Georgia Runoff Elections for U.S. Senate

dot com. If you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio and be sure to watch us too on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News. Let's bring in our guest, Dr William Hazltine back with us. He has been a go to voice for US many times throughout the pandemic. He's chairman and president of Access Health International, founded more than a dozen

biotech companies, including Human Genome. His autobiography release last year, My Lifelong Fight Against Disease UM, Dr Hazeltine, So good to have you back with us. Um, how are you and how do you make sense of some of the recent round of headlines that have to do with both COVID and the vaccine. Well, I'm fine, thank goodness, and my family is fine and we're looking forward to a

better year than we've had. With respect to the headlines, they're very upsetting because we see an epidemic out of control in many countries, and when they try to control, at the moment they release it, the infections popping back up. Unless you were able to control this infection early on, like China and a few other countries, did, you're really in the soup for a long time, And thank goodness, we have vaccines. Have you gotten On the other hand, yeah,

have I got the vaccine? Not yet. Now I'm not not eligible yet, but we're all waiting for the vaccines. I can tell you, excuse me that the first story. The second story, of course, is virus variation. All of those who who worked with HIV. This is like our old ghost coming back to haunt us. And it's just a very serious situation because the IRUs obviously is changing in response to immune pressure. Whether or not it's getting around the vaccines, I think it's only a matter of time.

It may already have done so. And the optimism that people have that it's not gotten around the vaccines already is I think misplaced. Let me tell you the reason I think that there was a patient in Great Britain who had a prolonged infection because the patient was a new suppressed twenty three samples of virus were taken during the patient's treatment. The treatment with convalescent SARAH. That's people

who successfully fought off the virus. That patient got three successive rounds, and over time, because they were sampling frequently, you could see variations arise and the virus became resistant to convalescent SIA. If it becomes resistance the convalescent SIRA, that means it can get around our natural immunity. And we can get around our natural immunity. It's very likely you can get around our artificial immunity that we create

with vaccine. What what are you talking to that this would this would be the case with MR and A vaccines and other ways that vaccines have and are being developed. And just have about seconds and then we'll come back. Go ahead, please, any vaccine I'm telling about any vaccine. Well, and in just this last barty seconds, the strains that the variants are they usually stronger, tougher to deal with, or not necessarily just quickly, then the idea that they're

weaker is wrong. They are not necessarily weaker in some cases they're more potent, I be more transmissible, uh and wrote higher tighters, higher concentrations and people who are at So there's very worrying observations out there today. I have to say we went to break. Tim and I were talking in the break dr hazeltine, and it felt pretty ominous here and what you had to say at variants and kind of where we go from here when it comes to COVID. So it made me feel like we

never get out of it. Help me set the record straight. Is that fair or is it just a case that it's going to take longer. How do you see it? I see this as a constant battle against this virus, likely fight against US virus. I don't think it's going to paralyze our economies and keep us in the house as it does now. I think we'll have effective measures,

will have much faster diagnostics to know who's infected. We'll have a whole series of drugs that we can take that can help us get over this and save us if we do get infected. And we'll have vaccines that will probably have to renew, whether it's every year, every two years, every three years, we're gonna have to be renewing our vaccines to keep up with the virus changing. But we will get this under control in a way that lets our lives go on. But it won't be easy.

We've got to be vigilant. We've got to replace complacency with vigilance. What is the best historical precedence for this? If we think about modern modern public health, when have we gotten through something like this? Well, we've gotten through it in the nineteen eighteen flu, the nineteen fifty seven fifty eight flu, and we've gotten through it for the

HIV pandemic. I think most people forget that that virus has killed upwards of thirty five million people in the world, and that is h much more than this is killed. And yet we've got another control. So modern science is capable of doing this. People have to cooperate, which they're not doing particularly well, especially with the last Christmas. But this these are this is infectious diseases we can control, but we cannot let down our vigilance. We can't assume

that a vaccine is going to be the panacea. We've got to combine that with good public health measures and continued intensive research such as going on right now. Your autobiography where you talk about, you know, your fight, your lifelonge lifelong fight against disease. You've seen so much. We talk about polio age, COVID nineteen, you cover it all. How does COVID nineteen even compare, How is it different?

How has it kind of just changed your mind thinking about some of the healthcare kind of foods that are out there for us as we move forward. You know, I think what woke me up with the HIV is that this is a brand new virus that came out of almost nowhere. We just didn't see it coming. After that, we have seen many of us have seen these viruses coming, and we've warned about a time and time again. They've been uh, all sorts of war games planned. We knew

what would happen. There's a movie called Contagion which basically outline is exactly what's happening to us right now with COVID. The only differences. So it's basically we know that these are coming, we know they're continually coming, and we just have to make sure that we have very good surveillance. We dropped the ball as a country very seriously, both with diagnostics, with public health natures of control. And we're even dropping the ball right now with actually not creating vaccines,

with vaccine distribution. We've got to up our game all across the board to take account of what nature is, the reality of nature, not what we'd like nature to be. What's a realistic vision of life after this pandemic? You say the vaccine will not will not be a panacea? Um, are we going to be wearing masks in two years? I think it's a good idea to wear masks in winter, not necessarily in the summer. You know, most of Asia

wears masks all winter long. That's sensible because it's not just this virus, it's influenza viruses, it's old viruses, it's all sorts of things. So I think we'll be wearing masks more than we will. I think we'll be paying a lot more attention to our vaccination schedules, will be paying a lot more attention to what the scientists are saying about what the threats are that are out there.

And I hope that our public health UH system. I just realize that this is a national and international problem. We can't treat it on a state by state level. We've got to treat it on a national but we have to have national policies which are uniform across the country because what happens in one state doesn't stay in that state. What happens in one country doesn't stay in

that country. We've learned that. And if there's anything I hope comes out of this is a need for continued vigilance and continued improvement in our public health measure, global cooperation and no doubt about it. Um. Dr Hazeltine, nice to hear from you. I'm glad you your family are well. Please stay safe. Dr William Hazeltine, Chairman and President of Access Health International. His autobiography released this year, My Lifelong Fight against Disease from Polly Owned AIDS to COVID nineteen.

This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer from Bloomberg Radio. Needless to say, a lot going on today. We know that if you check the calendar, you'll be reminded to Tim that the clock is ticking on getting an eleventh hour pardon from President Trump. TikTok. Yeah, Look, you're two weeks away from a new president. But get it done. What I like that parton you better get it So reporting for Bloomberg Business Week is Bloomberg News legal reporter

David Yaffie Bellny. He is with us on the phone from Washington. David, Hey, nice to have you here with Tim and myself. Time is kind of running out, But that doesn't mean we might not see a few more presidential pardons. Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's certainly

the case. Um right. The week before before Christmas, Trump issued forty nine pardons and commutations to various people, including close associates of his, of his former operatives who worked for him, his son in law, it's father, Charles Kushner, and he's widely expected to issue another round of those in the next couple of weeks before he leaves office.

Who would those pardons go to. Well, there's a whole array of sort of white collar prisoners and kind of politically connected prisoners all over the country who are kind of jockeying for his attention, trying to curry favor with the types of right wing TV hosts and radio hosts who who President Trump listens to. U. They're they're a lobbyists all over Washington who are making the case for

for particular prisoners. Um I spoke to the family of a of a former New York businessman named um Shalom weiss Um who was was sentenced to basically a life sentence in prison for money laundering in the early two thousand's. And he's got a lobbyist working for him in Washington. His his nephew is attempting to contact the legislators and getting them to put in the good word with the president,

sending tweets out to everybody he can think of. So that's the type of full court press that you know, all sorts of federal prisoners are are undertaking these days in the in the waning days of the Trump administration, David, I have to say, what I love about this story or what I kind of scratched my head about, is like, what is the process actually for for giving out pardons?

And to be fair, um, a lot of pardons were given out during the Obama administration, the George W. Bush, I mean a little perspective in terms of what we're seeing. It feels like a lot from Trump, But we've seen this before in other administrations. Correct sure. In fact, if you look at the numbers, has actually issued way fewer

pardons and communications than than previous presidents. The difference is that the clemency grants that Trump is giving out or going to people who are politically connected or able to get his attention through lobbying, rather than to people who have applied to the Justice Department, had their petitions vetted by government lawyers and sort of gone through that bureaucratic process which is designed to basically, um, you know, figure

out who's sort of most most deserving of clemency. And no doubt there were there were major problems with that. Well from this is the other thing that's scratching my head, but I thought there was a process like you had to kind of check certain boxes before it could even be considered. But obviously the president um has gone around that. I mean, are there any kind of really rules and standards for this or is there a lot of you know, is there criteria or is there a lot of wiggle

room here? So the the official, the official processes. You're a federal prisoner, you apply for clemency to the Justice Department. The Office of the Pardon Attorney evaluates your clemency petition, gets in touch with the judge who sentenced you, with the prosecutor who prosecuted you, and makes the determination, you know,

should we recommend you for for clemency. The Pardon Office will look at a lot of different criteria including, you know, behavior in UM during the time that you've been in prison, UM, you know, whether you've expressed remorse for the crimes that you committed, a whole wide set of criteria like that.

Then the Pardon Office makes a recommendation to high ups in the Justice Department who sort of vet the files and decide which ones they're going to send over to the White House for the President to make it make a decision on whether to grant clemoncy. That's the way

that the process is traditionally worked. What what Trump has done is basically cut the Justice Department out of the equation, established a kind of a white head sort of informal White House panel that takes recommendations from anybody and everybody.

You know. Kim Kardashian of course, famously was able to successfully lobby the President to pardon somebody whose case she was interested in, UM and so so really the abbying is like focused directly at the White House now, and that kind of standard process of the Justice Department has been kind of cast aside and to be clear, this is totally legal. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, the president. There are there are very few limits on the president's pardon power.

It's not a it's not a requirement that he only pardoned people who have been vetted by the Justice Department. It's just that's that's the norm of how it's worked for decades in Washington. And there are isolated examples of other presidents circumventing that that process. Um. But but Trump is really the first president in living memory who has kind of systematically undermined it, um and abandoned any sort of pretense of kind of fairness and uhpends your vigorous

bureaucratic review. Okay, So what's the latest on pardons for family members, for himself, um and for for you know, other people who are close to the president and the president's administration. Is that still possible? Um, it's certainly still possible. Albums. He'll have the power to do it until his term

ends on January. UM. There's obviously been a lot of speculation about the prospect that he could issue preemptive pardons to his children, to Jared Kushner, which would basically say, you know this, this person is shielded from any future criminal charges at the federal level that might be brought against them. Um, there's a whole legal debate about whether it's actually constitutional for the president to pardon himself. Um,

that question is sort of unsettled legally. The Supreme Court has never had the chance to weigh in on it. So it's something that Trump could do, and it's something that would only get overturned if if federal prosecutors actually brought charges against him after he leaves office, which is unlikely. UM, So you know, we're kind of in an uncertain phase now where it's not clear whether he's going to issue

those pardons. There's certainly a chance that he might, and whether the whole up in court afterwards is sort of another questions, just another um level chapter. Well, I just wonder how this change is precedent for presidents moving forward, right, Like, yeah, yeah, will it David, Well, I mean, that's a that's a

that's a difficult question to answer. I mean, of course, the fear from people who really value the traditional norms of Washington and the traditional process for um, granting clemency to prisoners, fear that you know, this will give a license to future presidents to deviate from that that process in alternative ways. But you know, there's no guarantee of that.

I mean the expectations that Joe Biden will revert something similar to that kind of traditional process that I outlined earlier, in which the Justice part and evaluates petitions and makes

recommendations to the White House. Um. But you know, I mean that that process had its own flaws, and what this could also do is create an opportunity for Biden or for future presidents to sort of rejigger the process in ways that don't kind of corrupt it with relentless lobbying, but make it move faster and allow more deserving people

to receive clemency. Yeah, I don't know that this is like one of those things I pull out a bottle of wine, have a great debate with your friends over presidential parts, because part of me is like, I just don't quite get it, why we need it. And then you know, I've done some reading on the history of it, and it's you know, initially for people who you know, guys who committed treason, So that to me sounds egregious to do we partner not necessarily your son in law's dad.

It's what you're saying. Yeah, there's that too, Like it just feels like, do we need to have a presidential pardon. I'm not quite sure that you know of it. I guess I understand it. Maybe I don't know, but um, like I said, good, maybe a couple bottles of wine then you have a good debate. David, Thank you so much. David Yaffie Bellini, legal reporter or Bloomberg News on the phone from Washington, d C. Do you think they make sense?

I think it's antiquated. Yeah, I do too. I think I think our forefathers were like, listen, you know, at some point you folks have to like look at these rules and get rid of someone. There's no check on it, and that's the thing. Yeah, it's very it seems very like it's from a monarchy or something. Yeah, I agree with you, all right, I'm with you on that one. All Right, we'll see if we get any kind of feedback on that. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol

Messer from Bloomberg Radio. So it's already one for the record books, record turnout for a runoff, our can amount of money raised for the congressional races. Of course, Tim we're talking about the Georgia Senate runoff races happening as we speak today today, Like we're finally got here, right, finally finally and we know so much really hinges off of the outcome of these races. Yeah, Look, it's all about how much power President Biden and the Biden administration has.

It has implications for Americans when it comes to stimulus and the economic recovery to the coronavirus pandemic. It'll stay with us for a long time. So let's get into it and find out what's going on. Our team covering it is Bloomberg Government reporter Emily Wilkins on the ground in Atlanta, Georgia. Bloomberg News national political correspondent Gregory Cordy. He's on the phone in Washington. D c Um, Emily, let's kick it off with you. What are you seeing?

What's the turnout look like? What are you hearing when it comes to maybe the early count versus the later count phill Us in So we just left the phone in place, and I talked to one of the workers there and she said, that's the number of people that she seeing today for the rob is about the same as what she saw in November for the general election. As you mentioned, we did see more than three million people go ahead and vote in early voting, So we're

not seeing giant lines today at this point. In fact, one of George's top election officials said that from his data, the laytime for most polling places was under a single minute, So there seems to be uh people are moving through the system today. Doesn't seem to be too too many major delays that we've heard about at this point. So far, so good. It sounds like I'm Emily, what about when it comes to results. When do you think we'll start to see results? So the poets closed at seven pm.

That's when votes are going to begin to be counted. As we see things come in, We're going to be doing in person votes first. Those are expected to uh plant in favor of the Republicans. So at the end of the night it might look like the two Republicans David Fordue and Kelly Leffler are upposite bit on their Democratic opponents. But when the absentee bells begin to get counted, we expect that margin to narrow pretty sign sacntly. Although we're not going to as but we don't expect to

call a winner tonight. We're hoping that we can call one within the next traveled days. We're not expecting to have to wait the ten days that we had to wait for Georgia to be called for the November three election. Gregory, I want to bring you in here and talk about implications of this, uh, not just for for Americans, but but also for President Biden when he becomes president in just a couple of weeks. How important is this race

in Georgia to the Biden administration. Yeah, this is a really extraordinary circumstance because you know, we have runoff races, especially in the South. Law of southern states do it if neither Canada gets a majority in the general election. But never before in history we had two Senate races from the same state, both up for grabs. And not only that, but these races will decide control of the Senate.

Now that the Democrats have a little bit more of an uptill crime here because they have to elect both Rapiel Warnock and John ass Off to get it to essentially a fifty fifty tie in the Senate. And then only then can the Vice president elect Kamala Harris when she's sworn in cast the tiebreaking vote in favor of Democrats, and that will really, uh have a big impact on how Joe Biden approaches the first one days of his presidency.

If he has the majority, you can afford to look for some of the bigger, broader, bolder proposals that he outlined the campaign, things like repealing the Trump tax cuts, raising them animum wage a something that resembles uh, but it's not exactly the Green New Deal. UH. As far as environmental legislation, if he doesn't have control of the Senate, then he's got to look to things like infrastructure, COVID relief,

cyber security, maybe criminal justice. UH. And so it'll be a much more moderate agenda because I'll have to look for Republican votes. It's also gregory, you know, might delay the process us of things, including you know, Biden's nominations for cabinet positions. I mean, it could just you know, if it ultimately ends up with the Republicans in control of this and it just could slow this process down. Yeah, there's still a lot of really sore feelings, especially among Republicans,

about how some of President Trump's nominees were treated. UH. And a lot of his nominees. You know, I'm thinking of Education Secretary Bepsy divoce Uh Mike Penns had to cast the tie breaking vote to get her confirmed. And so if that trend continues and a lot of Joe Biden's nominees for cabinet posts are confirmed on party line votes, boy,

it's going to be awfully close. And even if they're not voted down, the majority leader has the power to kind of slow things down, to refer things to committee, to not bring up votes the floor right away, and that could hamper the smooth transition to a Biden president. Yeah, we weren't joking when we said all eyes are on Georgia, Emily.

I mean, if you think about what happened in george over just over the last couple of days, We've had the president down there, We've had the president elect in Georgia rallying on behalf of Democrats, and then of course we had the infamous call between the President and the Secretary of State and other Georgia official elections officials that leaked to the Washington Post over the weekend, putting pressure

on officials there to find the votes. In the words of the President how has that specter played over with voters in Georgia over the last couple of days. So as soon as that story got late, Democrats kind of jumped on it right away. Vice President Life Paris was down at a rally in Susannah. She called it an abuse of power. John also said it was a direct attack on our democracy to Democrats have come out really strong on that. It remains to be seen exactly what

impact it's going to have on Republicans. Certainly, there are some Republicans, particularly in Washington, who we've seen, you know, criticized the phone call. But what strikes me is as I talked to Republican voters here in Georgia, most of them agree with the president in that they believe that's the November third election had a lot of fraud. They

have a lot of sincerns about it. And even though where did we have no convincing evidence that there was fraud in that November third election, there's a lot of belief here that that's an issue. And so voters to hear the calls, they might not sort of fully understand that Trump is trying to overturn a legitimate election. They might agree with the president. Hey, Emily, just quickly thirty seconds here. So what's driving people most to the polls?

Is it concerns about fraud and making sure that their vote is uh, you know, represented, and the count? Is it the economy? Is it the virus? What is it? Just very quickly, I can do this in five seconds. It's control of the Senate. Control of the Senate, Washington. You're my hero. Now. You did that so well, Emily Wilkins. Thank you so much. Bloomberg government reporter on the ground

in Atlanta, love this story to buy. Bloomberg News national political correspondent Gregory Cordy talking about like this is really significant. This will, as we sat at the top of our broadcast him, will determine the distractory of so much for

the Biden administration. Yeah, it was really surprising to learn from Gregory Cordy earlier when he would join us on Quick Take today, was that Biden will be the first president in years if they lose to actually um not have a co Congress that he controls, which is significant. And catch tim on Quicktake. You can find that on ROCCU and Apple TV and so much more. Mac journal. Yeah, but you let me drive, no no, no, honey, please, I'll do the vel I want to drive. Just drive

by the question. This is the drive to the Globe community. Thanks, We'll try us. Dawn on Bloomberg Radio, all right, just spend eleven minutes ago until we wrap up this trading day. Let's get to the drive to the close day. Adeed's back with us, managing principal and senior portfolio Strategies at Pepack Private Wealth Management. A billion dollars in assets under management. David with us on the phone from Semit, New Jersey. David, Happy New Year. Nice to have you here. I'm back

with us. How are you. There's a lot going on doing well. Um, you know, it was about today yesterday, but we're back on track today. So we are constructively optimistic going forward. Thank you. So which day is right? Yesterday or today? Ultimately, you know, I think there's a two key fundamentals that are still in play. First of all is the vaccine. We had the problems last year because of the worst pandemic since two thousand and eighteen, and since then, of course we've gotten two vaccines that

have been approved efficacy. Um. A third is over in the continent Astrosenica. That will come here eventually, we expect to see further. So ultimately, I think we're still going to have a tremendous tail wind from the get out of home trade as people re engage with the economy. As slowly these vaccines are jabbed into arms and people get back to normal. That's theme. One thing too, is

unbelievable support from policymakers. It starts right with the Federal Reserve, which have pinned rates down to zero, and there's no sign that desk can change anytime soon. So we're back in a situation where if you want to at least equal the rate of inflation, you've got to do something more creative than being in a bank account. And so this is continuing sturge into stocks. I think slowly is the key word that you use when it comes to

the vaccine rollout here. Um, what is the market expecting when it comes to how quickly these shots can get in arms, Because at the way it's going right now, this is going to take a long time and it is not encouraging. Well to me make a great point. Quite frankly, I'm worried most about mutations, and what scared me more was what we heard down in South Africa where they apparently have some sort of variation that may

require re engineering if some of the vaccines. In terms of the rollout, I think it's just gonna take a little while to get it right. I mean, right now we're being very cautious to make sure the neediest among us get it first. But at a certain point I think it will be a free for all as supply lines ramp up and we can't have um. For example, the fiser uh falling compound be wasted because people who really should be taking it for whatever reason can't get it or don't want to take it. So I think

that will ramp up UM. It's just a question of time, all right. So question of time UM, and we can never really market time well, although I do feel like there might be some indications throughout the year to give you an idea of, you know, whether or not we'll see market sell off or market rally. So having said that, David, how do you position yourself? Where are you finding opportunities specifically right now? Absolutely so, Really, Carol, it's still a

tale of two markets. On the one hand, you've got the over US and trading at some of the priciest levels ever close to twenty three times next year's earnings, and that assumes we get twenty pick up um in

earnings from this year from two thousand one. Having said that, of all the components of the SMP company lost money last year, which means we are rolling up our sleeves in looking We're staying diversified, of course, but we're looking to those two hundreds to see which are well positioned in terms of franchises, in terms of business model, and will benefit from the reopening of this economy and continued

low interest rates. So that's what we're working on. We're and I think a key um visual for people is to is to consider the Russell one thousand growth, which was up close to thirty eight percent last year, versus the Russell one thousand value, which is just above the flat line. That's a huge disparity. I think it closes in favor of value over the next twelve eighteen months. I want to talk bitcoin here because this was the story when I woke up yesterday morning, and it seems

to be sort of ignored today. Um, that decline that we saw yesterday, it was the biggest decline that we've seen since March, still bitcoin recovering most of it almost back at record that we saw over the weekend. Um, how do you position bitcoin in your investment portfolios, in your client's portfolios, in your strategy, To be perfectly asked with you, we don't and and and I'll tell you why. First of all, I don't know how to value that. Um, you know, there is no cash flow. You can't uh

net present value a stream of cash flows. So uh, you know, is it is it worth a hundred thousand? Is it worth ten thousand? I can't tell you. Second, of course, we do like to find things that have some sort of dividend or interest component. Historically, over the last hundred years, half your return in the market has come from dividends. Of course, bitcoin pays none of that. Third, of course, is legalty. I mean there's a lot of

things people want which are hell back. If anyone thinks that the government can't stop what is a great product. Look at what happened, for example, to Aunt Financial and China. I decided no, jack Ma, you can't take that company public, and it disappeared. Look at things like cannabis here it's been held back because the government regulation. Ultimately governments I don't think can have currencies that can't be controlled by them,

that can't be stimulated by them. And of course, but that is if it's a concurrency, right, we still don't know. You know, our in house analysts looks at it is kind of a collectible of some sorts, you know, and there's supplied demand restraints that provide support from the price. I mean, you know, it's not your typical investment. But having said that, there are things like John bonds and that Nana yield that used to be considered exotic and now their mainstream. So it makes me a little wary

that who knows what the future might be for bitcoin? Well, absolutely, who does know. It's all probability game. But of course it will not necessarily be bitcoined. There's a series of other crypto currencies. And what I thought was very interesting is yesterday one of the federal regulators gave permission to banks to do business using cryptocurrencies with respect to stable coins,

and so I said, what stable coins? Exactly? What stable coins mean cryptocurrencies which are tied to something like dollars, euros, or gold. So I definitely think that there is a great future for electronic trading of money movement or value movement. I just don't know whether there's going to be bitcoin, and given the popularity of it that in my thirty years of doing that, that is a yellow flag, if not a red flag right there with the way it's

moving around. I'm gonna say, David, is we're living in strange times. There's a lot of disruption going on. Um we shall see, David Diets, thank you so much, Managing Principal Senior Profilios Tragisic at Pepack Private Wealth Management eight

billion uh in assets under management. Jennings on the phone from seven A, Jersey, thanks so much for listening to Business Being Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or at Bloomberg dot com, and be sure to check out our daily radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, and be sure to watch us to on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News