White Collar Job Losses Will Trickle Down In A Bad Way

at Quill Intelligence. Of course, Danielle's former advisor at the Dallas Fed and also a Bloomberg opinion columnists and she's based in Dallas. Danielle, what do you make of the idea that we may not get stimulus before the election while the pandemic lingers. So there's that, and that will definitely put a pin in any kind of burgeoning recovery that we're seeing. Well, I think that there are two

different factors at work in today's market. One of them is that there's this underlying weakness that is going to continue to play out and stay and local employment for example, in in in families who are just getting by and we're waiting patiently as as they could for that next true stimulus package that provided them with a weekly jolt of of income while they continue to wait out a full and escape velocity, if you will, reopening of the

U S economy. The other thing I think that's at play today, though, is the market trying to wrap its head around quantitatively what the stop gap measures will accomplish. There is a lot of money in Uncle Sam's checking account, the Treasury General account, and money that can be can be pulled upon. But what what will what will it do to say, keep the airline workers on payrolls versus the rest of the country that needs stimulus measures not receiving them. What might do you can those checks come

out before election day? And most importantly, I think what's driving trading today is rumblings on trading floors about Bill Gates saying we might not need a vaccine. If what treated President Trump is as good as it is, we might be able to move past the pandemic with just

treatments in hand. So, Danielle, you know, the the administration is touting uh, the declining unemployment rate, the fact that the people are going back to work, But at the same time we see big companies like the Walt Disney Company talking about, you know, laying off an additional twenty eight thousand employees. What is your sense as to the underlying health of the employment market or lack there of in the United States. Well, I think it's more important

to look past. Twenty eight thousand is a huge mass layoff figure. It gates gets a lot of headlines, but two thirds of those workers were part time, So the economic the macroeconomic impact is not nearly as bad as well as fargoes intent this morning that it was going to be laying up and another seven hundred employees of KPMG announcing that it would be laying off white collar workers in tax and auditing and consulting UM. The list goes on and on of companies that are beginning to

cut at headquarters salaried employees. If you looked at the job openings data yesterday, the worst category by far was business and professional services, and in Friday's Peril Report we saw three consecutive months of losses again in business and professional services. These are the highest paying positions that account for the vast majority of US consumption, and they will continue As these white collar job losses percolate through the economy.

That will continue to trickle down, but not in a good way to the smaller businesses that are still holding on but in need of their of their business. So, Danielle, what happens next? How does the economy recover? How do people get by? I mean what the federals are has done as much as it can. There's possibly things that can do. It says, it's toolbox is never empty. But essentially this is a federal government issue. Does Joe Biden need to get elected and then, you know, implement a

huge amount of stimulus. Well, I think the scenario that the ladder of the two scenarios that you just painted out has been playing out in the bond market for the better part of a week now. We've seen bond yields break out of a very tight range in which

they've been stuck anticipating some massive stimulus spending bill. Uh. If Biden is victorious on on election day or in the days that follow, the question I have though for all politicians inside the Beltway is whether or not they're going to be looking to implement some programs that have proven successful in Germany, jobs, reskills, training, vocational training, infrastructure spending more than throwing money at people who who need it.

And I'm not saying we should put people out on the street by any means, but more than that, actually pro biting means by which people can get back into the workforce forcibly the way that it was done years ago in the New Deal, when there were no bridges and tunnels. Now we just have crumbling bridges and tunnels

and roads that need to be repaired. I would hope that the Order of Business number one would be looking to stimulus spending measures that not just make sure people were put back on their feet, but also that gave them job opportunities. So, Danielle, we heard from FED Chairman pal You speaking yesterday at an economics conference calling for

fiscal stimulus. Yet again, um does Congress listen to to FED chair people when FED chairman when they do speak about fiscal stimulus, Well, congress is track record is pretty is pretty spotty on that account. Bernanke spent years of his career as head of the fed UH pleading with Congress to do more on the fiscal side and to be more creative on a fiscal side, and he got the heisman time and again, which is why we ended

up having q E two and que three. Uh. The problem I have with with Powell, though, is on a more fundamental level, and that is that it appears that most of the Fed's tools in the toolbox are broken. And the one thing that that Powell knows he can do if there's fresh treasury issuance in order to finance stimulus spending, it is by those bonds via quantitative eavening that filters back into the stock market. Daniel d Martino Booth, thank you so much for joining us yet again. We

always appreciate your insights. Danielle de Martino Boots, CEO and directive intelligence at Quill Intelligence, former advisor at the Dallas Federal Reserve, and a Bloomberg Opinion columnists. Also you know just extraordinary book. She's the author of fed Up, an insider's take on why the Federal Reserve is bad for America. It is time for Bloomberg Opinion on Bloomberg Radio. Tai Kim Technology Commas for Bloomberg Opinion joins is here. There's

some significant news out recently. The House of Representatives out with a report suggesting some key regulatory oversight provisions for some of the biggest tech companies out there, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Take Kim, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it. How it just give us a sense of what the House report says and how worried does some of these tech companies be. I think the technology companies should be worried. Um, this report was four hundred fifty pages.

The subcommittee poured over one point three million documents, and they really laid out the case and a pattern of anti competite behavior by each and every one of these big tech companies. And it kind of lays our role map and a case for action over in that coming year. And they gave a bunch of remedies. Some of them more aggressive ones may not happen and buy pars in Congress, but you never know what happens with the November election.

If there's a Democratic sweep, and I do think we're gonna there's a good chance some of these remedies will be pointed action in coming. Here do we have an outline of the types of remedies Congress is looking for? Yeah, they have like a dozen things in there. Um. The most important one is a structural separation of any dominant platform if they compete with other competitors on their business. UM.

Another big one is a shift of burdener proof. So whenever of these big dominant platform big tech companies by company in the future, UM, they're going to have to prove that it's not anti competitive. So the burdener approof will beyond the technology company to argue that it's not anti competitors. So those are two big ones. UM. So there are a lot of recommendations that they lay it out.

So tell you I think you know. Historically the United States has taken a very light touch too big tech in terms of regulations, I guess, preferring to foster innovation. And we're gonna argue whether that's been positive or negative, but certainly it's helped Silicon Valley. Is there a real bipartisan support for significantly regulating these big tech companies like

an Amazon, like an Apple? Right now? There isn't bipart support for the more aggressive remedies, but there is support for certain things such as increasing funding for the antitrust regulators DEDC and the Anti Trust Division the t o j UM. But yes, there isn't like the Republicans aren't a board for more of these uh progressive breakup actions. Does any of this change if we get a change in leadership or even you know, the change in the Senate for example. I think so like if the Senate

changes and there's a Biden administration. Um, it was reported earlier this week the Biden the Biden team was given the heads up on this report. So I think if we see a democratic administration, will see some action. Another thing that the report outlined was UM potential limits on

self preferential behavi year by Google and Apple. So what Google does is they kind of bolster their own services on top of search results and potentially with either the d o J, which actually is on the Trump administration, UM, potentially putting out the report leader this week or next week to go after Google in terms of the the antitrust lawsuit. UM, that's another thing that that could be put in action.

And also Apples app Store. UM, I could see it certain legislation to limit Apple from preferential treatment for their apps and services. So tell you, I think even last year, I believe it was when the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice kind of divvied up these big tech companies and say, okay, you take a look, you d J, you take a look at these companies. You Federal Trade Commission, you take a look at these companies. Is this report in concert with those investigations or is

it separate from them? And and how are they tied together? If at all? So, I think they're pretty separate. This was the House subcommittee doing their investigation. The d o j it's is on their own path, and the most imminent one is a lawsuit that's going to to Google for their search engine and the dominance and the ad

platform business. But I do believe they're separate. But they all they're all tied in together of greatest scrutiny of big technology companies because I mean, everyone agrees that these companies are just so dominant in their markets and something needs to be done. And this four hundred fifty page report really I think it is an important step because

the outlines the huge pattern of behavior. Uh Specifically, I think the most egregious is Amazon in terms of how they know aplied on individual seller data to inform their private label business. So there's this great pattern behavior of these companies using their market power. And I think this, this report, this vast report, is really good step in terms of going to the next level of actual actions

against these companies. So these companies, many of them, have been dealing with or working with these types of issues. Let's say, in Europe for a very very long time. Margaret of s day Or was one of the most fierce competition commissioners that the European Commission has ever seen. And all of the companies that we're talking about how to work with her, What lessons can they learn in

terms of how they deal with Congress? How will how will you know what the US wants from these companies differ from what the EU wanted and ultimately got from most of these companies. So the EU is actually in progress with a number of these antitrust probes. Also, they started a few months ago invest seeing Apple and how they require their in app purchasing and the fift cut.

So I think we're actually going to see a lot of these actions come together at once, and the EU is still involved and really working, especially on the Apples. So I think we'll see a lot of these governments, but they're all all on there are on all their stuff tracks, like they're not really working together. Um, potentially we'll see the state, the trained generals and the d o J I think the d J is trying to get this data trainee channels on board for their Google lawsuits,

so they're all on this epic tracks. But I do think over the coming year, we're just going to see more scrutiny action. You look at the stocks, the stocks are not worried. Stocks are trading up, they're not trading down on this news. Particularly. What does that tell you time, Um, I think day to day it's it's it's tough to say. I mean, I think this stuff is going to take a long time to get legislated out, a year or

two at the earliest. I mean, this is not something that you could flip on a switch and say, oh, new Congress to kind of work on it. So it's gonna take time. And I mean I don't really foresee like vast breakup per se, but I do see on the margin rule changes limiting acqua eficians, like I said, the self preferential behavior and maybe prep and it's not

being compelled to give up the private business. So I'm not saying that you know, they're earning power and gets smashed because of their scrutiny, But I do think there will be accents where there will be limits to their behaviors and in terms of crushing competitors and things of that, some of that action will will be under this also. Take him, always a fascinating conversation. Take him as technology columnists for Bloomberg Opinion, and we thank him for joining

us today. And you know, it really is interesting called you preparing you know, a Digital Services Act, so an actual act of regulation. And if you go on a website for any of these companies in Europe at the moment, you know, you have to answer a whole load of information about you know, what you're allowing them to take from you in terms of your privacy and so on. You don't you don't typically get that yet in the US.

Let's get straight to our next guest. He needs, you know, is political contributor and professor polit legal science at Iona College, Jennie. A lot to talk about, not least the VP debate tonight, but first let's talk about Nancy Pelosi trolling the President on the view a few moments ago. Having had a conversation this morning with Steve Mnuchen about airline aide that apparently is going nowhere. Does Donald Trump bite before the debate tonight? Does he make some kind of unilateral announcement

or something to do with stimulus. You know, I'm not very good at predicting what Donald Trump will do. I hesitate to do that, but if I had to guess, I would say I do think he will respond. Um. He was very very active on Twitter, as you know, and you've been talking about all night, um and so you know from yesterday late yesterday to into today. So I would be surprised if he didn't respond. And of course this does I have to say, this does work

to the President's advantage. He he wants to um, you know, set this up as a debate between him and particularly the Democratic leadership in the House, led by Nancy Pelosi. So I think any chance he gets to do that, he's going to do that. And this is a way to energize his base. So I would be surprised if he didn't respond. Genny, you know, I want to ask you about what you think President trump strategy is here.

But every time I mentioned President Trump and strategy, Tim O'Brien Bloomberg Opinion Calmness and long time Trump chronicle or tells me that the president does not have a strategy. But what do you think his strategy is here so close to the election, seemingly handing the opposition of victory. Yeah, and I would have to say, you just made me chuckle because Tim is so right about that, and I would never ever disagree with him on anything to do with Trump. Um, and I do think he's right. There

does not seem to be a strategy. And in this case, when we were getting these tweets last night, these mixed messages about the stimulus package, I was scratching my head to try to figure out what could the thing king be. For most people running for office, the opportunity to invest money into the pockets of the people voting for them

would be something they would jump at. So the idea that the President took that off the table when it seemed they were, you know, getting much closer in the last few days was absolutely baffling from a sort of electoral campaign political strategy perspective. And then to your point, I had Tim running in my head saying, Okay, well maybe there is no strategy here. So you know, it's

really really hard to tell what the president. The most I can say is, on the one hand, he makes a case about walking away from the table when you're negotiating, you have to be prepared to do that, and that seems to be what he did last night. And then he walked back right up to the table a few hours later. So you know, we're getting these again mixed messages from the president, in which case he can always declare victory, and that seems to be sort of par

for the course with him. If there is a deal, he can declare victory. If there's not, he can say, see, I told you so, and I walked away before you know, this thing didn't work. Let's I'll forget that this is a very very ill man right now as well. And while you know, officially he had no symptoms yesterday, he's on huge doses of you know, very strong chemicals and you know apparently at some point that will start to wear off in the next day or two, after the

fifth dose of de severe. How much do you think that that is coloring his stands on things right now? Yeah, I mean, this is the million dollar question. And I don't think we know, as you just said that his doctors are saying that he's showing no symptoms, and yet we hear from doctor to you know, say that this absolutely can cause you to have a reaction, and that can be in you know, some kind of psychological way

as well. So I think the honest answer is that none of us know that said um, even if the President wasn't on these medicines, I'm not sure any of us would be surprised by the tweeting and the decisions made in the last twenty four hours visa VI or the statements made not decisions visa be some kind of stimulus package. I'm not sure what the answer to that is. We hope that he is physically and mentally fine and that we as the American public, are getting honest answers

from his doctors. And I don't think after this weekend we can be confident about that. Jenny, we do have a vice presidential debate this evening from Salt Lake City. Uh. You know, typically we don't spend pay too much attention to these VP debates, but given the ages of the two president, the president and the vice president former Vice President Biden, seems a little bit more relevant, doesn't it.

It absolutely does. I think in an ideal situation, you know, the vice presidential nominees for two men in their seventies would be a big deal, as you mentioned. And then of course we're in a much different situation, not ideal, in the midst of a pandemic, with a president who we've just been talking about has been diagnosed is currently under treatment, we understand, and a former vice president whose health has been called into question at numerous times, you know,

throughout the campaign. So both of those things give this sort of vice presidential debate, which normally gets a rather small audience. I think it's going to get a lot more attention tonight for that reason. And then, of course, just a week ago we have the you know, sort of stunning presidential debate where we didn't get a lot

of answers in terms of policies. So I think we're really looking for president vice President Pence to sort of play clean up for the president and to sort of fill in some of those gaps that were left and try to get a you know, a you know, some scoring here for the Republicans in terms of doing a better job. Because of course, polls show that the president did not do well according to voters after that last debate.

So what does sont of they Kamala Harris have to do to avoid making a mistake Denny, I think what she's got to do is focus like a laser beam on COVID. I think she's got to prosecute the case, but do it in a, you know, not a terribly stringent way, but bring more evidence forward, if you will, that they have not done well. These are the the American public in terms of managing this crisis, that is

the pandemic. I think if she can do that for a sustained period of time, put Pence on the defensive trying to defend you know, in many cases what the administration has done here, she will have succeeded, provided, as you mentioned, she doesn't make any mistakes, and it's gonna be tough. She we haven't seen her in a lot of one on one debates like this, so we're not

quite sure she's a great prosecutor. She was very good in the multi person debate, but this is a different format and Vice President Pence is good at this format, and I think he doesn't get enough credit for being successful in this venue. No, thank you so much for joining us. Once again. We appreciate your thoughts here as we get ready for the vice presidential debate. Jeniso, political contributor for Bloomberg News also professor of political science at

iona at College. We always appreciate her thoughts here again, So, Vanni, you know the markets are going to be you know, they seem to be not obviously not focused on the debate tonight, but certainly focused on uh Twitter and the it's coming out of the White House as it relates to fiscal stimus. Is it on again? Is it off again? Um? I just don't know. And you know, at some point

the focus will turn to the debate. It it maybe an hour before the debate, but at some point the president, you know, won't be able to keep the limelight if he does indeed take it today. Will you be watching tonight, Paul I will? I will. I'm be flipping back between the Yankee game and the debate, so we'll happen to see. But there are other important things going on. Is that what you're saying? Well, the Yankees, Yeah, they usually get

top billing for me, so we'll see. But this will be important, so I think everybody will be paying attention to it. Well, there's another hurricane bearing down on the southern coast of America, and it is just another storm in a extraordinary year of disasters. UH certainly copped capped off by the COVID uh pandemic. Team Rubicon is a nonprofit veteran lead disaster response organization. You have about hundred seventy full time employees a hundred thirties thousand volunteers and

they have been busy this year in disaster relieve. Jake Would, founder and CEO of Team Rubicant, joins us here. Jake tell us a little bit about Team Rubican, kind of where this came from and kind of where your focuses uh in an epic. Yeah, well, thank you for having me on to share the story. Team Rubicon were a nonprofit organization that was founded about eleven years ago in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. Um I had served

in the Marine Corps served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Following the earthquake, I led a team of veterans and doctors down the Court of Prince to help with the response effort down there, and we realized that these men and women who have served in uniform overseas had a lot of skills and experiences that were applicable in disaster zones.

So in the decades since, we've built up uh, you know, a really incredible organization that leverages military veterans and first responders to go into disaster zones and humanitarian crises, you know, like we've been seeing throughout I mean, you mentioned the hurricane season. We've got Hurricane Delta, which is an upgrade to a Category force and a slam in the southeast Louisiana. You know, this is one of many major hurricanes that have hit the US already this year. And all of

this in the midst of of COVID nineteen. I mean, it's it's been a year fraught with disasters and prices, and and Team Rubican has been their serving communities along the way. So, Jake, how has COVID nineteen changed the environment for you all? I imagine you may have gotten you know, extra volunteers in some ways if people were at home doing nothing and felt like they wanted to to get out there and do something, if they didn't

at all, or what have you. But also keeping everybody safe. Yeah, well, we made a commitment early into OVID nineteen. We made two commitments. One we were going to step into that crisis aggressively, and we were gonna assist communities to get

through the pandemic, and we've been doing that. We've been doing that by sending medical providers to Navajo Nation, We've been sending up mobile testing sites, We've been distributing PPE for the entire city of Chicago, and we flood did food banks across the country with thousands of volunteers to

support their efforts. But we also did it through the lens that we were always going to keep our volunteer safe, and so we very quickly developed the necessary protocols, ensured that we had the necessary PPE to keep our volunteers safe.

And the one thing that we realized early was that Mother Nature didn't care about COVID nineteen and we never predicted that we'd have a storm season quite like we've had, But we knew that we were going to have to continue to respond to natural disasters in the midst of this.

So that has required us to rework all of our disaster response protocols, ranging from how we fly in volunteers, how they transport in vehicles, how they sleep at night, um, the types of equipment that they have to take h into these homes that they're helping to recover from the storms. And so, yes, we have seen an influx of new volunteers,

but we've also seen a dramatic decrease in funding. Um, you know this issue, you know, the economy, the broader macro economic trends that we're seeing are are creating real headwinds for the organization. You know that I think is coupled with kind of the uncertainty of the election and all of the money that's being diverted into both sides of the Democrats and Republicans. And then finally the rise

of social justice as an issue that's pre eminent many Americans. Uh, the unfortunate reality is that public support for these disasters has waned. So Jack, let's let's go there a little bit. I mean, I would I would think your resources are beyond stretched in a year like with COVID and this extraordinary storm season that's impacted the United States. Kind of how are you funding your operations? Well, you know, our funding is all uh private philanthropy. So it's it's corporate funding,

it's foundations and as individual giving. We don't take any government money and we don't charge the homeowners that we assist for the services that we provide, and so we really rely on these these institutions and these individuals to the fund our efforts. And as I said, you know, people pocketbooks are are stretched. We have extraordinarily high unemployment many sectors of the economy, the core of corporations. Uh you know, despite where the you know, the Doubt and

the Nashtac are sitting. You know, many of these companies stock prices are still pummeled. That's that's been an impact to our bottom line because they have fewer dollars available for philanthropy. And so yes, we you know, we're having to kind of clench our jaw here and find creative ways to to flex into these operations and not leave these communities behind. And it's it's challenging. Tell us how

very clearly j people can donate. Well, if anybody wants to support our work, they can go to Team root becon USA dot org. You know, five dollars, five dollars, anything in between, anything above, uh, you know, will will maximize the impact that that that money can have in the community. Uh. You know, if you want to volunteer, that's your most precious resource, your time. We'd love to have you and even just sharing the word of what you're hearing and the work that we're doing can go along.

So we'd encourage people to follow us on social media and share the story of Team Rubicon. Team Rubicon dot org and Jake, if people did want to volunteer, what are your criteria? It's Team Rubicon USA dot org and anybody is eligible to volunteer as long as they're over the age of eighteen. Um. We you don't have to be a military veteran. It certainly makes up the bulk of our volunteers, but we take people of all stripes.

Uh and uh. You know, we're just looking for you know, great American citizens who are looking to help their neighbors. Team Rubicon USA dot org. I'll say that one more time, Team Rubicon USA dot org. Jake, thanks for sharing your story with us today and we will definitely continue to follow your movements throughout the country and stay safe. And I know that if anybody can, you guys can much much appreciated. That is Jake would, founder and CEO of

Team Rubicon. Thanks for listening to the Boomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Bonnie Quinn. I'm on Twitter at Bonnie Quinn and I'm Paul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio