Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - March 28th, 2020

Business Week again, we're taping this largely on Thursday. As the story continued to evolve in terms of stimulus packages, in terms of market reaction, and in terms of course of the virus count and the spread. Jason, Well, and Carol, what I found so interesting about this week so far, and as you say, weeks not over yet and we know things can change very quickly, there were diverging storylines

in many ways. We saw the markets get a little more enthusiastic, maybe a lot more enthusiastic in some cases about stimulus, as you mentioned, economic monetary actions by the federal government at this same time, and you and I, as you pointed out, are both in the New York City area, we are seeing still a deep and seemingly abiding health crisis in certain parts of this country and so the push and the poll is really hard to

synthesize in a lot of ways. Yeah. Absolutely, And you saw that play out within officials at the White House and in Washington versus some of the governors in the hardest hit states, whether it was New York, whether it was New Jersey, whether it was California. There is this growing divide about getting the nation back, getting the economy back on track, versus those states who are still just trying to get uh, trying to really deal with the crisis,

which has yet to peak. And so that was certainly a bit of attention this week overall. I also want to say, Jason, it was the week of big numbers, that weekly jobless numbers. We all knew it was going to be a big number, three point three million jobless claims surging for the most recent week, and that number when it hits still, you know, it was a chakra.

And then let's not forget this bailout or stimulus package that was working its way through Congress, you know, two trillion dollars and folks saying that this is only phase three, and Phase four and five expected to come as well. So it was a number that on many different levels, of course was shocking, and of course the personal feelings and this is uh the personal impact, I should say, in terms of folks still coming down with the virus

and folks losing their lives because of the virus. Well, and it's important going back to the numbers for a second to understand that superlatives really fail us at this point because the orders of magnitude larger that these measures, these figures are. It's just incredible. You think about that

three point three million that you pointed out. If you go back to the last sort of darkest time that we had, which is the depth of the financial crisis, the weekly number then the worst weekly number was about six hundred thousand giver take, so you're talking about five times, you know, four or five times what we saw in the Great Recession. And that's why people are really struggling. That's why you see the market taking these wild swings.

That's why you have individual people, as you say, some of whom were struggling with this disease in particular, but others who are just struggling living their daily lives in an economy that has completely been turned upside down. Absolutely, and that leads us to a story that's in the

magazine this week. It's by our economics editor Peter coy and Peter has been such a great person to talk to and to read his work because he really is looking at this, you know, from a bigger perspective, from a historical perspective, from an economic perspective, because ultimately one of the conversations that really came to the forefront Jason is, you know, we do have to think about keeping our

economy going or getting it back on track. And the bigger the fall is because of the coronavirus, it's going to be much more difficult to get it moving again on the other side. And so Peter writes about in the magazine this week about big ideas to say the

economy from bailouts to super chapter eleven. But it's all specifically about how do you help companies right, how do you keep them going as much as you can through the virus so that they don't come come undone or file bankruptcy or so on, so that when we get on the other side, there is there are still companies out there, there are still jobs to be had, there's still economic input. All right, let's check out that conversation with Peter Coin. Well, I decided to focus on business.

We are Business Week, after all, and I take it for granted that we have to do a lot to save the individuals, people who are laid off, people who aren't laid off but are still in financial stress. That goes about saying, well, maybe it doesn't go without saying. It should be said very clearly. But what I'm talking about is what to do to rescue businesses. And I

think that cannot be given short shrift. Because when a company fails, if if it, if it goes through hard times and comes back, that's one thing, but it actually fails. If it, if it, if it's looked it aidd goes out of business, there is real damage done, not just to the employees of that firm and its owners, but to the economy as a whole. It's going to be much harder for the economy to bounce back after this

COVID virus fades. If people, uh, if companies have been dismantled and have to be started from scratch, there's organizational capital, there's social capital that's permanently lost. I'm thinking about teams. We have a lot of teams working at Bloomberg so we know about this, but there are teams throughout the economy. When those teams are broken up, it's hard to put them back together again. Yeah. I love this line you have in your story, Peter herb. But don't kill bend it,

but do not break it. Uh. Certainly policymakers are thinking along those lines. But CEOs have to be thinking that way too, right, Right, if you're a CEO, you're thinking, Look, I've got to just find some way to get past this. And if if it means reaching out to the government for help, you know, I'll do it because I can't afford to lose these people. They might not come back to me. You know. We we had a tight labor market before this crisis hit, and I hope we'll have

a tight labor market after it passes. Uh, because there's a shortage of skilled people in the economy. There has been and there will be again. You don't want to lose your teams. And that was Peter Cord, the economics editor for Bloomberg Business Week, talking about his story in this week's edition of the magazine. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week coming up, How the coronavirus outbreak is impacting

the early stage investment community. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly

from Bloomberg Radio. We're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations that we had on our daily radio show about the coronavirus this week and Jason, as we want to remind everybody, this story was very flu and constantly advancing and changing, but some of these conversations just really struck home well absolutely, and I think part of what we heard consistently Carol was what happens next? What are the impacts? And we try and look at

that throughout the course of the show. And one of the voices we caught up with Carol was Michael mo He's the co founder of GSV Asset Management and author and investor, longtime resident and entrepreneur investor there in Silicon Valley. We started by asking him what it's like they're in the valley. Clearly everywhere people are are UM, you know,

a little bit of a shock. And I think the you know, the fear of the virus, you know, has UM really kind of consumed many people's thinking and behavior, and when people get scared, and I think many a lot of people are scared. You know, it's hard to focus on much else, and so I think generally speaking, that's kind of it. It's a little bit eerie. It's you know, I live in a place where there is typically a lot going on, a lot of energy, and

it's very very quiet. Yeah, and I think we do wonder, Michael, you know, how much of kind of how we're adjusting our lives at this point, how much of it once we get through this. I'm assuming we of course, will you know that how much of it stays with us in terms of you know, concerns about viruses because there will be more viruses to come, but also how we're kind of adapting our work lives, a lot of us

working from home and the ability to do that. I just wonder, you know, we had a conversation with someone who talked a well known investor, Cathy Wood, who invest in disruption, and she says, you know, when you see market disruption, that's where you kind of get innovation, uh and opportunity. So I wonder, you know, if you're looking at it in a similar way, that's clearly where the

half is glass half the glass is half full. I mean, you've seen this over and over again where you've had this location and disruption, you've also had huge opportunities, and so I think, what's exciting And then again, this is a very serious situation and and obviously the most important thing is health and safety, but you are saying people in their creativity and the innovation thinking about what, you know,

what does this mean and where does this go? So I like to say, is we were it was it was BC before, that's before Corona, and now we've got a d which is going to be you know, after the disease, and these opportunities that emerge a d UM, I think are going to be very exciting. And so that's part of what we're doing is focus on what those opportunities might be and also understand what it means for kind of companies that UM grew up in the

old world. Right. Well, one of the things I wanted to make sure we talked about Michael was you know, normally this time of year, you are like in the thick of planning this massive conference that you do in in San Diego and partnership with Arizona State. I believe you know, you bring together some huge speakers to talk about the future of education, education, technology, and tech specifically. I guess two things. It seems like you've made a big decision to do a lot of that virtually this year.

Tell us about that. First, Well, we're shifting the physical conference to the fall UM with the hopes that things will be UM more or less back to normal by that.

But we didn't want to lose the UM opportunity to convene people that we're gonna do it virtually, So we're gonna have a one day virtual event UM next Wednesday, April one, and we called this, you know, the dawn of the Age of Digital Learning, because while digital learning has been growing at a very healthy clip up until now, UM you know this, the coronavirus has really been a

major catalyst to accelerate this. And with whether you're a parent, whether you're a K twelve school, you know, there's one point four billion kids around the world right now that we're going to school now our home. UM. You know, universities are scrambling to figure out what they do to UM, you know, to provide courses for for their for their college students, and corporations are reimagining what they need to do to upscale, re school their their work force. So it is as much of this is a a very

difficult situation for society, for the economy, for online learning. Um, it's it's I think of you know, it's based on accelerts to the future well, and the same thing with like I think, um, you know, using the virtual world in terms of distance and reaching out to our medical community, right in terms of telehealth. UM, I mean I wonder if that is something that we look at very differently

coming out on the other side, for sure. I mean again, I think this has been it has been a total shift in terms of how people think about you know what you know, those sort of the realities of of an interconnected world, urbanization and and and globalization that that you know, the pandemics. You know, people that are you know, worry about you know, things that could happen in the future have been worried about demics for some time. But really this is the first time where it's been you know,

basically relevant to everybody. And I think that kind of you know, mind shift is going to affect this isn't because the genie is not going back in the bottle. I think it's a permanent shift about how people think about UM activity and how they've done how they do things in the future differently than maybe they did in the past. You know, you wrote a book a couple of years ago that I read. It's fantastic, and it's

about Global Silicon Valley. This whole notion of the Global Silicon Valley is the Global Silicon Valley Handbook is the technical title. UM but you have really explored this notion of this interconnected world and this notion that the ideas, the ethos of Silicon Valley is much wider spread than just the place where you happen to be sitting right now. Does this dent that ambition at all or does it strengthen it? Yeah, I think it's actually is going to

strengthen it. And I think that's partially You've had this

trend that's been going on for a dozen years. You know, the front g s V stands for Global Silicon Valley, and so to your point, you know, the mindset of innovation, entrepreneurship that's made Silicon Valley that's an amazing place and I've been fortunate to live in for twenty five years, is going you know, spreading throughout the world, and you're looking at the ambition that exists with young people that want to not work for the large company but want

to start their own business. And you know, in today's world, where you know you're gonna have more difficultd hiring is going to not be as robust as what we've seen the last five years, you're gonna see that likely accelerate because your opportunity costs to start a business is lower. And so what we're seeing is from you know, from Austin to Boston, from Chicago to Salpallo, from Mumbai to Shanghai,

do by this emergence of this global Silicon Valley. And that's Michael mo co founder of gsc Asset Management, speaking to us from his home in Silicon Valley. Everybody working from home, Carol, but trying to make sense of this. And you know, it was an interesting perspective a given Michael's vast historical institutional knowledge, global knowledge, but also the idea that he's in a part of the country as we are, that has been deeply affected on a very

human level by this virus. And I'm just gonna say, why you're at home, you might want to check out some of his books. He wrote the Global Silicon Valley Handbook and also Finding the Next Starbucks. So um, certainly some books to check out. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up a valuable lesson that three M learned after the stars epidemic of two thousand to two thousand three that's going to let them make more than a billion

medical masks by the end of the year. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. This week we're bringing you some of our most important and we hope informative conversations we had on our daily radio show that runs two pm to six pm Wall Street Time every weekday, and of course all of it was about the coronavirus and the cover story of the magazine this week, Jason is about three M. Three M is a company you know

really well. They make post its, they make Scotch tape. Well, this company is now looking to make more than a billion medical masks, something that everyone needs to get through the coronavirus. Now. The company's CEO, Mic Roman, spoke with Bloomberg's David Weston we've been working very closely with the government. We've been working, you know, with with Vice President Pence from his visit, looking at how to make sure that we can shift what have been the industrial and ninety

five respirators into healthcare. So it was really appreciate the Emergency Use authorization out of the SPA and then the prep Act amendment which enabled us to be able to deliver our industrial respirators at the healthcare workers of the front line. That was the first big step. So that is the three M CEO, Mic Roman talking with our own Blueberg David Weston Well three M and it's overall team caught up with our Brian. Really, he's got a great story. That's the cover of the magazine this week.

Brian is Projects and Investigations reporter at Bloomberg News. He's with us right now on the phone from Chicago. Also with us Joe Webber, editor of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. He's on the phone from Brooklyn. So Brian, let me kick it off with you. I mean, three M man, this is a company that has learned from past crises and figured out how to be ready for what we needed today. Talk to us about what they learned. I

believe it was through Stars. Years ago. You had the Stars outbreak two thousand two, two thousand three, and after that prem realized they really weren't geared up two uh to address a real big surge in demand until then they decided that they would build into their plants what they called surge capacity. And over the years, um they would find this. But but essentially what it is is putting in idle lines, you know, lines you don't use, which assembly lines you don't use, which runs contrary to

most um business sense. I mean when when we talk about automobile manufacturers, for instance, so we talk about down capacity, that's money going out the door because you're not you're paying for that. You have carrying costs on that equipment and machinery, and you're not getting any money for it. So or something that three M thought would would be helpful in times of crisis, and and they've used it over and over again, but but um, it never has it come into such important play as it is now.

So Joel Weber, come on in here. What struck you about this story? Because obviously everything is a business story, as you often say, and man, this is just a

business squarely in the heart of a crisis. Yeah, so, I um, I've thought about this story a lot, because it was one of the first things that came to mind a couple of weeks ago as we were just seeing a huge um surge in demand for for a lot of consumer products actually, from things like toilet paper, to Go Joe hand sanitizer and even Clorox bleach right like, and that the idea kind of just jumped in my head of like, you know, how do you make more

of these products yesterday? How does how does three M manufacture millions and millions of maths in addition to the

ones that they were already doing. So I sort of just started kicking that idea around with people like Brian and Rick Klus also the code island on this story, and three M just kind of came back to us again as like the company like in the middle of a crisis like this, and lo and behold, it turns out that they're a company that actually has built this manufacturing technique into its factories for precisely this moment, and so they've been able to go into overdrive actually back

beginning in January, and what we're seeing now is like by the into the year, they may have been able to make as many as more than a billion face masks. And that's just incredible when you think about a company that was just sort of potentially in the right please at the right time and and have the capacity and wherewithal to kind of plan for the future. What's interesting too is, you know, and Brian, I just think about

this is a company. If we think about three AM, they have just so many different products under their roofs under their roof, and most of us think about the post it notes and you know, those things, but I mean, they do so much more. This is a company that's been around for a long time. They're really expertsing materials, creating materials, and you mentioned one post which is one of their it's part of you know, the adhesives they make.

They have I think forty six different technology platforms they build from. This is a good thing for them, and sometimes it's a bad thing because it's tough to keep all those different businesses going in the right direction, and when one or two are not. Wall Street doesn't like that. They've had some struggles over the last couple of years.

But you're doing pretty pretty well right now, especially in this particular spot, and it's sort of an odd feel good story in the midst of this crisis which produces so much great And that's Business Week reporter Brian Grooley and Business Week editor Joel Weber. Listen. This is in

some ways a story about hope and preparedness. Carol, you know, we hear so much about people not learning the lessons of the past three m clearly got the message and acted very differently going into this crisis than in previous iterations. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week. Coming up, the CEO of Travago explains how COVID nineteen is impacting the travel industry and his team. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from

Bloomberg Radio. We're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations that we had on our daily radio show about the coronavirus is this week, and Jason, we were really lucky. Our team man really hard at work, bringing us folks from the corporate communities, from the medical communities, from academia really so that we could get the full picture on what's going on with the virus. Well, and

certainly this global lockdown of sorts. You've got people staying in play, sheltering in place in some of the world's biggest cities, and travel has been brought to a complete halt. We wanted to get inside that industry understand some of the nuances, so we caught up with Axel Heaper, he is the CEO of Travago, to find out what the coronavirus is doing to his company. To start with the most important I mean, obviously the situation has significantly deteriorated

UM in Europe, but really all around the world. And we have a very global workforce, so we have a lot of effect that UM. UM friends and family in the company, UM that are living in in areas that are completely locked down, that are severely affected. UM. We have a company have have moved to home office operation. That's pretty much every company a few weeks ago and UM so far okay, UM and nobody in the company has been affected. But yeah, the situation is is pretty

dramatic in and a lot of regions and particularly around Europe. Well, and Axcel, you have a window like almost no no one else into the travel industry. I mean, this industry has been absolutely for the moment just brought to a standstill. What what does that look like? From from where you sit? I think the the the most important thing is to to think about what is actually right and in the current situation. UM. And by now, I think that's that's

pretty much clear to all the Western leaders. The right thing is not to travel, but to actually not move and have as little contact as possible. So UM, we also communicated that to our our users, UM, that they should actually not travel if they don't have to. UM. And and obviously and at times like that, UM, there shouldn't be any travel activity unless it's absolutely necessary. And and that's also what what you what you would expect and so UM, yeah, I mean that that that that

is obviously affecting the business. UM. But UM, that's that's that's okay. In times like this, I mean, everybody has to sacrifice to really get it under control. As you look at it, what are you seeing in terms of different geographies when it comes to the virus impact? I think too in a certain way, in all the Western economies are pretty much all the Western economies, UM, the governments have decided to slow down the virus by shutting

down pretty much the daily life. And and that that obviously has um has a huge impact on travel activity. I mean, nobody should travel, nobody wants to travel, nobody is allowed to travel unless absolutely necessary. In in Asia. UM. There are some countries where UM where the shutdown or the lockdown seems to have had a positive impact and where things seem to normalize to a certain extent, But overall from a from a travel perspective, I think it's still too early to tell. UM. I think it will

be will be very important to think about our travelers. UM. Not only right now where everybody is really sitting at home UM and and and would like to to be out there, UM if things would would have normalized, but more at one or two months in the future, when people will have had a lot of indoor activity or it will have been locked down into their apartment in certain areas without even being allowed to leave the apartment

other than going to the supermarket and um. And that's really what is driving us as a business to think about that moment in time when we can actually help travelers. And right now we can only help travelers by not encouraging anybody to travel, but to to just try to stay disciplined, UM, to really slow down the spreading as

much as we can, and so accel. You know, we've been posing this question too to a lot of experts we've been speaking with, and and that is, you know, working under the assumption which I think we all should, that this will abate and and uh and we will get our arms around it and there will be a peak and recovery and all of those things. What do you think changes about the business of travel in the aftermath of this, I think they they it is it's it's fair to assume that that the whole industry will

be a different, different one. UM to what extent the user behavior will change. I think in the short term it will change. UM, it's likely that initially, and particularly in times of uncertainty, where the virus is under control in one country and perhaps not another, or in one region not in the other, that there will be a trend to shorter trips that feel safer, or generally travel that is perceived as a stafer, and that that will

only normalize over time. But the much more difficult question to answer is to what extent this will completely change the structure of the industry, Because this has never happened before. That that the industry basically globally has come to a complete standstill within a few weeks and um, and it's

likely to stay in in that mode for quite some time. UM. And obviously it has a huge impact on everybody who is is active in any leisure activity, not only travel, but anything that is that is really requiring people to be active and to be out there. And you are you, Folcus at Robago actual are thinking about you know this time, you are thinking about the recovery, right and I'm assuming

kind of planning for it already. Absolutely, I mean, it is obviously very difficult to to really deal with this situation. I mean for all of us individual really, um, in particularly I mean in the company with with friends and families in very severely affected areas and and when they started, um, I mean, the first reaction of everybody is really damage control,

I mean, and that that's that's very natural, um. To make sure that every employee is safe, to make sure that that really the business is safe, so that costs are are coming down, that marketing is top, etcetera. UM. But then it is also important to to look into the future because the present is is quite depressing, and

and that's what we thankfully started very early UM. And really this thought that I mentioned before, the thought of our user who has not been able to travel for quite some time but would like to end and has been in his apartment UM sometimes as I said, with very very limited outside activity for quite some time. That is really the moment in time where we can really make a difference to our user. And and that's what's

really we are focusing on. So what kind of service and what kind of product do we need to UM to bring to our users UM to really help them in that moment in time. And that is really it's really I think it's very important from a business perspective.

It's also very important to help our users there, but it's also very important to keep focusing the business and and not get get get really to too taken away by by the very very difficult situation that everybody is facing personally within the family and also I mean the overall society right well. And actually that that raises such an interesting point because you know, ultimately people turn to

you for information in a lot of ways. And I do wonder if the types of information that people will be looking for you know, whether it's as simple as you know, sort of health and safety type information, wellness type of information. I do wonder if that changes going forward and whether your team is is thinking about those

sorts of things. Absolutely, I think that that that's that's you're absolutely right, that's exactly what we are what we are doing and then trying to do right now, we're trying to think from a user perspective, where is the user UM in in really one or two months from now,

what is he thinking? What is important to him? And some things are obvious, UM, I mean it's it's clearly favorable to to show rates that you can cancel if there are still in particular in times where there's still a lot of uncertainty, but but safety overall will be a lot more important. Um. International air travel might still be disrupted for quite some time with all the major airlines reducing their networks. So so these are exactly the

thoughts that that we are going through. UM, what is really the need of the user and how can we best serve that? And they're obviously you need to think about multiple scenarios because that's a global business. We will face multiple realities in different markets. As every country and sometimes in every state is reacting slightly differently to manage the control all of the spread and at the same

time the impact on the overall economy. And um, yeah, different balances early to two different different situations or will lead to very different situations and a few months from now. And that's actual He for the CEO of Travago and what's fascinating Jason. We talked with him in late February when, of course there were lots of virus concerns and a lot more outside the United States, so we were able

to kind of get the picture from there. But to get an update, especially as the virus has spread and he's got truly a global team, uh, and so to get his input was I think really crucial in understanding this story and the spread of the virus. Well, that wraps up the first hour the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Mass. There plenty of coming up in our next hour. We're going to continue looking at all aspects of the

coronavirus and really it's impact on our world. Cure Leave sporis Jordan's He's executive chairman of that company, will check in with him. It's a personal story for him, Jason. That cut me by surprise. So fascinating to hear what he had to say about at as well as how his company is getting through. Also an IVY League perspective.

Barnard College president see on bilog. She has written extensively and studied the impact of stress on our lives, very relevant now, as well as the fact that she's running a major institution. Plus Carol, one of our favorites, Paul Rabel, the co founder and chief strategy officer of the premier

lacrosse Lee. Jason was great to check in with Paul because the sports industry has just been shut down, and I feel like a couple of weeks ago when that started to happen, I think for many of us, we realized how widespread and how big the impact of the virus was. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Hello. I'm Carol Masser and I'm

Jason Kelly. Today we're bringing you some of the most important, we hope informative conversations we had on our daily radio show, Bloomberg Business Week about the coronavirus, it's impact broadly on the economy, on businesses, executives, and human beings all across the nation, and Jason, that included the cannabis industry. We caught up with Cia Leafs Boris Jordan's he's the executive chairman of that company. This is a personal story for

him because his own daughter impacted by the virus. So we talked to him about that as well as talk to him about continuing to run his business because that's what he's doing, and also how this is impacting his team, his team of workers well. And we also went into two worlds very much affected by the coronavirus. First the world of academia. We talked to the Barnard College president see on bylog. She has also studied stress, she understands that.

And also the world of sports. Paul Rabel, of course, co founder of the Premier Lacrosse League. The sports world shut down completely. I gotta say both of those conversations really inspiring for for me certainly, and I hope to our listeners. First up, though, we did spend some time with Daniels were and he's the CEO of Arena Investors and he had Jason, A lot to say about the investment environment and just the world at large. It's been evolving.

Over the last couple of weeks. We certainly saw equities breaking down, but the kind of over the counter institutional markets were relatively immune and really weren't reacting at all. Then we started seeing UM kind of institutionally held UM basically arbitrage related positions starting to come out and starting to get liquidated of various sorts across um rate of return,

things in merger, arbitrage, and relative value. We then saw large scale selling and liquidations of kind of institutionally held loans and A B S offerings of which we probably haven't seen at these levels in several years. In most instances, still a good ways away from kind of where the bottoms of an O eight or an O two or ninety eight looked like. But UM certainly uh a level of activity and a type of activity that's been a long time coming. So Dan, how far are we do

you think we are from that bottom? I think if you, if you did, it kind of apples to apples in a very general sense to where those other where those markets kind of bottomed out. UM. I think it looks

like we're probably a third a halfway. Um, you know, there's a good, a good way to go because you know, as i've as we talked about in our earlier discussions, there was such an absolute frenzy of credit, fueled originally by the kind of depressed risk free rates from the monetary authorities, that things got so overdone that it just means that the trip back is going to be longer

and harder. So I have a thought there though, So if it wasn't the virus from what you're saying, because yeah, it was such a frenzy of credit, right, we all talked about all the money that was slashing around there, whether it's the public markets and you know, especially even in the private markets. So was it just a matter of time? That's something, Um, maybe not in this magnitude, but we would have had some kind of undoing of all of this. Absolutely absolutely, And it's totally consistent with

the last you know, several hundred years of market behavior. Ultimately, the thing that kind of knocks the market off it's off its chair is going to be something none of us counting on. By definition, if we were counting on it, then it wouldn't do that And so every every five or ten or fifteen years, you're going to see this.

And and by the way, it doesn't really seem to uh fit the kind of normal distribution because we've had you know, we've had four or five one in a million year type things happened, you know, in the last

twenty five years. So clearly something's amiss. And so when you saw this kind of frenzy happen, I would like in it potentially to you know, not to OH eight or O one or O one or nine, but really to O two where the world comp fraud happening in the wake of and Ron and others happened where there wasn't a fundamental change even in the general macroeconomic environment as much as a a a an absolute repricing of risk and reward across the credit spectrum. That's a really

smart point. Yeah, keep going. I'm sorry, there have been well, there's just been there's just been so much. Uh, this party has been such a frenzy um that and it's lasted so long even relative to kind of normal careers, that the number of people even old enough who are still in the market, who were senior enough to be kind of at the trigger in some of these old time times, so to speak, has dwindled. And so this is a big surprise if you just haven't lived that

mom uh. And so that really exacerbates what you what you see. And then, as I noted in a in a bit of a paper, I wrote, you know, there's a whole series of secular changes that happened in the wake of the of the crisis of the O a crisis that have changed the game, uh, such that it if a situation like this ever arose, the issues that it caused would be greatly exacerbated. And that stands weren He's the CEO of Arena Investors, He's a specialist in this is the term of art on Wall Street, Carol,

special situations and listen, this is beyond special. It's extraordinary the time we're living in. And yet investors they are getting their heads around this. We saw that this week and you start to see strategies form around where we go from here. And I have to say, Jason, I found it really helpful, and I hope are our our listeners did as well. That listening to investors who have gone through some of these market disruptions, market cycles, whether

it's the financial crisis or other. I think um was really helpful and understanding how we got through that and how it's different perhaps than what we're going through today, and how we get out on the other side. And I found it so interesting that he didn't make the comparisons that everybody else is making to two eight to two tho one his comparison World Calm. I found that so interesting. You're listening to Blueberg Business Week. Coming up

Barnard College president see on by Luck. She explains how COVID nineteen is impacting higher education. I think this was a really thoughtful conversation about how it's impact in the student body, her administration, but also Jason about she's done a ted talk on stress and how that impacts us. I think really helpful at this time front of mine, for sure. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio.

We're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations that we had on our daily radio show about the coronavirus this week. One of the individuals we spoke to was in the sports world. Paul Reable, a friend of the show, Jason, and it was really great to hear what he had to say. He's the co founder of the Premier Lacrosse League and obviously this effects the world far beyond lacks. We have never seen anything like this.

Certainly haven't imagined that a world would exist where there are no professional sports leagues in play at this moment um. And so for all of us at the league level, we've actually locked arms and are are having conversation daily. So between the p LLL, the NBA, the p G A tour um and then there's also a seasonal tranche

of decision makers. So probably uh safest right now are fall sports and uh and we're in the summer, so we're certainly observing what the current leagues are doing that we're caught in the middle of the season having conversations with all the networks, the venues, shareholders, advertisers, and with the news about the Olympics postponing, which you know, it's I thought it was anecdotal to the way this whole you know, this this whole last seven to ten days

have gone. Really it's felt like we've, uh, we've experienced a whole year's worth, so to put it in perspective the Olympics, they sent out an email to their membership around the prospect of discussion of postponement and they would have a decision in four weeks. They made a decision in twenty four hours. So it seems to be the state of leagues right now is we're having minute by

minute and hour by our conversations. But our goal is to continue to persevere through this and get our product out to the communities because we're we're servicing a lot of constituents, from our fans to our players, and health and safety and following public official guidelines is sits at the top and as everyone's priority. But for a long time, and we're talking to century sports of being quote a human connection and their tribal and the way people feel

entertained and motivated and so on. Yeah, and there is still this need, this drastic need, and I see it among even our our you know, editorial community of people being home and feeling very isolated. So to that point, Paul, what are you guys doing to continue to connect um with your fans. Yeah, that's that's a great question, Carol. So where there is challenge and I was listening to you guys talk about the public markets, they're they're also opportunity.

And so if you look at the network television landscape, what we've seen is as as O T T and technology have disrupted, is that live news and live sports have become the last standing firewall. So right now network national and local news has seen a dramatic uptick. There is no live sports on right now. So the traditional sports networks are replaying old programming but also looking to acquire programming that hasn't hit the shelves yet, so they're

looking at expedited documentaries and expedited docuseries timelines. We're gonna see a big pop in an NFL draft, but in the interim, we've seen big climbs in engagement on social media and in particular tools that these platforms launched, like Instagram Live, where you're seeing not only musicians but athletes

go live on these platforms and communicate. So that's the silver lining is is finding through technology in an era where we've never had this level of connection with an audience to maintain that sense of entertainment and human action that sports have traditionally brought through live games. And so Paul, knowing that the timeline is incredibly fluid. You know, when does your team, what's your timeline for thinking about your season, which I believe is scheduled to launch at the end

of May, right, that's right. So right now we're a May twenty nine and thirtie opening weekend, and it's getting tighter and tighter, Jason to to your point, and uh, you know, there's a there's a lot that we're gonna find out in these next two weeks. Is we're in the midst of of the curve, and uh, you know, there's a lot that our economic leaders and public health

officials are are deciding on. And right now we can we consider ourselves very much a part of a horizontal strategy to to self quarantine as a nation, but I think it will evolve into a more verticalized strategy to focus on imminent threats um and and then from there what we'll see, uh kind of a trickle back up

to normalcy hopefully. And so for us, given our cush and so to speak, in scheduling, matched with our tour based model, which we had announced with Bloomberg now about a year and a half ago, we actually have about a dozen scenarios that we've planned around contingency of if we have to delay the start, we can actually pull by virtue of that tour based model, similar like Jenga and re stacking your bloxes. We can take week one and slide it to our first bye week in July.

We can take week two and slide it into our second bye week. So right now we have about a half half of our scenarios where we maintain a full regular season, playoffs and championship, and then the others. We can take a traditional game weekend where all of our teams are in market, extended a day or two and do doubleheaders. And that's Premier Lacrosse League co founder and

player Paul Rabel, and I love his perspective. He's an entrepreneur, he's an athlete, obviously, but he's also clearly from that conversation, very much in touch with the broader sports world, Carol. He understands the McCann next, the media aspect to it, the fan aspect so much. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up, Executive chairman of Cure Leaf, Boris Jordan joins us on how the medical cannabis company is dealing with the coronavirus outbreak and how he's dealing with it

as a parent. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. And today we're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations we had on our daily radio show, Bloomberg Business Week about the coronavirus it's impact across the world, and that includes Jason a conversation that we had with

Cure Leaf executive chairman Boris Jordan. He's been a member of the Bloomberg fifty list, uh and we've talked to him several times over the past year about the industry overall, but this conversation definitely had a different tone. How do you deal with a crisis like the one that the world and the country is facing right now, and how do you deal with it when you're worried about your workers, you're worried about your company, and also of course worried

about your family. I had actually a daughter who came down with the bars. She's young, she worked for us, twenty uh seven years old, and uh three days later she's feeling much better. So I hope that's encouragement everybody. That's obviously a scare for her, for me as a father, but it was good to hear from her this morning. She's she's in Manhattan, she said to me, she's feeling a lot better. Wow. That's interesting. And so I mean with that, we don't need to I don't want to

get to invade your privacy at all. But um, it's so interesting and heartening to hear that that somebody, somebody recovered. Uh like that. Anything more you can tell us about her experience, I just think listen, I think that overall, there's a lot more cases out there that we don't know about today, and many of them are as we saw the statistics coming out in New York or with younger people, uh, and they seem to be recovering reasonably well.

And I think that's the encouraging thing about this. Obviously that's not the it's with the older population. Uh. And obviously our our our hearts and and and and go out to their well being and and we're doing everything

at our company. As you know, we've been granted the Essential Services designation and all of our key markets around the country, we provide a very important service for for our medical patients who are dealing with either cancer treatments or or pain treatments or or children's epilepsy, where we provide the necessary drugs to help these them UH and products to help these families through difficult times. And you know,

our business, like everybody else's, has changed dramatically. UM. We are you know, we're serving curbside, we're doing mobile delivery services. We're doing anything we can to keep both our employees UH and our clients and and and partners and and and and patient states UH so that we can continue to deliver on the products that are necessary for their well being. And so boards help us understand, like what is that designation allow you to do in terms of

increased latitude or or operations. Well, we've had to our business is very highly regulated. As you know, it's still federally illegal. So we've had to go state by state and negotiate with the various governors in order to give

us these things. I have to say some most governors, UM, and I'd like to thank them in advance, have been very very responsive to this and making sure that we can deliver a safe uh in the products our products in a safe way and so you know, what we've done is we've negotiated the curb side delivery that was never allowed in any of the states before. We have negotiated mobile applications and online snails that hasn't been allowed, home deliveries in some states that was allowed in many

states it wasn't. So there's a lot of changes taking place. I think the whole positive changes for both this terrible time that we're being faced with now, but also I think going forward, it will help the industry become much more mainstream. I think, you know, just several months ago, nobody would have thought that, you know, cannabis would be made a sent should would be designated essential services, and it's one of the few industries in the country that

has been so far well. I think that's really revealing what you just said. And I do wonder, you know, we keep talking about what will be the longer term and lasting impact of some of the things that we're all doing to adapt in this situation, and I do wonder about the regulatory environment understanding, okay, what needs to be changed, what needs to be perhaps loosened up. Do you feel like this will ultimately um stick with us? I think so I think, listen, the biggest problem we

all face is obviously federal banking and federal legalization. I think it's time for the federal government to understand and see that every governor in this country that's thirty some governors that have medical cannabis in their states have made it UH. Most of them have designated it as essential services UM. There's huge demand from the population for this um UH and it's time for the federal government to allow, for instance, credit cards, the banking services so that we

can make the process even safer. Today, no matter what we do, we still have to exchange cash, whether it's curbside, whether it's in the store, whether it's on home delivery. That obviously adds to the you know, the danger of the spread of the virus UM and and we've been requesting this from the federal government now for that are part of ten years, and they're very slow to move on it. And I would say that's the last bit

that we'd like to see UH changed. And we are working our our lobbyists working in Washington as we speak, to try and see if we can get that. But you know, they're they're ingrained in their ways in Washington d C and and there's still a lot of opposition even though the population overwhelmingly the population for medical cannabis around the country. Of course, I do need to ask you because I think this is a situation we're all

trying to figure out. You know, what workers get really taken care of during a crisis like this, and some of the bigger companies, you know, those workers continue to get paid. Uh, we're certainly not seeing that necessarily in a lot of the hospitality industry. Can hear your workers are being taken care of, and everybody's up and working and will be. We are, we are, we are Our first priority is our employee, in our customers. We've broken teams into eight teams and beat teams that are working

at different shifts. We've gotten masks and gloves for everyone, obviously we have We're paying bonuses at the end of the month for those workers that are on the front line in order to keep them incentivized. We are looking after those that are that have fallen ill um and and we haven't really had any so we've been very

very lucky. But we know we will and so and and we're in you know, as you know, we're in in in nineteen states around the country, and so so we we we we have a very wide reach and we are looking after all employees and I have to thank all of them today. I'm sorry I'm doing that on the radio to say thank you very much for continuing to provide services to our patients. I'm curious too, as someone who runs a business understands that there needs to be safety nets for workers. You're seeing some of

the bailout programs come along. Um, what's your take on everything that's happening out of Washington and the assistance. And I think it's very important for Washington to finally approved this package. I think it's um uh and for the workers in the country, so that we have millions and millions and millions of people that are out of work. I've heard estimates that layoffs could be somewhere between twenty and thirty million dollars over the next quarter. We need

to address that. That would be bigger than even we saw in the Great Depression. And I think it's very important to federal government to step up. And uh, we've been waiting now for you know, for over a week for the federal government to get its act together with this uh. With this bill, I'm not you know, I don't know how much of this bill is going to be available towards workers, um uh, you know, and and

how quickly it will be available. We're certainly all hopeful that it will be available to workers and to people that are laid off very very quickly. I mean, Schumer said it's unemployment on steroids. I think the the people that have been laid off in the restaurant industry and the hospitality and the airline industry are really hoping to

receive some assistance here during these difficult times. So boris altas square something, especially given what we said at the top that you know, you have a personal experience with this. You know, certainly through your daughter, what it's like here in the New York City area in terms of this virus really ravaging this area. And yet we also at the same time have a call on the part of many business people, on the part of the president to really get back to work. You know, the president talking

about Easter. How do you balance those things and how do you look at it as someone who's running a business. So I have to say it's it's I would not want to be the president United States right now. Um, somebody uh much smarter than me players this way. Just imagine he's got two shoulders. On the right shoulders got the medical community which is telling him, uh, you need to you know, uh, quarantine the country, you need to

slow down transportation, you need to stop the virus. Uh. And on the other side, you've got, um, the economists that are telling him, you know, if you keep this going much longer, you could bankrupt the country, and that would create much more hardship, uh for the countries and what we're doing. And I think the biggest worry I have is the people that are losing their job to the people that need it the most. And that's what

I am concerned about. And you know, the longer this goes on, the harder it is going to be for the more needed needing part of our population, the people that are in the in the in the uh you know, retail businesses, in the in the in the hospitality industry, uh, you know, union people. We we really need to look after these people. And so it's a very difficult decision whether we start the economy or not. But I do think they're not going to have much of a choice

at some point. They're gonna have to. I hope that the country uses these next two weeks to really quarantine seriously. I'm more specifically focused on the young population, which in some places isn't taking this very seriously. They need to take this seriously. We need to slow the virus down, and then we need to get the country back to work. We are a capitalist, you know economy, uh and and and the capitalist economy cannot survive without being without working.

So I think we need to get this country back to work how fast. I don't want to make that prediction. It's not mine. I'm not an expert. Well did you do you say that? Because yeah, the younger population. We've certainly seen New York City Mayor Build A Blasio talk about it, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, uh, you know, threatening to shut down parks and things just to kind of stop it. You you have a younger community, right who are working at um, you know, your various retail outlets. Um,

what are they saying about that? I mean, obviously there's a tremendous amount of nervousness. UM they understand. You know, the people that work in the cannabis undership are very, very dedicated Uh, and they and they and they truly believe in the product that they sell. And so we've had a tremendous um you know, sort of sort of effort on behalf of our employees stay there and to service our patients. That's force Jordan, the executive chairman of

Cure Leaf. Jason, and I think it's safe to say that when he started talking about his daughter having the virus and having to you know, continue running his company, being worried about workers, but then having to of course first and foremost, being worried about his daughter and making she sure she was okay. Um, it really took the story in a whole different direction. Well, and it's also interesting to think about this industry and what it may

mean a pivotal moment. We know that from covering uh, the cannabis boom as it were, over the last couple of years, he obviously is right in the middle of it. What happens next remains to be seen. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masster. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio live Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street Time, And if you can't catch us live,

get our daily podcast wherever you download podcast. You can also watch the show live on YouTube. Just search for Bloomberg Global News and you can get this week's edition to the magazine. It's on newsstands now. We'll be back next week at the same time. This is Bloomberg