Money Talks: Joblessness in May
Money Talks from The Economist
The Economist
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2020
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
American unemployment fell in May, but is this really a sign of a "rocket-ship" recovery? Also, Gene Sperling, a former director of the National Economic Council, lays out his vision for a more equitable society. And, thriving on secrecy—the private fund behind well-known brands. Simon Long hosts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Job numbers in America show positive signs, but is there a danger some people will be left behind? |
| 0:10.0 | Hello, you're listening to Money Talks on Economist Radio, our weekly podcast on the markets, |
| 0:17.0 | the economy and the world of business. I'm Simon Long, an editor here at The Economist. Coming up on today's show, a former director of America's |
| 0:26.3 | National Economic Council asks whether economic dignity could cut through partisan politics and pave the way to a fairer recovery. |
| 0:36.0 | Shouldn't we be able to construct an economy where these basic human values that are universal could be afforded to all who are doing their share. |
| 0:47.0 | And the huge German business you've never heard of that thrives on it seriously. |
| 0:52.0 | There's no photograph of any member of the Riemann family available. |
| 0:58.0 | I mean, I looked everywhere and on their website, of course, there's nothing. First, the pandemic has brought business to a halt and led to fears that the American |
| 1:18.5 | economy might not easily bounce back. The National Bureau of Economic Research has already declared the |
| 1:25.2 | economy in recession, but positive signs are emerging. The index for the tech-dominated |
| 1:32.0 | NASDAQ exchange has reached a record level, |
| 1:35.0 | and the S&P 500 index crawled its way above the opening year level, |
| 1:40.0 | despite having collapsed in March. |
| 1:42.0 | And the country's latest employment figures showed that more Americans were in work in May than in April. |
| 1:48.0 | Donald Trump hailed this as showing America was already embarked on a recovery. |
| 1:53.0 | Better, he said, than a V-shaped one, more of a rocket ship. |
| 1:57.0 | Well, is there anything in that? |
| 2:00.0 | Most economists of the US economy had expected unemployment to come in at around 20%. |
| 2:07.0 | Callum Williams is a senior economics writer for the economist. |
| 2:10.0 | Obviously very high, the highest figures really since the Great Depression and then when you see the figure of around 13% come in it's no surprise that people were |
| 2:19.4 | Rushing to explain what happened and why were expectations so low to start with? Well if you |
| 2:24.8 | looked at some of the so-called real-time economic data, so data that's often |
... |
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