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Hello and welcome to the programme.

New series Can't Avoid One Old Topic, COVID-19,

and living with ups and downs, false starts and disruptions.

As the pandemic affects everything, we can talk about anything

and still be on topic and we shall through this series.

But we thought we might start by thinking about the overall strategy. What do we do to minimize the

economic cost, the material destruction and the sense of well-being that for many goes with it?

Business, central banks, treasuries and governments are operating in a fog of

ignorance, feeling their way. So today we will stand back and think about how to approach things,

and I will be guided by experts. And to start us off, let's hear from a left-leaning economist,

Nobel Prize winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz from

Columbia University. As a former chief economist to the World Bank, he was sent to stage

during the management of a different crisis, the Asian financial crash of the late 90s

that eviscerated the economies of several countries. I spoke to him earlier this week.

There's a natural

dynamics to any economic downturn. As firms go bankrupt, as firms balance sheets get eroded,

as households, banishing sheiks get eroded, it becomes more and more difficult to recover.

And so you want to have an idea to try to maintain the economy so you don't

go down that rabbit hole. One view I have is you should be prepared for a crisis. You know,

they happen over and over again. And so if you have people in the central bank, in government, as economic advisors, who've been through

a crisis, I think that puts you in a lot better stead.

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