Welcome to Business Weekly
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2020
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The most compelling reports and interviews from the BBC's business programmes over the past week, examining the huge issues facing policymakers and asking what the future holds for our working lives. This week we ask a big moral question - will the deliberate shutting down of economies in an effort to slow Covid-19 kill more than the virus itself? Or as some have predicted will a recession actually save lives? We have a report from Brazil where conflicting messaging has sown confusion and fear. And we'll hear from small business owners, musicians and even horticulturalists. Presented by Lucy Burton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, if a week is a long time in politics, a day is a long time in business at the moment, |
| 0:06.1 | and it can be exhausting trying to keep up with all the latest developments. |
| 0:10.1 | That's why we've interrupted your Business Daily pod feed to bring you Business Weekly, |
| 0:14.4 | a new weekend program which brings you an hour of the most interesting, inspiring, |
| 0:19.8 | and thought-provoking stories you might have missed |
| 0:21.7 | from the BBC's business team. |
| 0:28.3 | Hello and a big welcome to Business Weekly with me, Lucy Burton. We've got lots of stories |
| 0:33.9 | to bring you this hour, including a report from Brazil, where conflicting COVID messaging has sent confusion and fear. |
| 0:41.2 | As ever, we'll be looking at how the virus is affecting life and work, hearing from small business owners, musicians and even horticulturalists. |
| 0:49.4 | First, though, we're going to take a closer look at a question that's being asked as the world enters |
| 0:54.3 | what feels like week 100 of COVID-19 lockdown. That is, what if the cure is actually worse than the |
| 1:01.7 | disease? We know that the decision to hibernate the global economy will bring a deep recession, |
| 1:06.8 | even a depression. In fact, we heard on Wednesday that US GDP has fallen 1.2% on the previous |
| 1:13.2 | three months. That's the first contraction in six years. Later in the week, figures confirm that |
| 1:19.0 | Italy and France have entered recession, and that could be more harmful than the virus itself. |
| 1:24.6 | On the other hand, some evidence suggests death rates are down in China compared with last |
| 1:30.2 | year, with lower pollution-related deaths and fewer accidents outweighing the COVID fatalities. It's |
| 1:36.9 | something that my colleague Ed Butler has been looking at in some detail, and I asked him |
| 1:41.0 | what prompted him to look at this rather awkward problem. |
| 1:49.3 | Well, I suppose, Lucy, because there's a couple of trends or strands that everybody seems to be talking out right now, they centre really on this kind of very theoretical question of the cost |
| 1:55.7 | benefit analysis that everybody, really, everybody, policy makers, economists, epidemiologists, everyone is making |
| 2:02.1 | right now around us imposing these lockdowns or stay-at-home orders. Donald Trump, of course, |
... |
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