Pierre Lassonde, legendary billionaire investor, philanthropist and company builder: “Eric, it is quite unbelievable what’s happening. Think of the world we live in with negative interest rates, the Coronavirus and the lockdown of America and other countries, and trillions of dollars being printed. It’s not like one black swan, it’s like 100 of them all at once.
Think about the oil business being completely devastated, and when you add the coronavirus on top of that, there’s another black swan. And with negative interest rates, where are retirees going to get their income from? I’ve been on this earth for 73 years and I’ve never seen anything like this before. But that is what black swans are all about. It’s not that they are unpredictable, they are out there, but when they show up that is when you can finally see the enormous damage they cause.
I think the market is way too optimistic in terms of getting out of this. The damage being done to small- and medium-sized businesses, which accounts for 70-75% of all jobs, is devastating and they are going to suffer the most. Eric, I have talked to people in the airline industry and they can see thousands of planes parked. The problem is that the plane is the tip of the iceberg of the entire economy. If the planes are not flying, there are no hotels booked, so there are no cars being rented, there are no restaurant reservations, and on and on, and you are not going to put 4,000 planes back up in the air tomorrow morning. Are you really that anxious to get on a plane with a bunch of people and breathe the same air for 8 hours? This will ripple through the whole chain, and we still don’t have a solution to this issue…
Arts and culture is also being devastated, Eric. All of the revenues have collapsed to zero. So 200 people in one pocket doing live performances are gone. And those jobs may be gone forever. That’s what the economists are missing.
Job Losses Will Become Even More Devastating
And this war on Covid-19 will have a much more lasting impact. War is the mother of necessity and it speeds up the adoption of technology and the adoption of technology has been fierce, especially when you look at companies like Netflix. But these companies that have all of these jobs will look at their workforces and cut jobs because 20% of the people do 80% of the work. So job losses will become even more devastating. People have no idea how bad this depression is right now and what the future really holds.
Look at groceries being delivered. When this is over, will people go back to grocery stores? A great many will not. So this is changing the world. There is not a prayer in hell that things are going back to normal. The damage is so deep and will last way longer than anybody thinks. So then you start to think, well, what will people do this summer? They have already been laid off for a month of two, so will they take a holiday? Probably not. So restaurants cannot survive this. Can they survive without customers for a year?
- Source, King World News, read more here
