers, the former chief of the reserve bank of india, mervyn kingrmer governor of the bank of england. there was a clear message coming through the paddle. central banks have done what they can. they have stabilized financial markets, the crucial contribution back in the beginning of the covid crisis. now interest rates are at zero. it is not realistic to expect monetary policy to do the heavy lifting or even the lighter lifting of driving the recovery. it is time for fiscal policy to step forward. vonnie: she made that point, but she also said several other things, like the fed should not be targeting particular groups of people. she made some very strong comments on the fed. it made me think that maybe she was thinking about a treasury role. she said she would not comment on whether she was asked i would consider going to treasury. tom: no comments about whether that treasury role is in prospect. but the discussion, as you say, did go wider. by larryrn articulated summers, echoed by others on the panel, was about mission creep for central banks. i

alix: you've been listening to a panel with former fed chair janet yellen, as well as mervyn king and larry summers. really interesting conversation at the bloomberg economy for them. you can continue to watch on neweconomyom and forum.com. all of this taking place with rising virus counts, the questions of whether we will see this cool stimulus from the u.s. and when, and recovery questions and europe as well, and emerging really leading the way. paulson -- hank paulson is also speaking right now. let's listen to what he has to say. >> i am delighted to join this for a minute's third year, and i am pleased to see how it has grown and thrived. it is worth recalling that when we gathered for our first the outlines of our stormy present were already apparent. i remarked that we had arrived at a moment of change, challenge, and potentially even crisis. i warned that the prospect of a crisis between the united states and china was leading to the risk of an economic iron curtain. fast-forward two years. it gives me no joy to report that those warnings have been borne out. the u.s.-china re