“Many people come on this program throwing mud at the ‘V-shaped’ recovery forecast without realizing that it’s the throwing mud part that’s the consensus view”, Bloomberg Television’s Jonathan Ferro said, during a truly fantastic 60-second-long, mini-rant on Thursday morning.
“The consensus view is that nobody really thinks we’re going to get a ‘V-shaped’ recovery”, he added.
Ferro’s monologues over the course of the crisis have been punctuated by some of the most forthright commentary of any on-air personality from any network, bar none. Consider, for example, his message from the moment the April jobs report hit:
Obviously, it’s all scripted, but Ferro certainly comes across as deeply sincere, and to the extent he writes part of his own script, he’s done a truly admirable job of driving home how tragic the last several weeks have been for tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans – not to mention the tens of thousands of newly deceased.
During his closing remarks on Thursday, Ferro implored those bickering inside the Beltway to ignore a stock market which, arguably, is even more detached from the economy (and thereby Main Street) than usual.
“My message to those of you saying ‘Look at the market’ is ‘Don’t let the market fool you. Netflix is not up 35% because people believe in a ‘V-shaped’ recovery”, Ferro chided. “Banks are down 45% this year precisely because so many people don’t”.
“So if you’re in Washington using the market as a guide as to what to do next…”, a visibly incredulous Ferro continued, shaking his head in disbelief, “…look at the labor market instead”.
He proceeded to cite Thursday’s claims data, which showed another 2.98 million people filing for unemployment benefits, bringing the total to 36.5 million over the past eight weeks.
Then, Ferro brought it all home.
“If you’re looking for five tech stocks to break down before you do more in Washington, I think you’re probably doing it quite wrong”, Ferro said, flatly.
He was, of course, referring to the fact that five stocks now comprise more than 20% of the market, a level of concentration that surpasses even the tech bubble.
That visual suggests the S&P 500 no longer represents corporate America, let alone the broader economy.
Ferro closed things out: “From New York City this morning, good morning. This is Bloomberg”.
Full clip
Thank you for this post.
Ferro may be the best financial news commentator and host since Mark Haynes
Spot on.
Ferro is excellent. I have appreciated his “Real Yield” program over the years, because there is otherwise so little Fixed Income commentary on the mainstream financial media outlets.
Found this interesting:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/13/low-balling-the-unemployed-in-the-era-of-the-2020-great-recession/
Even worse looking at Gig workers who operate on contracts and deposits like people in the wedding industry, not simply becoming unemployed buy having to refund deposits from the last 6 to 12 months as people cancel. I expect a lot of planners, florists, photographers and venues to not simply be unemployed but be out income they had already in their accounts. Imagine your employer taking back 6 months of paychecks then kicking you out door. The situation is WAY worse than 14.7%. I expect something that indicated damage on a wages lost scale would be (discounting the insane offset caused by the 1%) something like 35-40%. The Unemployment kicker and the checks probably helped offset something like 50% of that but only if this is over in 3 months, then it starts to soak a lot less damage. These numbers are all out of my butt but sound in the ballpark.