Laurence Boone: Is enough being done to prevent a recession?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2020
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
HARDtalk’s Stephen Sackur speaks to Laurence Boone, chief economist at the global economic forum, the OECD. Leaders around the world have adopted the language of war to capture the scale of the threat posed by coronavirus. But are they deploying the right weaponry, not just to protect public health, but to prevent a worldwide economic depression? Will we get the dramatic, coordinated, emergency intervention needed to stave off economic disaster?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:07.0 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:11.5 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. COVID-19, coronavirus, |
| 0:18.8 | doesn't just pose a threat to individual lives across the world. It threatens to profoundly |
| 0:24.8 | disrupt the global economic system and plunge us all into a prolonged economic depression. |
| 0:32.1 | The speed at which economic damage is being done is staggering. The travel, leisure and entertainment industries have been |
| 0:38.5 | brought to their knees. Economic activity is slumped from China to Europe to the US. Financial markets |
| 0:45.4 | have plummeted much further than they did after the financial crash of 2008. Unless governments |
| 0:52.3 | around the world come up with dramatic, coordinated intervention now, |
| 0:57.3 | worldwide recession looks inevitable, a prolonged slump, a disturbing possibility. My guest in Paris |
| 1:04.8 | is the chief economist of the OECD and former economic advisor to the former French president, Francois Alonde. |
| 1:13.6 | Well, Laurence Boone in Paris, welcome to hard talk. |
| 1:17.7 | Thank you. |
| 1:18.2 | Thanks for the invitation. |
| 1:19.6 | Well, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. |
| 1:21.7 | Of course, you are in Paris. |
| 1:23.8 | Your own president, President Macron, talks about a war, his country and the world being |
| 1:30.8 | engaged in a war against coronavirus. Do you see that actions are matching the words when it comes |
| 1:38.3 | to trying to safeguard the world economy? Well, there are actually three fronts on which we have to fight this battle. |
| 1:46.6 | One is health and the other is economics and financial and social. On health, I think there |
| 1:53.7 | could be more cooperation with the WHO, because at the moment, whether it's about data collection, |
| 2:03.8 | provision of supplies, equipment, and testing, then there seems to be a little lack of coordination. On economic and finance, |
... |
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