Coronavirus Pushback: Big Money Says No to Trump, Tells Him Not to ‘Reopen’ the Economy Yet
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When the moneyed elite who would normally align with Trump on just about everything to plump their bottom line tell him to knock off the nonsense, you know they are worried about catastrophe.
It started when Trump started whining about the economy during yesterday’s campaign rally coronavirus task force update:
“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” Trump said during a briefing at the White House. “America will, again, and soon, be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. Lot sooner. We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
Um, no, Donald:
“You may get a [market] bounce on the headline,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial Inc., told The Washington Post‘s Tory Newmyer. “Or the market could down even more if the community of investors and traders believe this is the opposite of what is needed. Above all else it will be the empirical data that suggests the virus is receding.” …
“What the world, and the market, needs to see is that number stop going up,” [Adam Sarhan, CEO of investment firm 50 Park Investments] said. “Think of it as a trade: What’s the risk of reopening early?” Sarhan said. “The risk is the number of cases continues to skyrocket, and longer term, you’re just digging a much deeper hole.”
Pershing Square Capital’s Bill Ackman tweeted this just hours before Trump’s latest outburst:
The virus can’t survive without a host. With a coordinated national shutdown for all but essential services, manufacturing, retail, etc for 30 days, the virus is largely obliterated. When the economy reopens, we test widely so that we can quarantine outbreaks when they reappear.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) March 23, 2020
Scott Gottlieb, physician and former FDA director, himself weighed in on Twitter:
There’s a strong and understandable desire to return to better times and a functioning economy. But it should not be lost on anyone that there’s no such thing as a functioning economy and society so long as covid-19 continues to spread uncontrolled in our biggest cities.
So long as covid-19 spreads uncontrolled, older people will die in historic numbers, middle aged folks doomed to prolonged ICU stays to fight for their lives, hospitals will be overwhelmed, and most Americans terrified to leave homes, eat out, take the subway, or go to the park.
You can read the entire thread here.
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