Our CEO and founder is one of the live guests at BBC: Business Matters that talked about the cruise ship travel warnings, Italy’s Coronavirus, Wells Fargo, US politics, and sports.
BBC Notes:
The US State Department has told US citizens not to travel on cruise ships. We will look at how the industry has been left reeling from these latest government instructions.
Italy meanwhile remains on lockdown as the country attempts to stop the spread of coronavirus gripping it currently.
Wells Fargo, the bank that went bad, promises to Congress that it has turned the corner.
We look at whether we – or Congress – can take its new chief executive at his word. We ask who will help out companies when coronavirus hits supply chains harder, from Kerstin Braun, President of Stenn Group, an international provider of trade finance.
We talk about all this live with guests Yumiko Murakami from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Tokyo, and Tony Nash, CEO and Founder of Complete Intelligence, a contextual artificial intelligence platform in Houston, Texas.
Show Notes:
Do you think this is the way that all countries (same as Italy) will have to go? Could it happen in the States?
It could, but I don’t think it will. Part of the problem in Italy is almost 25% of Italians are over the age of 65. If you look at the mortality rate, for those over 80 years old, it’s about 15% and for those over 70 is 8%. The biggest risk is in older populations. With Italy being the oldest country in Europe.
The people who are affected by it are largely older people and they are not working-age population and not consumption cohorts of the economy. Anybody under 60 years old, there’s a less than a 0.5% chance of fatality. It’s just not bearing out in the direct economy. But we are seeing concerns for older people, justifiably, we should be. But does it necessarily require the shut down of the economy? I’m not so sure.
Do you think he’s got what it takes to take on Trump?
I think it’s gonna be hard to beat Joe Biden at this point. But it’s gonna be an uphill battle for him with Trump because Trump is already taken him on in social media and speeches, and I’m not sure Joe Biden has the ability to respond to Trump in a debate, etc. in a way that Americans expect.
The populism way of 2016 is not really over in the US yet and Biden cannot grasp that. There was an issue with him in a factory him cursing a factory worker that upset a lot of people.
Do you think if the Coronavirus continues at this rate, and tips the economy into recession, does that make the President more vulnerable?
I think it can. That’s 6 months away, anything is possible in 6 months in politics. If the US is the only one affected or affected worse, then sure, it will make Trump vulnerable. But if the US is kinda similarly affected to other places, I think it’s hard to blame him. I’m not exactly sure how Biden will take that in November. They may just blame China.
It’s very hard for Biden to play the common man message. If you’re talking about the economic dislocation (1% vs the 99%), Joe Biden has been carried in the womb of government health care plans for the last 60 years or something. Most Americans are very resentful at public sector workers because they have a very good insurance plan. It will be very hard for Joe Biden to play the populist in that role. I just don’t see a scenario that Biden looks better than Trump in that scenario.
If you really want to drive a clear wedge between the Republicans and Democrats, Sanders would have been a very clear alternative to Trump. But you can’t really say that Biden, at least from the kinda rich guy getting his kids job, it’s really hard to say that Biden’s really much that different.
Listen to the podcast on BBC: Business Matters.