Adam Tooze/Shockwave

TALKING POLITICS

Catherine Carr

News, News & Politics

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David and Helen talk to Adam Tooze about what we know about the crisis that we didn't know a month ago, and what we still don't have much of a clue about. From fights inside the French government to the fate of the planet, from shale gas to corona bonds, we try to join up the dots. Plus a small update recorded after news of the oil price-drop. Read 'Shockwave' by Adam Tooze in the LRB https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n08/adam-tooze/shockwave.

Talking Points:

The dominant reality is the scale of the unemployment rate, especially in the U.S.

Michigan’s unemployment rate soared to 25% in a single month.
We have often seen an extraordinary policy response.

The Fed’s initial policy response was a failure: they didn’t stabilize share and bond markets. But it has now, at least in part, succeeded.

It also seems to have stabilized dollar funding markets.
The Fed did in about 3 days what took roughly a year in ‘07/’08.
Will these actions make democratic politics more difficult in the medium term?

The Fed’s ability to act in certain ways has depended on congressional cooperation.

This could change if Biden were elected. Trump’s presidency enables the GOP to behave more pragmatically.
The shale industry is being bailed out—this is a tricky issue for the Democratic party.

Is data the new oil?

The tensions between Russia and Saudi crashed into the virus.
It’s hard to see how oil prices will recover any time soon.
Are we entering the oil endgame? If so, seizing market share immediately is much more important.
The oil and the financial elements of this crisis are closely connected.

Has anyone moved the dial on corona bonds?

The Germans didn’t want the question to be put, but the French went ahead and did it.
But Macron’s recent interview with the Financial Times was vague. How serious are they?
How does the Eurozone engage in common borrowing without engaging in common taxation?

Mentioned in this Episode:

Further Learning:

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, my name is David Runseman and this is Talking Politics. Another extra episode for this week.
0:11.0	A chance to catch up with Adam Tuz and Helen Thompson and to get their latest thoughts on the economic
0:18.0	and financial consequences of this crisis.
0:23.0	Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books,
0:27.0	Europe's leading magazine of culture and ideas. Improve the quality of your solitude with a subscription to the LRB.
0:35.0	They'll send you exceptional analysis of the politics, economics, sociology and science behind the crisis and reportage from around the world.
0:46.0	But also, gloriously unrelated, richly immersive distraction from the world's best authors and critics,
0:53.0	writing about history and philosophy, art and technology, fiction and poetry.
0:58.0	Just go to lrb.me-torg and get your first 12 issues for just 12 pounds. That's lrb.me-torg.
1:11.0	The conversation that you're about to hear was recorded on Monday at 1pm, London time, 8am, New York time, where Adam is.
1:22.0	We were about to publish it this evening, Monday evening and we've just discovered that the oil price or other oil futures price has collapsed.
1:31.0	Helen, just give us a snapshot of what has actually happened since we spoke at lunchtime.
1:37.0	What has happened is that the West Texas, in the media, oil price for delivery in May has crashed to, I think it settled at minus $37 a barrel.
1:50.0	I think at one point it was minus $40 a barrel. It's near incomprehensible that a oil futures contract could go into negative territory.
2:04.0	It certainly never ever happened before. It should be said that this doesn't mean that oil prices have collapsed, so that oil which is sold through the Brent exchanges still has a price of around about the mid-20s dollars of our own.
2:23.0	But people who hold those contracts are paying people to take oil off their hands.
2:28.0	Well, they're trying to. I think the conclusion we have to draw is that they're not succeeding.
2:34.0	They can't find those people. We're going to let you hear the conversation that we recorded just a few hours ago.
2:40.0	Then we'll come back briefly at the end with Helen to try and make sense of what this oil price collapse means.
2:47.0	Adam Tews is a regular contributor to the Lunderville books and we like to speak to LRB writers whenever we can.
2:55.0	Today's episode is pegged to Adam's article Shockwave on the pandemic's consequences for the world economy and it is a definitive account of what's going on.
3:06.0	So Adam, it was to my amazement now that I look at it a month ago that we spoke in the really early days of this pandemic and economic fallout from it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Catherine Carr, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Catherine Carr and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.