Hello, welcome to the world is falling apart edition of Slate Money,

your guide to the business and finance news of a week which seems to have lasted for a few decades at least. This has been one

hell of a week. I am Felixamin of Axios. I'm here in Brooklyn with Anna Schmanski of Breaking Views.

Hello?

I am also on the line with Emily Peck of Huffpost.

Hello?

From an undisclosed location somewhere in Westchester.

But most excitingly, I'm also here with Ben Hubbard in Beirut, Lebanon.

Hi Ben.

Hello.

You are Ben, the New York Times Bureau Chief in Beirut? Yes. And you have written a book, it is called

MBS, the Rise to Power of Muhammad bin Sal Man. And I can definitely recommend this book.

It is a fantastic book.

This man is the most important and interesting head of state in the world kind of,

definitely in the top five.

But he's come out of nowhere to seize just

astonishing amounts of power. We are going to go back to either 150 years ago or

maybe six days ago when oil prices went crazy. We are going to talk

about the coronavirus and its effects on the global economy. We're going to talk about

what on earth is it like to have to work from home for possibly months on end.

We're going to talk about all manner of stuff coming up on slate money.

So there's absolutely no way that we are going to be able to cover everything that has gone on even in the last five minutes, let alone the last week, because it has been a week of complete crazy but we should

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