How To Stop The Recession From Happening Right Now

I think that's kind of a marker of how much has changed in markets and the economy in that short time, because when we spoke to this particular person, I think it was either late January or early February. Obviously the coronavirus was a concern, especially in China, but it had yet to really take off in places like Europe and the US. Now all of that is changing. People are worried abou out the economy, and of course we've seen

a massive sell off in markets. Right since that discussion, we've had a de facto stock market crash, one of the fastest declines ever, breathtaking moves day after day, and now extremely serious and legitimate worries that a recession could be imminent. So we're talking about a recession as a sort of theoretical thing that at some point was likely

to come. But now we're talking about a possible recession right here and right now, really globally, but also you know, specifically in the West and in the US right and of course, because we are talking about a potential recession, that means people inevitably are talking about what we can do to stop it. We've already seen the Federal Reserve do an emergency rate cut, but a lot of the

focus is on fiscal stimulums. Right That's the big question is whether DC can get it together in a way that it rarely can to spend money to blunt the impact of these of this virus, which is expected to be traumatic. So without further introduction. A few weeks ago, we spoke to Claudia Psam, she's the director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and our discussion was, again it was theoretical, is what do you do to hold the recession if you see one coming?

How should spending get out the door in a timely manner. We were not thinking of the discussion at that time as something like, oh, here's an imminent playbook that we need. But really we are in that position now. So without further ado, let's get right to it. Claudia, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me back. I appreciate it. So, just in your view, how serious are the recession risks right now for the US economy. I think the risks are

incredibly serious. Uh, the events are fast moving right So if we were talking this time last week, I would not I've been say we should, we should be really concerned. This is not looking good as last week went on, I think, especially for me, I felt like we know how to do this, We know the fiscal tools that need to be deployed when we face a risk to the economy. Coronavirus is unique in many ways, but in

a lot of ways it isn't. It's just something that's threatening on the economic side, something that's threatening the ability of people to go to work. People do want to go buy stuff Like this is what a threat to the U. S economy looks like. We know how to fight that. We've got the tools, we have experience from the last decade, but we need fiscal policy. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot about why monetary isn't enough.

But to see, um, Larry Cudlo do the interview on Friday where he essentially said, yeah, we don't we don't really need the fiscal or it just there wasn't a really forceful we're going to do all it takes on the fiscal side, and between that and then the markets and you know, the Sunday night was really bad and

the treasury. So all of this has just made me really concerned and concerned to the point not that oh, recession looks like it's you know, could happen that like if we do not act fast, like it is going to be a recession, Like I just um, and it doesn't have to I think this was so hard for me is it does not have to happen at all. Like if we were to act now, then this is this is gonna be painful. It's gonna be painful that people that get sick, some people will lose their job.

We're not gonna be able to act fast enough and be able to help everybody. But it does not have to take the US economy down, and we're in such a good place right now. It's just it's tragic to like cut off this expansion. So Claudia, on that note, why do you think there is this resistance to fiscal stimulus stuff so far? So, like I said, we have

all the economic tools. This is just a matter of political will or physical policy makers have all the tools they need, you know, that's that's not my lane the politics. But I will say having been a forecaster, I mean I worked on all of the a stimulus from two thousand and eight, especially stimulustracted a household, so I stimulus payments two thousand nine, two thousand tend making work paid two thousand eleven and twelve, payroll tax cut. I mean

I followed all those. I've had to analyze them for the staffs macro forecast. I did research on every single one of those. I know the research and I I mean I cried at the end of like they didn't extend anything like that's the payroll tax cut expired. That was the last of the stimulus. The unemployment rate was still high, like way too high, and there was all the discussions of austerity. And this doesn't just hit on

one side of the political spectrum. And we had very senior macro economists who were in positions of leadership in various organizations saying yeah, we just we got too much debt, we gotta we gotta pull back, tighten the belt straps, and it I mean, it was um unconscionable what that meant to the people who really already had their belts

their belts tightened as much as they could. So I like, I'm not as naive now because like they did it when it was so bad that like I just anyways, but it's you know, you you'd hope that there were lessons learned, Like we learned last time. We should have learned is that you have to act fast, and when you act fast, you gotta go big. You gotta go big to start with because that might be the only bite at the apple, and then you've got to stick with it because if you don't like there, there are

long term costs for everyone in the economy. So yeah, that's like something I mean, Ay, what you say is like something that I've been thinking a lot about, which is I thought, you know, we had learned some of these lessons after the Great Financial Crisis that like, it doesn't pay to weight, it doesn't pay to be particularly cautious.

The game is to go big and prevent it, and then you have the same old cast of characters all saying the same thing like, oh, worried about how we're going to pay for it, and we have the fiscal space and maybe we'll do something small and targeted. But as you note, uh, you know, the recovery from the crisis was shockingly slow, and I didn't realize it up until yesterday. I was looking at the chart how we didn't return to pre crisis levels of unemployment rate till

that's in my mind. Maybe I would have thought it was. There's incredibly long lasting scars from the crisis. But we've been talking about fiscal stimulised. One of the things that we talked about when you were on the podcast a few weeks ago, and everyone should go listen to that because that really like sort of gives your whole body of work or a lot more of It is the importance of just getting cash into people's hands. That that's the key thing that we need to do right now.

So talk about the importance of just putting money in peoples on bank accounts right here. Yeah, So when I talk about this fiscal response, so in a recession, I think there's two principles that we should be working on. One is we should go wide. So that's this idea of giving money to everybody, like give every man, woman, and child, United States five find a way to do it. So that's that's covering the breadth. I think it is important, and you're going to hear a lot more people talking

about targeted stimulus, so I think that can. I think we should have that. People who get sick right now, people who are quarantined, they should get money. They should get more money because they're they're the ones that are sick,

they're they're suffering the most. Give them more. But I think if we bypass the give something to everyone, we are going to really amp up the risk that this spreads and becomes a recession because right now, well right now, people are freaking out right because they don't because they don't know if they are going to get sick, They don't know if someone their family is going to get sick.

And the vast majority, like way up into the income distribution, people they spend what they make, right so you're there are many people who are one paycheck even some cut hours away from serious financial district as. So if you know that about yourself and you don't know if you're going to get the virus, and you don't know if you're gonna be out for two weeks from work and

you won't get paid. If you're out, then you're not going to go out and buy like the new washing machine, or put the offer on the house, or you know, by go out to the rest. There's just so many things that you'll do right now to cut back because you don't know if Americans across the country do that

all at once in the next couple of months. Like that, that's how you take an economy with a three and a half percent unemployment rate, really solid GDP growth and turn it into a recession because like that, once that dynamic gets going, it doesn't matter how much you give to the like you know, five percent of the population

that becomes severely ill. We could get past the virus itself and have the economy already be into a tailspin that you can't then arrested easily as you could right now if you just told people we got your back, like we're on this. What do you say to critics who make the point that given the uncertainty that you just described, so people don't know if they're going to have a job in the next few weeks. They don't know if they can go outside of their houses. Just

massive uncertainty for households at the moment. So if there's that level of uncertainty, how do you know people are actually going to spend the additional money that you give them? And I should just mention that here in Hong Kong we already have this happening. Hong kongers are getting cash handouts of a little over a thousand U S dollars

paid directly into their bank accounts. And the joke over here, although clearly it's not very funny given the situation, is that everyone is just going to either save it or use it to buy, you know, a few rolls of toilet paper and some face masks. Yeah. So this this has been the longstanding critique of these stimulus payments, tax rebates, uh, the the difference. So, and I think they make for a good story, right And and a lot of times people telling the story like maybe it fits them, like

I don't like every dollar that comes into me. I don't just go out and spend it because I've got I've got a cushion. The fact that matters in the United States, and this is different than a lot of other developed countries. We do not have a good safety net. We do not have financial buffers, Like a huge fraction of US households do not have a paychecks worth, let alone like five worth of money just sitting around that they can access quickly. So we're in a much more

fragile place than other countries. And then on top of that,

there is research. There is incredibly good research from the two thousand one tax rebates and the two eight stimulus payments that says people will spend it, like I just but but this this trope will not go away, like this is I have talking to someone who's been a lot of conversations with um Republican economic staff, and time and again they say, well, but they're just going to save it, you know, the wonky term of Riccardian equivalence, like if I give you a dollar, but you know

sometimes the government's going to take it back when you save it. Or I was talking to someone who does the like permanent income hypothesis, like I give you a dollar and I'm going to calculate the annuity value of it over the rest of my life and spend it like those are just wonderful, like theoretical models, but like those people don't exist well, I mean Riccardian equivalent people

just like there's like ten of them in the world. Um, but the you know, the permanent income hypothesis, there are people who have more money that they really do smooth it out. But there are a lot of US households that for various reasons, and there's a lot of different models kind of thinking about why this happens. They keep their spending and their income really closely tied, so it is very and a lot of them like they don't have a lot of income, right, may mean wage growth

has not been good. Like if you give them money, they will spend it. And this is something that as economists we get wrapped into this with our models. Or if you don't want to do this, you come you grab a defunct economist model and say that's the truth. But like if you just went out and grabbed ten people in front of the White House instead, if I gave you five bucks, what would you do with it?

I mean they'd say they'd spend it, Like it's not a I don't know, and and I have heard discussions about well, you know, we don't want people to go out to the store, and we don't want them to spend. And I'm like, first of all, this is why I think you should go broadly. Right, there are parts of the country right now. It's not like the just the virus isn't there yet, Like let's get ahead of this. Let people spend, and frankly, like you can do a

lot of spending sitting in your living room, right. This is I just it's like we want to talk ourselves out of doing something, which totally reminds me of like two thousand and seven, Like we knew things were going

wrong in the housing market. We knew, but we just kept saying, well, but it's okay because look at this other good data, Like we're getting such a clear early warning, like we get to watch the train coming at us Italy shut down the country, Like but we have the train coming at us and we're like, oh, it's gonna be okay, It's I'll be okay, Like, oh, get out

of the wake. Yeah, it's really amazing to see the stuff that's happening in Italy now because it's very similar to the stuff we saw happen in China in January and February, and I think back then, no one thought that democracy in the West was ever going to be able to shut down its population in the way that

China did. Um just on the notion of safety nets in the US, you mentioned this idea that the safety net just isn't quite there in the same way it is for some other developed country ease would expanding that so that safety net be a preferable option here as opposed to handouts, if you could do it, would replacement wages or expanded unemployment insurance or something like that be better than payouts. So I think there's a way to answer that question on the economics, and I think there's

a way to answer it on the politics. I I advocate for this going wide and giving everyone money, not because I think everyone needs FI Okay, I do it because I think that's something you can do the fastest, and I think it's the most politically feasible. I mean, nothing is really politically feasible right now, but it feels to me like that is because everybody gets it. Once you get into targeting unemployment insurance, food stamps, any of these are a good example, there can be this feeling

of well, I saved up. I worked hard so that when there was a tough time in my I didn't have to go get food stamps. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay for somebody else to go get food stamps when I know they were out, you know, taking their kids out to dinner before they got laid off.

So I think there's this aspect of if we make sure that everybody knows we the government is here, we're going to help all of you, then it might give some space to be like, Okay, well, now that we've helped everybody, we really do need to especially help those who get hit hard. But I think if you just targeted to the ones who really need it, the United States hesitive um a very troubling history of those people who need to help the most, we are the least

likely to give it to them. So like, I don't if you know, in a perfect world, i'd want the safety net to be better. I'd want the money, like serious amounts of money to go to the people who need it most. But I'm afraid that if we don't do something broad, if they won't get anything. When we talk to you before, the focus of our discussion was not merely the sort of theoretical how to stop a recession from happening one day. But some of the work

that you've done, what's that? What you what's called the some rule named after you, which is, Okay, the unemployment rate rises to above a certain threshold, it tends to be a good recession indicator. That's when the checks should go out again. People should listen to that episode. We're not there yet in the actual data. And as you said yourself, um, your perception of the recession risks has

massively heightened even since this time last week. So in a way, this some rule would almost be probably too slow, given how quickly this crisis is coming upon us in the stock market crash and so forth. So in light of that, what would what is the ideal? Um A, what's the well, you know, just like what is the basis or what is the best approach right now? Given the uniqueness of the situation, the severe to speed, the unexpectedness to get the cash out the door? Right, So

I think we should hit go now. Right, As you said, there's no there's no reason to wait for the unemployment rate to jump noted noticeably, so like the sombarle isn't going to trigger for months, right, we could start seeing unemployment begin to rise, but we're we're starting in a really good place, right, But unemployment rate, once it gets going,

it doesn't stop. And like again, we can see unlike two thousand eight, where we were the epicenter of the disruption, the recession, the financial crisis, we got an advanced warning like this is happening overseas, like it starts in China and Asian But you know, so like this is different because um, we don't need the unemployment rate to tell us that something bad is working its way through the global economy, right, So the thing so I wouldn't wait until the sowar triggers. I do think one of the

benefits of the recession ready volume. So that was and I had the proposal in there's several others. There's been other discussions in the past year about automatic stabilizers in a lot of circles, which is which is really heartening. So that means there is legislative text ready to go or very close, right, So it might have been being

prepared for automatic stabilizers. And frankly, a lot of this the recession ready volume, Every single one of the proposals we did was something that had been implemented in some form before, right, So that legislative text literally is sitting on the shelf somewhere, so you can just take that structure, like we thought, Like I thought really hard myself and looking at the research about, Okay, if I want to get money out to people a lot of people quickly,

what's the best way to do that? And I came down on one time payment dollars, one time check, electronic payment as opposed to doing a change, you know, the payroll tax cut. Like that was one that I looked at because that had and done in the Great Recession. So like that's a decision point of like, Okay, you want to get money out, correspons gets money out. It's like, okay, how can we do that best? And I'm like, okay, here, based on the data and the research and the evidence,

do a one time payment right. And there's like in each of the different the Unemployment Insurance Chapter had a lot of really thoughtful ideas about how to strengthen that program. I think right now, the the f maps of the federal share of funding that goes to Medicaid would be an excellent way to push out a lot of money fast. Um, So there's all these structures. I think, one, well, there's a lot of things that are unfortunate we're in the

situation we are today. Uh. Some of the things that was specifically like what I had proposed, Uh, we are the idea of doing things making automatic stabilizers. Then you can build the logistics so the one time payments they have only gone out on a discretionary basis, So it's not like unemployment insurance where we already have this program

set up. So one of the things that I have been racking my brain over is, Okay, I want to get people to everybody, how would I do that logistically so that like money could start coming out right away and that it gets It's tricky, like you can't do what you did in two thousand eight with the stimulus payments because the I R S can't there in the middle of tax season. They can't process anything on the fly. I mean, money can't go out until May, so and I would I don't want to wait until May for

people to get five. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about what you could do it this way, and you could do it that way, and um, but that's but I'm not sure anybody wants to do it at all. So, like in some options, you start losing the window if you don't move. So so let's say, okay, somehow mechanically we get that check out to every individual

UH in the country that checkout. But one of the scary things about this virus, it's a virus, it grows viral e. Right now we might have a thousand cases in the US measure probably way more net next week we could have multiples of that. We don't know how long it's going to take at all. There's for the

health response to be effective at curbing this. So is a one time check enough or would it be in this kind of situation where you don't really know the severity and the intensity and the duration of the threat something where there's like a check every month until we hit some level. Yeah, So at first I'd say, like the one time payments regardless off there once a month or once a year, like they're not going to be enough. Like a policy response has to come on multiple fronts.

So I think there's an aspect of helping households broadly, like get everybody five. There's an aspect of helping the households who get really sick um and I think you know, you know, to back up the coronavirus. This is an illness.

This is a public health emergency first and foremost. So I think one of the most important things that Congress could do, and I think they could move this a lot fashion than figure out how to get to check money in everybody's pockets is really push money to states so that they can do State and local governments know their public health uh infrastructure better than anybody in the

federal government. Give those states money, tell them. I mean the f MAP goes through Medicaid, I mean Medicaid itself because it's a public health emergency, is going to need more fun like at the state level forum as people need to claim go to the hospital and pay for the emergency care. But that's a place where you know you can get the money out for the health system.

I think a creative idea. I'm not sure. I mean this hasn't been done, but you basically take areas that have mass outbreaks and maybe of Seattle becomes this and you declared a nastural disaster relief area. So do something very akin to a hurricane hits an area and the FEMA just comes in, they bring in you know, the portable housing units. I mean, we could verywell need those for quarantines. Uh. And you know the equivalent of in

the hurricane. It's like if your house gets flattened and you need money to revite, you can make a claim and you get money from the federal government. You can make a claim. If the coronavirus flattens you financially, you can go get a claim and get help. So I think there are structures. I mean the f MAP like has been used in this way to get money to states. I think thinking hard about how you could take um

FEMA and turn that into trees as a disaster. Like to me, that's like first order is like help people not die. But you know on this like helping people not die. That one of the benefits of getting money to everyone is it is a totally sad fact in the United States, but there are individuals who do not

seek medical care because they because of the cost. So over ten percent of US adults last year said that they didn't go see a position when they were sick because they didn't think they know, because of the cost not to pay for it. Now, this is like the last thing that we would want people to do is to stay at home, you know, not go to the doctor because I don't have the money to pay for

the care. I think what's even more likely is they're going to say, well, if I go to the hospital and I test positive, they're not going to let me go to work. I need to go to work. So the United States has this aspect of like, if we don't get some extra financial support to people right now

the virus, this is going to be worse. It could be worse here, despite the fact that we have this incredible health system, and like we can save people in the United States, but no other country can when they get like really sick, but they got to go to the doctor, right And I don't know, and this thing is so infectious. So I think there's this very like difficult interplay between the health aspects and the economic aspects and just everything the way it's rolling together does not

look good. Yeah, in some ways, it's it's kind of disappointing that we're talking about physical stimulus in the form of pay out UH and tax reductions and that sort of thing when probably the first line of defense um to an economic hit pause from the coronavirus is health care policy. And now having said that, I am going to smoothly segue to asking you about monetary policy, which is probably even less important on the scale of saving

people's lives. But I mentioned the federal reserves emergency interest rate reduction. What do you think of that as one way to sort of help out with the economic hit? Uh? And we've seen a lot of stress in the markets, tightening of financial conditions, things like that. So could the right cut help with that sort of stress, even if it doesn't necessarily immediately roll into the real economy. Okay, yeah,

so I will go to the FED. I wanted like one less in your segue piece about the first response here should be through the health care system, and I just didn't want to point out, you know, last week we did have the President signed Congress and acted a eight point six billion dollar um legislation, and it was largely for health fund like to hospitals work on the virus. I think, you know, that's a good step, and that was really the first piece of legislation that came out.

Eight point six billion dollars is an insult like that is nowhere near the amount of money so I think we kind of got the idea right that that's where we need to go first. But I don't think people have really like latched onto how big this needs to be and which actually does segue very well into the FED piece. So the so the Federal reserve to do whatever it can do. You know, the FED has two primary roles that the lender of last resort. I hope we don't get there with this one, but you know

they'll be ready. Uh, and their monetary policy is there to stabilize the business cycle. So this is exactly when the economy looks like it's going south. The FED uses the tools it has to the extent it can to help shorten the reset. Shouldn't make it less severe, right, So the and and I have full faith that the FED officials are you know, will do their level best and they will be creative. Like so I'm not worried

about hitting the zero lower bound. Anyone who says, oh, we should save the ammunition so you know, we don't go And I was like, what the ammunition is here for this moment? Like fire away, um when they think it's appropriate. Right. So, but the problem is the primary transmission mechanism whether it's Federal funds rate or it's asset back purchases, and you, I mean Rose and Grand wants to purchase other assets, go for it. But at this point, all of this is going through moving down the long

term interest rate, monking around with some financial asset. It's just the interest rates are so low, Like the debt was cheap before the Fed FED cut fifty basis points, and it's cheap now. Actually it's really cheap now. I mean tenure treasure reason are so low. I mean I was joking with someone about like what's going to hit the zero lower bound first, the tenure treasuries or the Fed funds rate. I mean, it's just it's absurd. And so what's happened is the primary way that the Fed

has to support an economy in time of trouble. It's just not effective, like you so, But the upside there's a silver lining to this, is it because treasury yields are so like, it's so cheap to borrow right now, there is an incredible demand for US treasuries, which are the safest asset in the entire world, like borrow the money like this, I mean, the markets are screaming at Congress to do fiscal policy. So it's like the FED doesn't have the tools they and I mean I'm sure

they will continue to cut um. You know, they will open up. I mean, especially if it gets into any kind of need for emergency lending. Like they'll do what they can. I mean, they have some things I gotta have signed off by Treasury. Now they didn't both or UM, but like they there's no there's absolutely no way that they are enough. And they know what they've been saying for years fiscal policy. You have to help us, um,

you know. But I've gotten increasingly frustrated. I think over the weekend, I was wrote a blog post trying that was really like how can we get money out to people? And I actually it was kicking around through this money finance fiscal policy, which is actually the way the FED could in theory get money out. UM. But it's you know, derisively called like the helicopter money, and so Ben Bernik you got his nickname. I refused to call it helicopter money. UM.

But like that's a tool has never been used. I mean, it is absolutely ridiculous. But like that, it feels like somehow the most hopeful because it doesn't involve a like their potentially could be a way to do it that the FED does it totally on its own. Like we should never have a political system that is so dysfunctional that it requires an unelected body to do it is right for the country. And like this money based physical like this is just absurd, Like we shouldn't be doing that,

We shouldn't even be talking about that. But let's just re emphasized like physical policy has to happen, it cannot be the FED. I think you make a really excellent point there, because obviously we have come to rely so much on monetary policy, and that is the first thing that we heard out of the White House is not a fiscal response but sort of browbeating Jerome Powell to

cut more and cut more aggressively. Uh. And but the question that arises is how much is that because monetary policy is the best tool versus how much our political system is so broken that the only entity that we can rely on to do anything is the unelected one where the people at the FOMC don't have to answer the voters. Worth noting to you used to be an economist at the Federal Reserve for people who don't know your background. So before we go, though, UM, let's just

uh sum it up. So President Trump, maybe he's listening to the podcast, He's like, I really want to have Claudia on. We need to or into the White House to save the economy, just sort of real quickly, give us your three bullet points. This is how we prevent the coronavirus from ending the expansion. So they need to act now. They need to go big, and they need

to be creative. Like I said, all the tools are there, some of them to be able to act now and to move really quickly, there will need to be some creativity like I talked about thinking about FEMA natural disaster areas with a lot of other uh policies. You just the policies are there, you just got to do it. I think right now it seems one of the biggest hurdles is taking on debt and they just somehow that wasn't okay a few years ago, but now it's not. But I mean really like this is the time to

step up. And the only way that we are going to avoid people getting to a painful place financially and health wise is we need everybody working together, like we need the FED cutting We need Congress pushing out money to states. We need the administration supporting all of this. There are things administration can do today to boost paychecks

for workers that don't even require Congress. So there's like all these tools that are out there that we've used in recessions past, and they're just there has to be this political commitment to we're going to do it, and we're going to do it together. Claudia, thank you very much for taking the time to join us again. I know you're in high demand because everybody is talking about this urgent need for fiscal stimulus, and you're one of the people who has been writing about and fleshing out

ideas for a while now. So appreciate you coming back on the podcast and hopefully people listen to your ideas and we don't have a completely unnecessary economic disaster on top of the impending health business. I agree, Thank you,

Thanks Claudia, Tracy. I'm really glad we had Claudia back on and what she articulated in terms of the sort of sense of frustration, uh, watching policymakers act so slowly both on the health front on the economic front, wanting to go small it's like, what did we waste the last ten years arguing about if that's still where we are. Yeah, it's it's that lack of political will that always comes up, you know, even when we have discussions about modern monetary

theory and stuff like that. But I also really liked her point about the Federal Reserve and people sort of relying on the Fed to make the first move and essentially be the grown ups in the room in many ways. And you know, we are talking about an unelected body that should have a very limited mandate, but here we are right. It is it's a depressing The reliance on monetary policy, particularly in developed markets in the West, has

simultaneously been not particularly effective from a growth standpoint. We know that the recovery after the crisis was too slow. It took forever to get enough people back to work. Wage growth has been mediocre, so A, it hasn't been particularly effective, and B it does sort of indicate this rot and it's not just in the U S event. I mean, like, where are the political leaders in Europe? Where's Angela Merkel? Whereas others who are sort of looking

at the same thing. I mean, they dealt with their crisis they had the financial crisis, that they had the Euro Area crisis, and yet it's like this weird paralysis among elected leaders. So hopefully that changes, and again that we don't have to have a you know, compound the health disaster with the end of the recovery, but it

might happen with economic pain. I mean, I guess the good news and I really hesitate to call this good news, but certainly in some places, some parts of the world, like Hong Kong, where they are giving out these cash handouts a thousand dollars in Hong Kong, We're going to have some data relatively soon on whether or not that

helped at all. And Hong Kong, of course is suffering from twin shocks of the coronavirus as well as the fallout from the protest last year, so on the plus side, and I really hesitate to say that, we will get some evidence of whether or not this kind of fiscal stimulus can work well. Also in the meantime, with any luck knock on wood, you in Hong Kong are sort of coming out of the dark light at the end of this tunnel of this crisis, whereas here in the US it really has that feel of like we're just

we're just on the verge of going into it. So we will. We will look to you in Hong Kong hopefully hopefully your future is right there, and then hopefully our future is bright here as well soon thereafter. Yeah, look, I'll tell everyone when I start spending again. How about that. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe Wisantal. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart, and you should follow our

guests on Twitter. Claudia Sam She's at Claudia Underscore Some s A h M. And you should follow our producer on Twitter, Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesca Levi at Francesca Today, and check out all of our podcasts under the handle at podcast. Thanks for listening. Te