September 21, 2023 • 35 mins
We discuss why Americans are pessimistic on the economy despite a drop in inflation. We also dig into Moderna and vaccines, climate change's relationship with farming, and being black in America. Claudia Sahm, Justin Fox, Lara Williams, and Lisa Jarvis join. Lisa Mateo hosts.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Lisa Matteo. This week a
conversation with Lisa Jarvis about Moderna's tough road ahead, Claudia
Sam with a look at why so many Americans are
downbeat about the economy, and insight into what the future
holds for the farming industry with Laura Williams. But first,
Justin Fox joins us with a look into the homicide
(00:36):
rate of Black Americans. The title of your opinion piece,
where It's most Dangerous to Be Black in America, That
itself is eye catching, but the stat that you give
right off the top really hits home. I'm going to
say it for you. Black Americans make up thirteen point
six percent of the US population in twenty twenty two
and fifty four point one percent of the victims of
murder and homicide. Now you check with data from the
(00:59):
CDC explains what this works out to as far as
homicide rate, for Black Americans and just the scope.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Of it, I mean, the homicide rate for Black Americans
in twenty twenty two. And this data isn't totally completely
final yet, but I've been checking it for a while
and it isn't changing much. And this is all on
the CDC's online Wonder database that anybody can look into,
although it takes a while to get up to speed
(01:26):
on it, which I did sadly early in the pandemic. Anyway,
the homicide rate for Black Americans last year was about
thirty per one hundred thousand people. For everybody else in
the country it was about four and four is still
pretty high by the standards of like other rich countries
(01:47):
in Europe and East Asia and such. I mean, in Japan,
it's just zero point two per hundred thousand, but it's
you know, thirty per hundred thousand is similar to even
higher than in places like Brazil, Colombia, Mexico that are
kind of known as being very, very violent. And it's
also a lot higher than the rate was before the pandemic,
(02:08):
and especially around twenty fifteen twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Right, and you mentioned when the homicide rady goes up,
black Americans suffer disproportionately.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, Like when you look at the increase in homicides,
especially from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty. I mean, as
we've said, a little over half of all homicide victims
in the US are black, but the increase was about
sixty five percent Black Americans, So it's clear that, Yeah,
when there's a wave of violence, it's it's Black Americans
(02:40):
who suffer the most. And when that wave recedes, as
this one is now doing, it's you know, down a
bit in the CDC data for last year, and in
crime statistics from New York, Los Angeles everywhere else, it's
down a lot so far this year too, So at
least that news is good. But wow, it went up
a lot, especially during the pandemic, but there'd also been
(03:02):
something of a rise in a couple of years before then.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
All Right, and you mentioned when the racial definitions have
changed recently, you talk about that as more government agencies
classify Americans as multiracial. So how does this change things
when you were going through the article.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I mean, it doesn't change it much. It just makes
it a pain because basically, in all the data from
twenty eighteen and earlier, the CDC uses the old racial definitions,
which are basically sort of are you mostly black, are
you mostly white? Whatever? With the twenty twenty census, and
(03:38):
they started doing before then, they're much more open to no,
I'm multiple, I'm lots of things, which I think in
a lot of ways is great and very healthy development
for our country. But it's a pain when you're trying
to look at developments in long run statistics by race.
It doesn't make that big a difference on a national
level in these numbers. The more recent statistics, who were
(03:59):
for people who identify as Black or African American only,
but you know in the census and all the people
who identify themselves as more than one race are sort
of in this no man's land. It couldn't get great
per capita statistics on them. With some of the cities
I looked at, it made a difference, but not enough
to really change the trajectory in a big way.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, and that's what I want to get to. Some
of those numbers. So the black homicide rates far lower
in some parts of the country than in other parts.
And you really broke down that twenty twenty two rates
for the country's most populous metro areas. So talk about
who topped the list, who came out at the bottom.
What did you find out?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
This is among the thirty largest metro areas. And the
kind of interesting thing with the CDC data is you
can basically ask it to give really detailed stuff like
how many people were murdered in some small county in
Texas in twenty thirteen, and for that it won't tell
you because it basically won't disclose data if they're fewer
(04:54):
than ten people involved, because the idea is that that
would make it possible, and it doesn't really with murder,
it doesn't really matter, but with other causes of death,
it would invade people's privacy. It's really helpful to do
big groups. The CDCED used to publish a lot of
this data by metropolitan area. You could just click I
want everything sorted by metropolitinaria. For some reason, they don't
(05:16):
do that anymore. But you can go in and pick
all the counties in a metropolitan area and ask it
to combine all of which is a long excuse for
why I only did thirty metropolitan areas rather than anymore. Anyway,
So these thirty biggest metropolitan areas, the worst is Saint Louis,
which is a bunch of counties in both Missouri and
(05:37):
across the river in Illinois, and Baltimore is not far behind.
And then the best are basically New York, San Diego,
and best of all, Boston. And that's for overall homicide
right now.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Did anything surprise you about the results that came out
from that?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I mean, this kind of started. I wrote a piece
a year ago looking at CDC data just to it
was sort of at the moment when crime in New
York was really top of mind and lots of people
around the world seem in the country seemed to think
New York was just such a dangerous place. And I
looked at homicides, it's not bad in New York. You
(06:13):
throw in accident data in New York is like one
of the safest places in the country. So that didn't
surprise me. But it's still kind of funny to see
it down at the bottom here. It kind of remarkable
how low Boston is. I mean, it's not that surprising
when you think about it, but it's like another big
step lower than in New York or it's only two
(06:34):
per hundred thousand overall, and the nationwide for everybody is
something like five point seven five point eight, so it's
a lot lower in Boston. In New York, it's three
point seven per hundred thousand. Saint Louis, the overall homicide
rate is fifteen point seven per hundred thousand, But then
you break it down by race, and it's just it's
(06:57):
an even bigger gap in some cases.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that gap. And you also
found some regional patterns to this data too.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I mean, the worst places, at least in this thirty
biggest metro area list in both the worstplaces in overall
homicide rates are pretty much all kind of rust Belt
or russ I guess Baltimore is not officially in the
rust Belt, but it kind of feels like it. And
you know, Saint Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and then Atlanta's
pretty high too. When you break it down, what you
(07:27):
get is really this these old Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia
stand out, and then this bizarre newcomer Portland, Oregon, which
wouldn't have been high on this list at all five
years ago but is just awfully high now. It's more
dangerous to be black in Portland last year than in
(07:50):
Detroit or Baltimore or Chicago.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Let's talk about those incidents of police violence that go
viral a spark protests. We've seen it. They can tend
to be followed by local increased is in violent crime.
So talk more about how this affects those homicide rates.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Obviously, police violence, I mean sometimes it's inevitable. A lot
of times it's not. People have lots of reasons to
protest against it and be mad about it and try
to fix it. At the same time, it's you know,
black people killed by police officers. It's around two hundred
and fifty a year as opposed to more than thirteen
(08:27):
thousand black victims of homicide overall. And it's so it's
pretty clear that, you know, if the focus is that
black lives matter, and it should be that it's getting
down crime rates is the most important thing. And having
effective policing, which generally means police departments that aren't abusing
(08:51):
their citizens, but at the same time means police departments
that are arresting people and fighting crime, is really important
to save people's.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Now, justin I think it's important to note that you
did all of this intense, intense research for this story,
and you are not black. What motivated you to take
this on?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I mean, the initial thing is just as as mentioned,
I got familiar with these CDC databases early in the
pandemic and was like looking at all the things that
were more or less likely to kill you than COVID.
And one of the things that starts coming out when
you're looking at younger people is that you know, it's
mostly not diseases did kill young people. It's accidents, it's suicides,
(09:32):
it's homicides. And then you start storing it by race
and especially by gender, and like it's for black young men,
it's homicide is the number one cause of death most
of the time. It might not be in twenty twenty
two for the awful reason that the opioid epidemic is
sort of moved from rural areas where that are mostly white,
into cities. And so I mean that's the initial thing.
(09:56):
It's just this is this thing that I don't think
it's enough attention. And then I I do think it
was this frustration with especially the mainstream media coverage of
police violence and the black Lives Matter movement that I
just think has underplayed this sort of underlying reality that
the biggest threat to young men's black lives is not police,
(10:18):
it's violence in their own communities, and police can make
that better, can make that worse. But it's just it
just feels like the focus of the discussion has been
way too much in one place. And I think it's
mainly because the mainstream media is full of white journalists
like me who feel uncomfortable writing about these things. So
I don't know, I mean, I don't have good answers.
(10:39):
Here are good explanations of why this problem persists, but
it does seem really important to note that it was
much better a few years ago, and it's much better
in some cities than others. This is not some inevitable thing.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist justin Fox. Coming up, we'll speak with
columnist Lisa Jarvist about moderna and vaccine development. This is
Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion Podcast Contest Saturdays at
one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Lisa Matteo. Let's bring
an opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis to get her thoughts on
where Moderna stands among the competition as it expands into
other infectious diseases. Moderna has had a tough road ahead
of it. That's the feel from this opinion piece that
you put together. Now, you mentioned that the company's biggest
challenge has shifted from proving that it's mrina vaccines and
(11:48):
products work to convincing the world that they offer something
better than what's out there. I mean, how tough is
that a sell?
Speaker 6 (11:55):
I think it's definitely a tougher sell than when they
had this captive market which just you know, a vac
seen from them and from Advisor, and everyone was feeling
very motivated to take it. But the products that they
have coming up next, and you know, I'll to say
it's impressive. They have four things that are likely to
be on the market by twenty twenty five. You know,
if we're talking about a different biotech company, that might
(12:17):
feel really impressive. But all of those things already have
existing products and so so far, what they've shown is
what they can offer is something that's about the same
as what's already out there. So they'll have an RSV vaccine,
a flu vaccine, a vaccine that combines covid and flu,
you know, to note that is novel, and then they'll
(12:39):
have a next generation covid vaccine. So you know, RSV
and flu are really competitive markets. And so the question is,
you know, are they offering something better? Are the side
effects worse for their vaccine? You know, how do they
convince people that they should choose their mRNA vaccine over
you know what already? You know we're all familiar with.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Right and you spoke with Maderna's CEO. I mean, does
he like the progress that he's seeing?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
He definitely does. And you know, I think what they're
trying to pitch to investors right now is that they're
really transforming, you know, and you know that they have
a very full pipeline and that they're not going to
be just a one product company. In fact, they have
a platform that is delivering. Each of their phase threes
has been successful, so I have to give them credit
(13:25):
for that. And they are going to be active in
three areas infectious diseases, cancer, and then rare diseases, which
you know that's a little further in the distance when
we'll start to see products coming out of that. So,
you know, I think he's basically trying to convince everyone
to be patient to you know, that it's going to
cost them some money to get these things to market,
(13:46):
you know. I think just the question is, you know,
how they adjust to a different reality than they faced
during COVID when it comes to marketing their products and
showing that they have something that is better.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Now, let's get in to that money. So as MODERNA
moves into other infectious diseases that you were just talking about,
it's facing a lot of competition, right, and they've been
putting a lot of money into late stage clinical studies.
Can the payoff of its transformation justify the cost?
Speaker 6 (14:13):
That really is the key question that they need to answer.
I mean they think yes, obviously, I think they're going
to be putting They said twenty five billion dollars in
R and D between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty eight.
That that puts them in the same league, just below
Gilead Sciences, which obviously has been around for a lot
longer and has a lot more successful products on the market.
(14:35):
And so you know, I think what they need to
prove is that they can be the kind of marketing
powerhouse that they're going to need to be to get
these products out there and convince people that they're worthwhile.
You know, that there really is going to be demand
for say, a vaccine that combines covid and flu. To me,
that's the most unique thing that they've got going for them.
And then I think last is their cancer vaccine that
(14:59):
could be potentially be on the market by twenty twenty five.
There's a lot of excitement around that. The you know,
kind of other issue they have is that right now,
it's very expensive to make these products, and so they
need to get down you know, that cost so that yeah,
that even if they are making you know a lot
of money off of these vaccines, that you know, there's
actually a profit there.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
All right, Let's get to the funding, because it really
depends on the continuing sales of the vaccine. I mean,
is is the demand strong enough for the vaccine.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
They have no choice but to rely on Americans wanting
Americans and people around the world wanting to roll up
their sleeves for this new booster that you know, has
recently become available. This updated shot to XBB. You know,
we know that last year only seventeen percent of people
in the US opted to get that that shot, and
(15:50):
so I think their hope is this is the first
year that we're in a actual commercial market. They're the
ones who are trying to get out there and get
the word out that they've got this vaccine. It's not
the government that's providing it. So it's going to be
interesting to see what happens. I think there's some skepticism that,
you know, their projections for how many people are willing
(16:12):
to get their shot, you know, will be matched with
the reality of some of the hesitancy that's out there
around you know, whether people feel like they need a
COVID vaccine or not.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Okay, now you mentioned some of these, but let's kind
of break it down a little bit talk about the
other vaccines in development. Let's start with Moderna's RSV vaccine.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Yeah, so that vaccine, you know, it's a good product.
It's a year behind. This is their problem. It's a
year behind vaccines that recently became available from Pfizer and
Glaxo Smith Cleent. So you know, I think, you know,
they need to play catch up. What they're trying to
sell is being differentiated is that they're offering the vaccine
in a pre loaded pen, so the other two products
(16:52):
come into vile and the pharmacist has to mix it.
And they're arguing like, well, in a busy pharmacy environment
where we know everybody you know is experiencing shortages of
you know, healthcare workers, having this pre loaded pen is
going to be attractive. Their flu vaccine, you know, had
been struggling a little bit. They came out this was
(17:12):
the other big news. They came out with you know,
good phase three data on that last week. The question is,
you know, the side effect profile. All of us who've
gotten a COVID shop you know, an mRNA shot know
that the side effects can be a little rough. You know,
Will people decide that something that's as good as what's
there is enough? And I think what they need to
(17:33):
prove is that what they have is something better like that,
you know, it does better, performs better than the other
flu vaccines that are out there right now, we only
have antibody data on that, but having some actual like
outcomes data, you know, do people do more people live?
You know, do fewer people get the flu? Or have
a severe case that would be really helpful for them.
And then they have this vaccine that they're working on
(17:55):
where they're going to combine covid in the flu. That
vaccine incorporates a next generation covid vaccine they've been working
on that they hope, well, they'll be able to give
people a smaller dose of and it'll work better than
what we have now. So you know, again, I think
the question is what does demand look like in a
year or two or three years, because we don't really
(18:15):
know how the pandemic or you know, the kind of
virus will start to you know, affect people if in
coming years. So those are their main products. And then,
as I mentioned, this cancer vaccine is the other one
that everyone's really excited about.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, and what about those ambitions? I mean, what does
the CEO say it's going to take to get FDA approval?
Speaker 6 (18:35):
This has been the question on investors' mind. I mean
so many people have been just clamoring for information. When
are they going to file for approval? I think they
had really good data that came out on this cancer
vaccine showing that it could reduce the risk of skin
cancer as certain kind of skin cancer from returning or
from people dying by forty four percent, you know, and
(18:57):
so a lot of investors think, well, that should be
enough for you to file for approval. The CEO, you know,
says three things need to happen, you know. One, they
have to start a phase retrial, which they've done, you know. Two,
they are going to have some data later this year
that will kind of show over a longer time horizon
whether those numbers hold up or if maybe they even
(19:18):
get a little better in terms of how well that
vaccine performs. And then three, these are highly personalized products.
They take, They use of patient's own tumor cells to
create the vaccine, and so that's very complicated from a
manufacturing perspective, and they're trying to get all of that
in place because I do think legitimately his pushback on
(19:39):
filing for approval now is like, well, we could do that,
but we couldn't actually treat everybody who's going to want
the product.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Right, And the company recently said it's well on the
way to becoming a big biotech contender. What's your take.
Speaker 6 (19:51):
If they can move their technology a little beyond where
COVID was. I mean, they showed that mRNA works, if
they can show works as a therapeutic, if this cancer vaccine,
you know, continues to progress in the way we'd like
to see it progress and help people. That will you know,
certainly show that it's not just like as good as
the existing technology that's out there, and that it could
(20:13):
be really transformative. But you know, they've got some work
on that. We have to be patient and see what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis there. The Federal Reserve was
in focus this week when FED Chair J Powell held
rates unchanged but signaled they'll be higher for longer.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
We're prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and we
intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we're
confident that inflation is moving down sustainably toward our objective.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
In addition to bringing down inflation, he clearly laid out
the Fed's objective.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
Soft lending is a primary objective, and I did not
say otherwise.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
I mean, that's that's what we've been trying to achieve.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Powell's had success in bringing down inflation this year, and
the stock markets had a strong twenty twenty three, but
many Americans are downbeat about the economy. Economist Claudia sam
joins us to explain why inflation rates falling back toward
more normal levels. We have the labor market, it's strong.
It sounds like a good reason to be optimistic about
(21:12):
the economy, right, But you're saying Americans are still gloomy.
This is what you put in your opinion piece. Now,
how bad is sentiment? Put it into perspective for us?
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Well, first of all, it is absolutely appropriate and understandable
that people are gloomy.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Inflation is high. Yes, the labor market is good, but
inflation has been high and it's been high too long.
So then the question is in some of the measures
that we normally use to gauge overall sentiment across all
people across the country, these have been really low, like
lower than you would historically have happened, even if you
take inflation into account. Right, So this isn't saying people
(21:48):
are overreacting to inflation. It's just saying their reaction to inflation.
And then there's more And what's particularly notable about this,
I mean these are these sentiment go back to the
nineteen four eight right, So this is a long period
of time to watch how people. Their views about the
economy change over time. And what's notable and what I
write about is the fact that this gap, this unexpected
(22:12):
gloom extra gloom, it showed up about the same time
the pandemic did. So we've had this for multiple years
now and we haven't made up that lost ground.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Now. Dig into these consumer confidence surveys that we hear about.
What do they ask people.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
There's a few different surveys, and they ask you know,
the questions very a little bit, but in general they're
asking people, how are you doing? Often the survey that
I look at comes out of the University of Michigan's
it's like, how are you doing relative to a year ago?
Is it a good time to go buy? And then
forward looking questions, how are your finances going to do
in the next year, get better, get worse? And then
(22:49):
how do you think more the economy as a whole,
how businesses are going to do in the next year,
the next five years. So it's it's a wide range
of views about the economy and and not surprisingly, every
single one of these measures plummeted in the COVID recession.
That's what they do in recessions. What has happened is
though they have recovered as economic conditions have improved, Inflation
(23:12):
is coming down, the labor market has been good, there's
still this gap and it's one that going back decades
and decades, we don't we don't see this right. And
so that's where it raises the question of and And
to me, what's important as an when I do my
work as an economist is not to say, oh, well
you people cheer up. It's to figure out, well, what
(23:34):
is I havep heer to do that that you try
to here out what are people trying to tell us?
Because when you have a pattern that's so at odds
with what you've seen in the past, there's a reason
there are lots of different possible explanations. So I don't
pretend that I know the answer. And yet I know,
having worked with these data for well over a decade
(23:54):
at the Federal Reserve, these can be very useful in
helping us gauge the economy.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
All right, so let's dig into why this sentiment has
really failed to rebound. Now, you say, the less talked
about but more likely explanation is COVID.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
The timing, first of all, is somewhat obvious on some level.
But when I say COVID, it's it's not just the
virus itself, people who passed away from the virus to
have long COVID. It's also thinking about the way our
daily life was upended, the way our institutions changed. And
at this point it's it's you know, no one wants
(24:31):
to remember back to March of twenty twenty, we shut
the US economy down. We sent everyone home. To a
large extent, that was a huge change in people's lives
and a huge change in how in their livelihoods. And
one thing that I argue in the is that you know,
we're just now seeing the you know, the supply chains
(24:54):
start to get back on track, right like, And these
were also very disrupted in twenty twenty we are in
twenty twenty three, but they're just kind of get people
take a long time to get back on track too, right.
So the idea that we still have something that we're
holding with us, even if it's not on our mind
every day, that's really impacted our lives, to me, that's
(25:15):
a very plausible explanation that we're just carrying along extra
effects of the pandemic. And there were some places in
the same survey where we like income expectations, I mean
not in this main measure that showed some after effects
of the Great Recession for a few years and then
it popped back up. So this big events can have
(25:37):
effects like this. Of course, it's hard to prove that
definitively right.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And then there's also politics can play a role in this.
I mean, we're coming up on an election year.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
One of the fascinating and maybe not surprising aspects in
the survey they have for some time now, not all
the way back, but for some time ask people about
their political affiliation, and what you can see in the
data are these views about the economy, owned finances future.
(26:08):
They are very much tied with is the is your
party in the White House? And then when you'll see
this big divide right now, you know Democrats are much
more upbeat about you know, they have much higher sentiment
than Republicans, but under President Trump that was reversed and
(26:28):
in the last two election cycles, these are big gaps
now for the overall sentiment. That's what I'm looking at,
and I argue why this is unlikely to be an
explanation is they're about the same size and magnitude. They're
just flipping around and the split in the population is
pretty similar. So it's unlikely to tell us why we
(26:50):
have this extra gap. Now, it is informative in thinking
about how divergent the views are that we have at
any one point in time about the economy.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Right and then on top of that, we have negative
economic news story the things people here, you know, as
they're listening and watching TV and doing all that. What
seems that actually seems to be reversing a little bit,
but it still has an impact.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Correct the survey, and I think this is really helpful.
You can do a lot of let's measure the media,
let's put it on some kind of positive negative scale,
and yet you don't really like what are people listening to?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
Like that That's where what kind of gets in gets
in the head. So the survey ask people about the economy,
what economic news have you heard lately? And they will
is this positive? Is this negative? They ask about specifically
what is this and it again, just like with sentiment overall,
(27:46):
we would expect it to be negative, you know, more
negative than before COVID, just because inflation is high and
there are problems in the economy that weren't with us
before COVID, but the news media, this balance between positive
news and negative news has rebounded more. It's not back
(28:06):
to before COVID levels, and it's also moved a lot
more with the economic conditions. So it's a little harder
to gauge with this one. But when you look at
these responses from households about what they're hearing, it doesn't
line up in the same way as when you ask
them what do you think about the economy in terms
of the gloominess. So there could be a piece of it,
(28:27):
but it's not. It's not that it noted like, there's
not a sign of a clear bias in what people
say they have heard. That's setting aside what's out there
in the news.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Got it now? Based on all that we've talked about,
Is the data still useful?
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Yes, we have to There are many relationships that in
terms of the economy, in terms of the kind of
data that economists look to, that have broken down in
this pandemic. So sentiment does not stand out in that regard.
I there is an argument that has been made that's like, well,
(29:04):
if you look, you know, we ask people and they're
very gloomy, But if you look at consumers, they're spending,
they're out there, and we should just look at their behavior,
and you know, who knows why they're saying what they're saying.
I disagree with that. I think, you know, again, people
can tell us something that the regular data can't, and
we don't have complete data on what they're spending and
(29:24):
all of that. So I think there's an important trying
to figure out what people are telling us. And it
has been the case in the past, and this is
difficult given the break in the series or how the
data has been acting. But the sentiment data in the
past have been helpful in seeing a little bit around
the corner in terms of a recession coming or a contraction,
so potentially we can still get some signs from that.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Claudia Sam thanks for joining us. Coming up why most
corn grown doesn't end up on our plates. Bloomberg's Laura
Williams has a look into farming's climate friendly future. And
don't forget We're available at It's a podcast on Apple,
Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Count us Saturdays
at one and seven pm. Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Lisa Matteo. What lies
ahead for the future of farming Bloomberg Opinions. Lara Williams
joined in to talk about a problem with our global
food systems. Lara, thank you for joining me. You start
off your Bloomberg Opinion piece about farming's climate friendly future
by really setting the scene. Now, you say how our
global food systems have become incredibly dysfunctional. What exactly do
(30:52):
you mean by that?
Speaker 4 (30:53):
So what I mean is that's loads of really healthy produce.
Is that saying diverted away from people plates? So if
you imagine a big American corn field, I naively thought
that lots of that food would end up on people's plates,
but actually thirty nine percent ends up being fed to livestock,
thirty seven percent is used to produce ethanol for fuel,
(31:17):
fourteen percent is exported, and then it's just ten percent
of the porn which is eaten. And then half of
that is a sweetener, so like highst corn syrup. So
that's not a healthy way of eating. And it's also
so this isn't this isn't working for us. More than
eight hundred and twenty million people lack sufficient food. Unhealthy
(31:38):
diets now pose a greater risk of morbidity and mortality
than unsafe sets, alcohol, dread, and tobacco used combined. So
it's not good for human health, but it's also not
good for the for the planet. Food production contributes about
a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. It's the way
that we use pesticides and fertilizer and change the use
(31:59):
of the lands of facilitated tatastrophic declines and biodiversity. It
really draws on fresh water, like use the seventy percent
of the fresh waters available worldwide. And you know, as
the global population grows, it just at the moment seems
like it's only going to get worse.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So let's dig into this new study was published in
the scientific journal plast Climate. Now, this looks into several
elements that can combine to help reduce emissions, diet shift,
waste reduction, those are really a big focus of this.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, exactly, And so I think the important thing to
take away from this is the study was really about
how to pull all the levers. We have to create
something that works much better. And actually, you know, food
production is one of the only industries where we get
to negative emission, so it's drawing down more carbon dioxide
than it's emitting into the atmosphere, and that's a that
(32:50):
could be a really really powerful thing moving forward, and
you know, helping offset other polluting industries and kind of
you know, cleaning up the mess that we made up there.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Okay, there's the importance also production efficiency and technology to.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Yeah, so basically if you take a look at the
non tech interventions, and that's so that sunds like adopting
a healthier flexitarian diet where you eat mainly plant based
foods and you can have still a little meat and
reducing food waste. That actually half global food emissions. But
that'll be a massive progress. But it can't actually tat
(33:26):
used to net zero because if we're producing food, we're
producing emissions at the moment. So if we improve production
efficiency and so that is reducing the gap between what
agricultural areas can deliver and what's produced. If we close
that adapt all our fields are as productive as they
can be. Then also use these novel technologies, and so
(33:46):
that can be things like you know, helping reduce emissions.
Further By, there's food additives you can give to cows
to stop them burpinged up methane. There's also technology to
use to help farmland absorb AMOSPHERICIO two. And if you
use all four of these things together, you can reach
negative emissions. But the trick is the second to using
(34:10):
those novel technologies will really help us take it to
the negative and net zero zone.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Easier said than done. What challenges still exist for this?
Speaker 4 (34:18):
One important factor is that lots of these novel technologies
are novel, they're really new, and so there's lots of
knowledge aapps we need to address. We need to know
about how much these things are doing a cost, We
need to know if they work at the huge scale
that they'll need to. There's also obviously going to be
you know, challenges in actually even you know, convincing Pete
enough people to adopt more flagetarian diet, because there's lots
(34:40):
of personal and cultural reasons behind diet choices people make.
There's challenges in every kind of zone, which is why
we kind of need to use each of the four
kind of methods to remove carbon from the food production,
because we'll get the match benefits without putting all our
edits in one bastiff.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Bloomberg Opinion, Lara Williams, there does it. For this week's Opinion,
we're produced by Eric Molow. Stay with us. Today's top
stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Lisa Matteo. This week a
conversation with Lisa Jarvis about Moderna's tough road ahead, Claudia
Sam with a look at why so many Americans are
downbeat about the economy, and insight into what the future
holds for the farming industry with Laura Williams. But first,
Justin Fox joins us with a look into the homicide
(00:36):
rate of Black Americans. The title of your opinion piece,
where It's most Dangerous to Be Black in America, That
itself is eye catching, but the stat that you give
right off the top really hits home. I'm going to
say it for you. Black Americans make up thirteen point
six percent of the US population in twenty twenty two
and fifty four point one percent of the victims of
murder and homicide. Now you check with data from the
(00:59):
CDC explains what this works out to as far as
homicide rate, for Black Americans and just the scope.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Of it, I mean, the homicide rate for Black Americans
in twenty twenty two. And this data isn't totally completely
final yet, but I've been checking it for a while
and it isn't changing much. And this is all on
the CDC's online Wonder database that anybody can look into,
although it takes a while to get up to speed
(01:26):
on it, which I did sadly early in the pandemic. Anyway,
the homicide rate for Black Americans last year was about
thirty per one hundred thousand people. For everybody else in
the country it was about four and four is still
pretty high by the standards of like other rich countries
(01:47):
in Europe and East Asia and such. I mean, in Japan,
it's just zero point two per hundred thousand, but it's
you know, thirty per hundred thousand is similar to even
higher than in places like Brazil, Colombia, Mexico that are
kind of known as being very, very violent. And it's
also a lot higher than the rate was before the pandemic,
(02:08):
and especially around twenty fifteen twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Right, and you mentioned when the homicide rady goes up,
black Americans suffer disproportionately.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, Like when you look at the increase in homicides,
especially from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty. I mean, as
we've said, a little over half of all homicide victims
in the US are black, but the increase was about
sixty five percent Black Americans, So it's clear that, Yeah,
when there's a wave of violence, it's it's Black Americans
(02:40):
who suffer the most. And when that wave recedes, as
this one is now doing, it's you know, down a
bit in the CDC data for last year, and in
crime statistics from New York, Los Angeles everywhere else, it's
down a lot so far this year too, So at
least that news is good. But wow, it went up
a lot, especially during the pandemic, but there'd also been
(03:02):
something of a rise in a couple of years before then.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
All Right, and you mentioned when the racial definitions have
changed recently, you talk about that as more government agencies
classify Americans as multiracial. So how does this change things
when you were going through the article.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I mean, it doesn't change it much. It just makes
it a pain because basically, in all the data from
twenty eighteen and earlier, the CDC uses the old racial definitions,
which are basically sort of are you mostly black, are
you mostly white? Whatever? With the twenty twenty census, and
(03:38):
they started doing before then, they're much more open to no,
I'm multiple, I'm lots of things, which I think in
a lot of ways is great and very healthy development
for our country. But it's a pain when you're trying
to look at developments in long run statistics by race.
It doesn't make that big a difference on a national
level in these numbers. The more recent statistics, who were
(03:59):
for people who identify as Black or African American only,
but you know in the census and all the people
who identify themselves as more than one race are sort
of in this no man's land. It couldn't get great
per capita statistics on them. With some of the cities
I looked at, it made a difference, but not enough
to really change the trajectory in a big way.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, and that's what I want to get to. Some
of those numbers. So the black homicide rates far lower
in some parts of the country than in other parts.
And you really broke down that twenty twenty two rates
for the country's most populous metro areas. So talk about
who topped the list, who came out at the bottom.
What did you find out?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
This is among the thirty largest metro areas. And the
kind of interesting thing with the CDC data is you
can basically ask it to give really detailed stuff like
how many people were murdered in some small county in
Texas in twenty thirteen, and for that it won't tell
you because it basically won't disclose data if they're fewer
(04:54):
than ten people involved, because the idea is that that
would make it possible, and it doesn't really with murder,
it doesn't really matter, but with other causes of death,
it would invade people's privacy. It's really helpful to do
big groups. The CDCED used to publish a lot of
this data by metropolitan area. You could just click I
want everything sorted by metropolitinaria. For some reason, they don't
(05:16):
do that anymore. But you can go in and pick
all the counties in a metropolitan area and ask it
to combine all of which is a long excuse for
why I only did thirty metropolitan areas rather than anymore. Anyway,
So these thirty biggest metropolitan areas, the worst is Saint Louis,
which is a bunch of counties in both Missouri and
(05:37):
across the river in Illinois, and Baltimore is not far behind.
And then the best are basically New York, San Diego,
and best of all, Boston. And that's for overall homicide
right now.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Did anything surprise you about the results that came out
from that?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I mean, this kind of started. I wrote a piece
a year ago looking at CDC data just to it
was sort of at the moment when crime in New
York was really top of mind and lots of people
around the world seem in the country seemed to think
New York was just such a dangerous place. And I
looked at homicides, it's not bad in New York. You
(06:13):
throw in accident data in New York is like one
of the safest places in the country. So that didn't
surprise me. But it's still kind of funny to see
it down at the bottom here. It kind of remarkable
how low Boston is. I mean, it's not that surprising
when you think about it, but it's like another big
step lower than in New York or it's only two
(06:34):
per hundred thousand overall, and the nationwide for everybody is
something like five point seven five point eight, so it's
a lot lower in Boston. In New York, it's three
point seven per hundred thousand. Saint Louis, the overall homicide
rate is fifteen point seven per hundred thousand, But then
you break it down by race, and it's just it's
(06:57):
an even bigger gap in some cases.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that gap. And you also
found some regional patterns to this data too.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I mean, the worst places, at least in this thirty
biggest metro area list in both the worstplaces in overall
homicide rates are pretty much all kind of rust Belt
or russ I guess Baltimore is not officially in the
rust Belt, but it kind of feels like it. And
you know, Saint Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and then Atlanta's
pretty high too. When you break it down, what you
(07:27):
get is really this these old Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia
stand out, and then this bizarre newcomer Portland, Oregon, which
wouldn't have been high on this list at all five
years ago but is just awfully high now. It's more
dangerous to be black in Portland last year than in
(07:50):
Detroit or Baltimore or Chicago.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Let's talk about those incidents of police violence that go
viral a spark protests. We've seen it. They can tend
to be followed by local increased is in violent crime.
So talk more about how this affects those homicide rates.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Obviously, police violence, I mean sometimes it's inevitable. A lot
of times it's not. People have lots of reasons to
protest against it and be mad about it and try
to fix it. At the same time, it's you know,
black people killed by police officers. It's around two hundred
and fifty a year as opposed to more than thirteen
(08:27):
thousand black victims of homicide overall. And it's so it's
pretty clear that, you know, if the focus is that
black lives matter, and it should be that it's getting
down crime rates is the most important thing. And having
effective policing, which generally means police departments that aren't abusing
(08:51):
their citizens, but at the same time means police departments
that are arresting people and fighting crime, is really important
to save people's.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Now, justin I think it's important to note that you
did all of this intense, intense research for this story,
and you are not black. What motivated you to take
this on?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I mean, the initial thing is just as as mentioned,
I got familiar with these CDC databases early in the
pandemic and was like looking at all the things that
were more or less likely to kill you than COVID.
And one of the things that starts coming out when
you're looking at younger people is that you know, it's
mostly not diseases did kill young people. It's accidents, it's suicides,
(09:32):
it's homicides. And then you start storing it by race
and especially by gender, and like it's for black young men,
it's homicide is the number one cause of death most
of the time. It might not be in twenty twenty
two for the awful reason that the opioid epidemic is
sort of moved from rural areas where that are mostly white,
into cities. And so I mean that's the initial thing.
(09:56):
It's just this is this thing that I don't think
it's enough attention. And then I I do think it
was this frustration with especially the mainstream media coverage of
police violence and the black Lives Matter movement that I
just think has underplayed this sort of underlying reality that
the biggest threat to young men's black lives is not police,
(10:18):
it's violence in their own communities, and police can make
that better, can make that worse. But it's just it
just feels like the focus of the discussion has been
way too much in one place. And I think it's
mainly because the mainstream media is full of white journalists
like me who feel uncomfortable writing about these things. So
I don't know, I mean, I don't have good answers.
(10:39):
Here are good explanations of why this problem persists, but
it does seem really important to note that it was
much better a few years ago, and it's much better
in some cities than others. This is not some inevitable thing.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist justin Fox. Coming up, we'll speak with
columnist Lisa Jarvist about moderna and vaccine development. This is
Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion Podcast Contest Saturdays at
one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Lisa Matteo. Let's bring
an opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis to get her thoughts on
where Moderna stands among the competition as it expands into
other infectious diseases. Moderna has had a tough road ahead
of it. That's the feel from this opinion piece that
you put together. Now, you mentioned that the company's biggest
challenge has shifted from proving that it's mrina vaccines and
(11:48):
products work to convincing the world that they offer something
better than what's out there. I mean, how tough is
that a sell?
Speaker 6 (11:55):
I think it's definitely a tougher sell than when they
had this captive market which just you know, a vac
seen from them and from Advisor, and everyone was feeling
very motivated to take it. But the products that they
have coming up next, and you know, I'll to say
it's impressive. They have four things that are likely to
be on the market by twenty twenty five. You know,
if we're talking about a different biotech company, that might
(12:17):
feel really impressive. But all of those things already have
existing products and so so far, what they've shown is
what they can offer is something that's about the same
as what's already out there. So they'll have an RSV vaccine,
a flu vaccine, a vaccine that combines covid and flu,
you know, to note that is novel, and then they'll
(12:39):
have a next generation covid vaccine. So you know, RSV
and flu are really competitive markets. And so the question is,
you know, are they offering something better? Are the side
effects worse for their vaccine? You know, how do they
convince people that they should choose their mRNA vaccine over
you know what already? You know we're all familiar with.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Right and you spoke with Maderna's CEO. I mean, does
he like the progress that he's seeing?
Speaker 6 (13:05):
He definitely does. And you know, I think what they're
trying to pitch to investors right now is that they're
really transforming, you know, and you know that they have
a very full pipeline and that they're not going to
be just a one product company. In fact, they have
a platform that is delivering. Each of their phase threes
has been successful, so I have to give them credit
(13:25):
for that. And they are going to be active in
three areas infectious diseases, cancer, and then rare diseases, which
you know that's a little further in the distance when
we'll start to see products coming out of that. So,
you know, I think he's basically trying to convince everyone
to be patient to you know, that it's going to
cost them some money to get these things to market,
(13:46):
you know. I think just the question is, you know,
how they adjust to a different reality than they faced
during COVID when it comes to marketing their products and
showing that they have something that is better.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Now, let's get in to that money. So as MODERNA
moves into other infectious diseases that you were just talking about,
it's facing a lot of competition, right, and they've been
putting a lot of money into late stage clinical studies.
Can the payoff of its transformation justify the cost?
Speaker 6 (14:13):
That really is the key question that they need to answer.
I mean they think yes, obviously, I think they're going
to be putting They said twenty five billion dollars in
R and D between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty eight.
That that puts them in the same league, just below
Gilead Sciences, which obviously has been around for a lot
longer and has a lot more successful products on the market.
(14:35):
And so you know, I think what they need to
prove is that they can be the kind of marketing
powerhouse that they're going to need to be to get
these products out there and convince people that they're worthwhile.
You know, that there really is going to be demand
for say, a vaccine that combines covid and flu. To me,
that's the most unique thing that they've got going for them.
And then I think last is their cancer vaccine that
(14:59):
could be potentially be on the market by twenty twenty five.
There's a lot of excitement around that. The you know,
kind of other issue they have is that right now,
it's very expensive to make these products, and so they
need to get down you know, that cost so that yeah,
that even if they are making you know a lot
of money off of these vaccines, that you know, there's
actually a profit there.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
All right, Let's get to the funding, because it really
depends on the continuing sales of the vaccine. I mean,
is is the demand strong enough for the vaccine.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
They have no choice but to rely on Americans wanting
Americans and people around the world wanting to roll up
their sleeves for this new booster that you know, has
recently become available. This updated shot to XBB. You know,
we know that last year only seventeen percent of people
in the US opted to get that that shot, and
(15:50):
so I think their hope is this is the first
year that we're in a actual commercial market. They're the
ones who are trying to get out there and get
the word out that they've got this vaccine. It's not
the government that's providing it. So it's going to be
interesting to see what happens. I think there's some skepticism that,
you know, their projections for how many people are willing
(16:12):
to get their shot, you know, will be matched with
the reality of some of the hesitancy that's out there
around you know, whether people feel like they need a
COVID vaccine or not.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Okay, now you mentioned some of these, but let's kind
of break it down a little bit talk about the
other vaccines in development. Let's start with Moderna's RSV vaccine.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
Yeah, so that vaccine, you know, it's a good product.
It's a year behind. This is their problem. It's a
year behind vaccines that recently became available from Pfizer and
Glaxo Smith Cleent. So you know, I think, you know,
they need to play catch up. What they're trying to
sell is being differentiated is that they're offering the vaccine
in a pre loaded pen, so the other two products
(16:52):
come into vile and the pharmacist has to mix it.
And they're arguing like, well, in a busy pharmacy environment
where we know everybody you know is experiencing shortages of
you know, healthcare workers, having this pre loaded pen is
going to be attractive. Their flu vaccine, you know, had
been struggling a little bit. They came out this was
(17:12):
the other big news. They came out with you know,
good phase three data on that last week. The question is,
you know, the side effect profile. All of us who've
gotten a COVID shop you know, an mRNA shot know
that the side effects can be a little rough. You know,
Will people decide that something that's as good as what's
there is enough? And I think what they need to
(17:33):
prove is that what they have is something better like that,
you know, it does better, performs better than the other
flu vaccines that are out there right now, we only
have antibody data on that, but having some actual like
outcomes data, you know, do people do more people live?
You know, do fewer people get the flu? Or have
a severe case that would be really helpful for them.
And then they have this vaccine that they're working on
(17:55):
where they're going to combine covid in the flu. That
vaccine incorporates a next generation covid vaccine they've been working
on that they hope, well, they'll be able to give
people a smaller dose of and it'll work better than
what we have now. So you know, again, I think
the question is what does demand look like in a
year or two or three years, because we don't really
(18:15):
know how the pandemic or you know, the kind of
virus will start to you know, affect people if in
coming years. So those are their main products. And then,
as I mentioned, this cancer vaccine is the other one
that everyone's really excited about.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, and what about those ambitions? I mean, what does
the CEO say it's going to take to get FDA approval?
Speaker 6 (18:35):
This has been the question on investors' mind. I mean
so many people have been just clamoring for information. When
are they going to file for approval? I think they
had really good data that came out on this cancer
vaccine showing that it could reduce the risk of skin
cancer as certain kind of skin cancer from returning or
from people dying by forty four percent, you know, and
(18:57):
so a lot of investors think, well, that should be
enough for you to file for approval. The CEO, you know,
says three things need to happen, you know. One, they
have to start a phase retrial, which they've done, you know. Two,
they are going to have some data later this year
that will kind of show over a longer time horizon
whether those numbers hold up or if maybe they even
(19:18):
get a little better in terms of how well that
vaccine performs. And then three, these are highly personalized products.
They take, They use of patient's own tumor cells to
create the vaccine, and so that's very complicated from a
manufacturing perspective, and they're trying to get all of that
in place because I do think legitimately his pushback on
(19:39):
filing for approval now is like, well, we could do that,
but we couldn't actually treat everybody who's going to want
the product.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Right, And the company recently said it's well on the
way to becoming a big biotech contender. What's your take.
Speaker 6 (19:51):
If they can move their technology a little beyond where
COVID was. I mean, they showed that mRNA works, if
they can show works as a therapeutic, if this cancer vaccine,
you know, continues to progress in the way we'd like
to see it progress and help people. That will you know,
certainly show that it's not just like as good as
the existing technology that's out there, and that it could
(20:13):
be really transformative. But you know, they've got some work
on that. We have to be patient and see what happened.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis there. The Federal Reserve was
in focus this week when FED Chair J Powell held
rates unchanged but signaled they'll be higher for longer.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
We're prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and we
intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we're
confident that inflation is moving down sustainably toward our objective.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
In addition to bringing down inflation, he clearly laid out
the Fed's objective.
Speaker 5 (20:45):
Soft lending is a primary objective, and I did not
say otherwise.
Speaker 6 (20:49):
I mean, that's that's what we've been trying to achieve.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Powell's had success in bringing down inflation this year, and
the stock markets had a strong twenty twenty three, but
many Americans are downbeat about the economy. Economist Claudia sam
joins us to explain why inflation rates falling back toward
more normal levels. We have the labor market, it's strong.
It sounds like a good reason to be optimistic about
(21:12):
the economy, right, But you're saying Americans are still gloomy.
This is what you put in your opinion piece. Now,
how bad is sentiment? Put it into perspective for us?
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Well, first of all, it is absolutely appropriate and understandable
that people are gloomy.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Inflation is high. Yes, the labor market is good, but
inflation has been high and it's been high too long.
So then the question is in some of the measures
that we normally use to gauge overall sentiment across all
people across the country, these have been really low, like
lower than you would historically have happened, even if you
take inflation into account. Right, So this isn't saying people
(21:48):
are overreacting to inflation. It's just saying their reaction to inflation.
And then there's more And what's particularly notable about this,
I mean these are these sentiment go back to the
nineteen four eight right, So this is a long period
of time to watch how people. Their views about the
economy change over time. And what's notable and what I
write about is the fact that this gap, this unexpected
(22:12):
gloom extra gloom, it showed up about the same time
the pandemic did. So we've had this for multiple years
now and we haven't made up that lost ground.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Now. Dig into these consumer confidence surveys that we hear about.
What do they ask people.
Speaker 5 (22:27):
There's a few different surveys, and they ask you know,
the questions very a little bit, but in general they're
asking people, how are you doing? Often the survey that
I look at comes out of the University of Michigan's
it's like, how are you doing relative to a year ago?
Is it a good time to go buy? And then
forward looking questions, how are your finances going to do
in the next year, get better, get worse? And then
(22:49):
how do you think more the economy as a whole,
how businesses are going to do in the next year,
the next five years. So it's it's a wide range
of views about the economy and and not surprisingly, every
single one of these measures plummeted in the COVID recession.
That's what they do in recessions. What has happened is
though they have recovered as economic conditions have improved, Inflation
(23:12):
is coming down, the labor market has been good, there's
still this gap and it's one that going back decades
and decades, we don't we don't see this right. And
so that's where it raises the question of and And
to me, what's important as an when I do my
work as an economist is not to say, oh, well
you people cheer up. It's to figure out, well, what
(23:34):
is I havep heer to do that that you try
to here out what are people trying to tell us?
Because when you have a pattern that's so at odds
with what you've seen in the past, there's a reason
there are lots of different possible explanations. So I don't
pretend that I know the answer. And yet I know,
having worked with these data for well over a decade
(23:54):
at the Federal Reserve, these can be very useful in
helping us gauge the economy.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
All right, so let's dig into why this sentiment has
really failed to rebound. Now, you say, the less talked
about but more likely explanation is COVID.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
The timing, first of all, is somewhat obvious on some level.
But when I say COVID, it's it's not just the
virus itself, people who passed away from the virus to
have long COVID. It's also thinking about the way our
daily life was upended, the way our institutions changed. And
at this point it's it's you know, no one wants
(24:31):
to remember back to March of twenty twenty, we shut
the US economy down. We sent everyone home. To a
large extent, that was a huge change in people's lives
and a huge change in how in their livelihoods. And
one thing that I argue in the is that you know,
we're just now seeing the you know, the supply chains
(24:54):
start to get back on track, right like, And these
were also very disrupted in twenty twenty we are in
twenty twenty three, but they're just kind of get people
take a long time to get back on track too, right.
So the idea that we still have something that we're
holding with us, even if it's not on our mind
every day, that's really impacted our lives, to me, that's
(25:15):
a very plausible explanation that we're just carrying along extra
effects of the pandemic. And there were some places in
the same survey where we like income expectations, I mean
not in this main measure that showed some after effects
of the Great Recession for a few years and then
it popped back up. So this big events can have
(25:37):
effects like this. Of course, it's hard to prove that
definitively right.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And then there's also politics can play a role in this.
I mean, we're coming up on an election year.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
One of the fascinating and maybe not surprising aspects in
the survey they have for some time now, not all
the way back, but for some time ask people about
their political affiliation, and what you can see in the
data are these views about the economy, owned finances future.
(26:08):
They are very much tied with is the is your
party in the White House? And then when you'll see
this big divide right now, you know Democrats are much
more upbeat about you know, they have much higher sentiment
than Republicans, but under President Trump that was reversed and
(26:28):
in the last two election cycles, these are big gaps
now for the overall sentiment. That's what I'm looking at,
and I argue why this is unlikely to be an
explanation is they're about the same size and magnitude. They're
just flipping around and the split in the population is
pretty similar. So it's unlikely to tell us why we
(26:50):
have this extra gap. Now, it is informative in thinking
about how divergent the views are that we have at
any one point in time about the economy.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Right and then on top of that, we have negative
economic news story the things people here, you know, as
they're listening and watching TV and doing all that. What
seems that actually seems to be reversing a little bit,
but it still has an impact.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Correct the survey, and I think this is really helpful.
You can do a lot of let's measure the media,
let's put it on some kind of positive negative scale,
and yet you don't really like what are people listening to?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Right?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
Like that That's where what kind of gets in gets
in the head. So the survey ask people about the economy,
what economic news have you heard lately? And they will
is this positive? Is this negative? They ask about specifically
what is this and it again, just like with sentiment overall,
(27:46):
we would expect it to be negative, you know, more
negative than before COVID, just because inflation is high and
there are problems in the economy that weren't with us
before COVID, but the news media, this balance between positive
news and negative news has rebounded more. It's not back
(28:06):
to before COVID levels, and it's also moved a lot
more with the economic conditions. So it's a little harder
to gauge with this one. But when you look at
these responses from households about what they're hearing, it doesn't
line up in the same way as when you ask
them what do you think about the economy in terms
of the gloominess. So there could be a piece of it,
(28:27):
but it's not. It's not that it noted like, there's
not a sign of a clear bias in what people
say they have heard. That's setting aside what's out there
in the news.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Got it now? Based on all that we've talked about,
Is the data still useful?
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Yes, we have to There are many relationships that in
terms of the economy, in terms of the kind of
data that economists look to, that have broken down in
this pandemic. So sentiment does not stand out in that regard.
I there is an argument that has been made that's like, well,
(29:04):
if you look, you know, we ask people and they're
very gloomy, But if you look at consumers, they're spending,
they're out there, and we should just look at their behavior,
and you know, who knows why they're saying what they're saying.
I disagree with that. I think, you know, again, people
can tell us something that the regular data can't, and
we don't have complete data on what they're spending and
(29:24):
all of that. So I think there's an important trying
to figure out what people are telling us. And it
has been the case in the past, and this is
difficult given the break in the series or how the
data has been acting. But the sentiment data in the
past have been helpful in seeing a little bit around
the corner in terms of a recession coming or a contraction,
so potentially we can still get some signs from that.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Claudia Sam thanks for joining us. Coming up why most
corn grown doesn't end up on our plates. Bloomberg's Laura
Williams has a look into farming's climate friendly future. And
don't forget We're available at It's a podcast on Apple,
Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Count us Saturdays
at one and seven pm. Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Lisa Matteo. What lies
ahead for the future of farming Bloomberg Opinions. Lara Williams
joined in to talk about a problem with our global
food systems. Lara, thank you for joining me. You start
off your Bloomberg Opinion piece about farming's climate friendly future
by really setting the scene. Now, you say how our
global food systems have become incredibly dysfunctional. What exactly do
(30:52):
you mean by that?
Speaker 4 (30:53):
So what I mean is that's loads of really healthy produce.
Is that saying diverted away from people plates? So if
you imagine a big American corn field, I naively thought
that lots of that food would end up on people's plates,
but actually thirty nine percent ends up being fed to livestock,
thirty seven percent is used to produce ethanol for fuel,
(31:17):
fourteen percent is exported, and then it's just ten percent
of the porn which is eaten. And then half of
that is a sweetener, so like highst corn syrup. So
that's not a healthy way of eating. And it's also
so this isn't this isn't working for us. More than
eight hundred and twenty million people lack sufficient food. Unhealthy
(31:38):
diets now pose a greater risk of morbidity and mortality
than unsafe sets, alcohol, dread, and tobacco used combined. So
it's not good for human health, but it's also not
good for the for the planet. Food production contributes about
a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. It's the way
that we use pesticides and fertilizer and change the use
(31:59):
of the lands of facilitated tatastrophic declines and biodiversity. It
really draws on fresh water, like use the seventy percent
of the fresh waters available worldwide. And you know, as
the global population grows, it just at the moment seems
like it's only going to get worse.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
So let's dig into this new study was published in
the scientific journal plast Climate. Now, this looks into several
elements that can combine to help reduce emissions, diet shift,
waste reduction, those are really a big focus of this.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, exactly, And so I think the important thing to
take away from this is the study was really about
how to pull all the levers. We have to create
something that works much better. And actually, you know, food
production is one of the only industries where we get
to negative emission, so it's drawing down more carbon dioxide
than it's emitting into the atmosphere, and that's a that
(32:50):
could be a really really powerful thing moving forward, and
you know, helping offset other polluting industries and kind of
you know, cleaning up the mess that we made up there.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Okay, there's the importance also production efficiency and technology to.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
Yeah, so basically if you take a look at the
non tech interventions, and that's so that sunds like adopting
a healthier flexitarian diet where you eat mainly plant based
foods and you can have still a little meat and
reducing food waste. That actually half global food emissions. But
that'll be a massive progress. But it can't actually tat
(33:26):
used to net zero because if we're producing food, we're
producing emissions at the moment. So if we improve production
efficiency and so that is reducing the gap between what
agricultural areas can deliver and what's produced. If we close
that adapt all our fields are as productive as they
can be. Then also use these novel technologies, and so
(33:46):
that can be things like you know, helping reduce emissions.
Further By, there's food additives you can give to cows
to stop them burpinged up methane. There's also technology to
use to help farmland absorb AMOSPHERICIO two. And if you
use all four of these things together, you can reach
negative emissions. But the trick is the second to using
(34:10):
those novel technologies will really help us take it to
the negative and net zero zone.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Easier said than done. What challenges still exist for this?
Speaker 4 (34:18):
One important factor is that lots of these novel technologies
are novel, they're really new, and so there's lots of
knowledge aapps we need to address. We need to know
about how much these things are doing a cost, We
need to know if they work at the huge scale
that they'll need to. There's also obviously going to be
you know, challenges in actually even you know, convincing Pete
enough people to adopt more flagetarian diet, because there's lots
(34:40):
of personal and cultural reasons behind diet choices people make.
There's challenges in every kind of zone, which is why
we kind of need to use each of the four
kind of methods to remove carbon from the food production,
because we'll get the match benefits without putting all our
edits in one bastiff.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Bloomberg Opinion, Lara Williams, there does it. For this week's Opinion,
we're produced by Eric Molow. Stay with us. Today's top
stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.
Host
Vonnie Quinn
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