And john delaney for his support and also especially thank you for the distinguished leaders joining today in our alumni board members. Its my pleasure to introduce the people who will be leaving this incredible conversation. Sylvia Mathews Burwell is president of American University and the first woman to lead the institution. She previously served as the 22nd secretary of the u. S. Department of health and Human Services and also served as the director ofth the office of management and budget and shes also served as the president of Global Development program and chief operating officer at the bill and Melinda Gates foundation and president of the walmartrt foundation. Shshes joined today by gary con and chief economic adviser to president trump, the former president and chief operating officer Goldman Sachs and an alumni of the american i welcome you both. Im sure you are ready to start the conversation. Iem. Thank you for the introduction and leadership at this fine institute. Thank you forhi joining us. We share the National Economic councill i will just get us started. We are going to focus on the economy i think we need to start with the trajectory because right about now we are so interactive in terms of what that means. Can you kind of startf us off with a little bit of where you think the trajectory of covid19 is on the sixmonth basis and then a year from now. I hate this question because when i acknowledged right up front im not an epidemiologist and to have a view of where we are going in the economy, you have to have a view inextricably linked and if you did anything wrong on either side. The. It seems to me we are still in a prolonged first wave i think its probably changed your thinking as well the fundamental basisin of our kids going back o schootoschool at a primary or sy level or are we going to continue to be at a work at home environment. Going back to a somewhat normalized versus the abnormal world that is completely different. I wasnt in this position three or four weeks ago but it looks to me like these show no signs ,of giving up. Its going to force a lot of the academic institutions it looks like they have to take an approach they didntac want to take and we are going to continue to stay at home and oiwork at home longer than we thought. The businesses that drive the economy are going to continueweo suffer. The big unintended consequence of that weve learned about and we are now dealing with a is the Small Business in the country. 60 of the businesses in america. Thats what they did, there was no malice intended. We deem certain businesses in the country to be fundamentally important in many businesses to be non essential. And the Large International businesses theyve got to stay open in full the products. We need it even though it was food and medicine and the small local businesses that sold clothing and all the other things and we told them they needed to shut down. The longer those businesses are shut down the harder it is for the economy to recover the sum you are in a disposition and it would be interesting to see how you are thinking of it and try to open up a big academic institution. What do you think is the trajectory of the pandemic, and this was back to some of my old backgrounds like you in terms of where we could be in the possibility but i do think some of the fundamentals that still hold inn there for help us from an Economic Perspective is the basic pandemics or prevention detention in response. Lets all get on the same page these are the things we need to focus on. The government as an Institution Needs to do their part. If we can get the fundamentals place where that has to do with one of the things we all talked about the trajectory of the virus and flattening the curve of what you need to do thiisget to the place that you e Community Spread. Youve got to get to a place where its in a a way that we actually know how and why itre spread. So do you prevent the additional spread. So you can start to contain it iandthat is what we are seeing n other countries and some places in the country how do you do that, prevention. We know this is a highly transmissible virus ended to spread through our breathing and talking. That is a great protection, the distance of 6 feet and because sometimes the droplets are sneezes and can land on. The American University right now we are on the path and weve got over half the number of students we will have only one student in a room to meet these basic preventative conditions. There is this important prevention questions and so from a residential perspective we will be an institution residentially and then the other part we will continue to telework as much as possible so theel staff doesnt add up to te density. Keep it as low as we possibly can and then we can take that class online and howre we do facetoface will bthatfacetoa changed and limited fashion. You are giving us a picture that covid19 is going to still be a burden to the economy. How do you think about where the economy is right now, where the markets are right now and where they will be in about six months . Its hard to believe we were talking about the hand washing and masks. On the test there is an important thing im afraid we need in terms of the scale and approach to testing. We have Community Spread and the tests cant just be a diagnostic tool. Diagnostic means i go to the doctor, i think i have strep throat, because they com the tet as a diagnostic tool. It has to be a part of surveillance understanding where we are. Thats why we need these tests and access to the test. The other thing is on a timely basis. Most folks know now number of days it takes to get the test result goes up. During that time people are not isolating. Its the most asked question i get and in a oneonone conversation people tell me they dont understand the value of marketing we dont have an index within a minority owned businesses. It is the snp, russell, nasdaq 100. The key is darrell market cap is this as meaning the bigger you are the bigger your reading on the index. So there are a few companies ofinating the performance the stock market. So when we talk about the snp, we are really talking about a small handful of companies today. They have to become more important in our life than they ever have been because we cant live without them and this covid work at home, stay at home, live at home world. They provide connectivity. They provide food, services and msns weve made these companies bigger and have given more market share than they ever thought they had. When people say i cant believe i would say both, i dont have a problem with that because when i look at whats going on with the companies that describe the value of the stock markets based on a market cap it makes no sense to me and pr Companies Need to deal with. Its between the market embassies in the. They just took it on the stock with about a 10 difference in the return in the snp said thats how important it is and he is embassies. The. They provide an enormous amount of the stimulus money. This was oneas of the lines of defense. So initially we did the right thing. We knew that they needed to shut down so we providedd the loans. 3 trillion of stimulus money initially. Whether its fortunate or unfortunate most of the money is running out at the end of july. We extend that you can only take it once so most companies we as a country and legislative branch and federal government have to decide are we going to up the benefits now because it is still here or are we not . I think we dont have a chance. We have to get a second round of stimulus and to give more money to Small Businesses because we thought they would have a chance to open during this virus and then there would be more in september and october that wouldnt allow people to go back to work. And be in a position to only treat covid they shut down what we call elective surgery most elective surgery is an essential surgery. If you have a tumor removed for if you shattered your knee it is rebuilt you are in a ngwheelchair that is not considered elective they say its elective because its not lifethreatening if we need to for a short period of time make those hospital beds available. We need to get our Healthcare System in a strong place to do that. We have to go with another round of stimulus. I dont know if you agree with that or not but it seems like we wont make it to the next three months without the legislator getting involved. The other part that needs to beer considered actually gets to the things that will help us fundamentally contain the virusnd whether thats the funding for the testing nation. Ucture as a that doesnt mean its not the same in every place but the ability to access with lab core their capacity right now in terms of testing how are we as a federal government thinking of supplementing if we have the capacity so i believe we need to do things from the economic side but i would consider the right things in terms of ensuring there is testingof capability and the states have the ability to support people and places to do the isolation necessary to keep people contained that is the other part of what needs to be considered. On the Mental Health side no ones talking about the Mental Health side of whats going on here and the kids not getting the protection and not being seen at the primary education system. What we consider legislation is basic healthcare that we mentioned the covid death but not those because they are not having the procedures that you talk about even if they could, they are concerned and dont go because they dont want to be exposed in a hospital setting. Those are things we need to focus on. I think the Mental Health ctissue is an issue across the thboard. We have a ten and 12 yearold through the College Students and the americanh university and to the elderly when you talk to people who have elderly parents who are dying the fact they cannot see people leads to a decline more ckquickly so acrosstheboard with the Mental Health issues , this is a real opportunity to take the next step of Mental Health this is one of those things where it does what it says between the physical health and Mental Health in terms of how we pay for empire termination and also to move Mental Health forward in terms of thator coverage people need so its a real opportunity to think through what we need to be doing that we will see the results of this for an extremely long time our counselors cannot provide Telehealth Services to a student in washington dc and in california and they were in counseling we cannot provide those services but if there is a waiver for a limited period of time with certain constraints so we can continue care because theres many things we can do. I have a daughter who teaches new York City Public School system in a fairly poor neighborhood. Shes just worried about her kids getting fed she considers herself a first line of defense to make sure theyre healthy and say shes literally worried how the kids are surviving. They live in one room apartments they made sure each family had wine ipad that with four kids in a small two room apartment sharing one ipad trying to go to School Online probably with a not highspeed internet. I dont know what that leads to but surely not to a robust educational system in one of the most important years in fourth grade it is the core learningng year. Yes. That point brings in a the question how covid19 has showed economic inequality the situation in front of us and what that means from a policy perspective goingh forward. In terms of the situation in front of us that we see the incredible inequities who bears the Health Burden and the economic burden of covid19 and where we know that communities of color have a bigger board in on bigger burden of mortality and illness related to another issue which are issues of racism because these are communities that are related to those issues and now we see covid19 more death and sickness and on one illness and the communities disproportionately impacted because their jobs aresp essential and also the Small Businesses you were referring to that we have to have those policies to bridge i dont know if you thought about the inequities in these spaces and the policies we should be thinking about now and in the future. You cannot go a day without thinking about the policy. We knew a lot of thes issues were out there for those of us who served in the Public Policy world we knew these existed thats the good news but the bad news is weve never been able to solve that we knew it existed in the corporate world we could not solve it. Covid really brought home the reality we dont have a choice but to solve these issues in the United States right now education of Healthcare Access to capital, i very firmly believe it starts of education i bring up the example of kids in new york city yes they gave them an ipad but for kids in a one room apartment with slow internet is not the environment they can learn so getting kids back to school is important its one of the pieces of the puzzle. We have to continue how to figure out better ways to make the system work. Education is important. Access to capital with the largest Financial Markets in the world. If you ask a list i would ask the breadth and depth of the Capital Markets people cant hear from all around the world to start new companies. They do that because the educational system and we have access to capital. We do that for foreigners and naive and people domestically so the inequality plays into that. We have to figure out ways to get People Better educatio education, keep them in the system so there is capital in the Financial System will provide capital for any entrepreneurial activities. As we do that with those inequities to solve the problems that racism is an additional problem for many that we have to resolve with the government with the justice systemli and policing and as we think about focusing on and access to education acrosstheboard how do we get young people back in the economic sphere how do you think about questions i think the social safety net comes with a picture and words so how do we think we make our economy of individuals resilient to more challenging times cracks so that the country has mechanisms for resiliency even if not the covid19 downturn but to get throughat those the economy means individuals economic wellbeing as well as the overall economy and how we make our economy more resilient. The covid experience is once in a long lifetime experience. 1918 was the last time we had Something Like w this. It is a 100 yearte experience. But that said, its not the first time weve had to deal with Something Like this in the United States which does put us on notice as a country ethat we now have to think of this potentially every 100 years and viruses dont know 100 years. It could happen again into years. We now have to think as a country how we can be prepared for these viruses. Talking about this lately with the job picture so that will change over the last four month months. If we spent an enormous amount of time over the last 100 years talking about the military security and protection from enemies foreign and a broad we never talked about domestic security we never thought of protecting our citizens day in and day out and we ought to come away from this virus. We arent done with it thinking differently about domestic security. What does it mean to have a secure supply chain . Of ppe . How do we make sure we manufacture in the United States or stockpile, enough ppe that this would never be an issue or a newsworthy item . We should never be in a position talking aboutre ppe how do we manufacture or stockpile enough drugs in the United States that we are never at risk to worry about a foreign country . Because were worried about how do we ensure our food supply so we never have to worry about of food supply . And this crisis was some respects it was clorox, lysol, toilet paper and paperer towels and napkins things that were need to have nice to have not have to have. But the next crisis will be different. So now knowing what we know, we have to sit down and say if we will be domestically secure, we have to do the following things. A lot of infrastructure on food and medicin medicine, ppe, transportatio medicine, ppe, transportation, e are intricacies creating a whole new set of jobs in the United States. That for the last 80 years to create more and more service jobs i am willing to declare it has come to an end we will not get out of the Service Business but we will go create more manufacturing and infrastructure and supplychain jobs knowing that how are we educating people in our country . We have to entice companies to do that and how do we entice theou workforce with those opportunities . Thats really important. Think of that pandemic preparedness for my old life at hhs we need to understand the likelihood of pandemics they become greater and greater in terms of the issue human transition. And the idea of pandemic preparedness basically 100 years since the last, i dont think thats what we should be preparing for. Think about world war ii and did it bring the economy to its knees . And to secure the nation about being ready and what does that mean as we think of this threat from thee Health Perspective and Economic Perspective and to your point thinking about how we make the nation more resilient with access to healthcare and has led to people having more of the conditions that make this particular virus when you are compromised in a respiratory way or have diabetes or for these viral infections that you are most susceptible to mortalities of you think of these places and to put in placehe to protect people as we move through these including how you think about the food issue. May have things we refer to as countercyclical because they help carry people through and then to see the Supplemental Nutrition Program and now to say you are resilient as a nation and its interesting to hear it sounds like what is the biggest thing economic changes not working from home that changes in manufacturing and how you think about that. I think we will have to change our supply chain in the United States whether ppe or the supply, chain, yes. And it is close. We now know as a country that any moment in Time Congress will need to spend 3 trillion. We never had that in the back of our minds i dont think congress did. I help, not even help i pray that when a new congress is set in 2021 that they approach the revenue side and expenditure side of the federal government different. They should look at the way we spent many and they should be more diplomatic and thoughtful and then we have to look at the taxing system we have to change it. We have to collect more revenue in this country because now we know that we just cant keep spending more and more money and be prepared for one of these may be 100 years and then to look back at what we have learned. The manufacturing part of this is so to get back to that work from the 19 nineties that i had the chance to work on in that work on and it has the the lecturing capability. Sohe the second time, the vet then the stockpile and what that means and that you couldnt get those funded so that capabilities and infrastructure points and then actually its a very important but the Core Infrastructure that we have that we now know is related to Technology Like West Virginia i have gone to check on my mother in West Virginia to make sure there is that capability that i was fortunate enough that the Deputy Director and how we ethink about the revenue side and whats important about what you said is we have to think about both sides and think through the right way to do things. At this moment we are not in a moment it will nots help the healthcare issues but you understand that people are suffering in terms of the economics from those who have the economic hits so what we tried to do is they will not have their retirement payments. I totally agree with you. Now is not the time to cut spending. I said we will need another stimulus package. But but when we get to the other side of covid we will talk about it where congress is going to have to takegr a deep breath and reflect and look back at the financial side. So we as a country have done a horrific job on infrastructure. We have not sat down with the master plan to say what do we want our infrastructure to be . And to do maintenance on what we have, and so this is a modern developed economy in but it should have. With the only modern developed economy in the world that doesnt have highspeed rail. It would solve so many problems. Environmentally friendly and then to get congestion out of the skies and allows parts of the country to open up. But its hard to believe we dont have the network in this country looking at japan and china they figure that out instantly its a way to move people efficiently so can you explain in terms of what is in front of us in thend opportunity side so when we get to the other side of covid we will have a unique opportunity because not just get to we have to. But what i have learned in washington will have to take a deep breath and reflect that and decide where we are going in this country. Because so many important issues has been raised in the last four months whether the Healthcare System, the inability to be prepared for a pandemic or crisis family on womenowned businesses in the country those that are getting larger and the inability to maintain the medical system i could go on a name things but we cannot ignore all those things so in many respects we have to reflect where we are and reengineer bit of the economy Going Forward doesnt mean we will isolate ourselves but import more of the nonessentials and more of an interesting relationship with allies around the world. So to talk about this earlier with our Technology Industry and its all those people that are involved and they think they will bring this into their retail market. But the next two years are nothing short of extraordinary whether personal security and then what we can predict and behavior and trends so can we basically do our taxes i will everything be automated . Sometimes its scary when you talk about it but on the other hand it levels the playing field. So to come away from this excited and optimistic once we can get to the othert side. Here and there im kind of scared because nobody can predict what will happen. My optimism, im an optimist by nature there are three places i am optimistic to have a positive change pushing off of where we are right now in terms of covid and i will do three. They are all related but the idea that we can move the ball on accessibility and what we have seen but we were forced to do to learn lessons and not onlinene education is 18 and 22. As a first choice. And to think about those things differently in the education and the healthcare space tour learn about telehealth for so many barriers to get it done and now we will see the value us are in inhome care and that was a great hurdle so the accesses the quality incc healthcare space can we look at thes lessons . Know there are things we need to do facetoface and in certain ways but what are the tthings technology can help us with and then i was hopeful. That this will be a seminal moment and the recognition we all as individuals need to take aggressive steps that have not been taken in the past and those challenges of optimism so now will turn it over to you. This is been an incredible conversation so the first question is from kelly marie because of your like experience in the public specter with the one size fits alll solution so how do you see congress and the administration all different states and cities with different financial situations . Im happy to go first. The issue of the differences so to provide real healthcare and urban health care and have access and affordability and quality because you can a mention the challenges are different and each setting. And then to make policy that there are Core Principles and things with those different situations whether rural or urban to think about the application at that level. Its getting everyone on the same page with those Core Principles. Do you want access . What does it take in our rural setting or the urban setting and the ready to create that implementation with different pans andwa different ways. Coming directly to you we had such a great conversation but certainly his question is for the global perspective. Is there a great unwinding coming where do traditional allies fit in . This should come as a shock to know when i was always the globalist in the white house so i am very much a free traderad that we are part of a very important Global Economy and we have globalized we shared stop debating that. We will not nationalize or put the genie back in the bottle. Knowing that and understanding chinas biggest economic issue is full employment for 400 Million People we should use that to our best advantage we can import a lot of goods cheaper than in the United States but the nonessential core good and therefore nonessential goods from china at a lower price we could manufacture from the United States and may create more service jobs because once a by those goods from china will have more disposable income i believe it i dont think that will ever change we should stop fighting it and embrace it to work out well for china and europe. The country has reopened businesses will that cause the economy to backslider can we rebound having an economic and Health Care Crisis happening at the same time what do you see for thete future . This was the right decision we created the economic crisis. We decided the best way to fight the virus was literally shut down the economy, tell everyone stay at home and not go to work. We conscientiously made that decision. What we didnt know at the time is how long that would be. We thought it would be a relatively short period of time looking at the ppe benefits w somewhere extended son and this month so we selfcreated that economics is just one situation and what they are finding in real time certain states have reopened and liberalized so we are back where we started handwashing, social distancing and that was the right answer we didnt execute it long enough or efficiently enough to let it completely leave and now we understand how powerful and how many people and how it can explode. This is great. Christopher is asking us there is discussion when things will go back to normal versus the new normal. How do you think this to be will be reflected . Are we going back to normal or a full new normal . I think we will be in a place with the impact of covid even with a vaccine that rolls out over the new year than that vaccine they think 100 percent effective so then you have to think about what that means so for healthcare workers. I believe from the Health Perspective, we are looking at two years what people would not consider normal. I think there will be key elements if there are opportunities that will be different hopefully better. I think saying exactly what those are its an option and an opportunity and it infrastructure those are the things we will see that will be different over time. Will there be hybrid learning in different forms . So we are at the cusp of seeing we need to Pay Attention we are in the early stages of that. We are not going back to where we were. I agree with that. What is your most memorable moment . I was involved and i take the university to federal court for the board of trustees to raise tuition. Tyoure welcome but that was lsalso 1981. I started the conversation with what year you graduated. I can handle it. U where do you feel the stock market will w be cracks can we see any indicators as we move forward . Its difficult because the stock market right now is representative of so few companies they will continue to do well so the stock market as an index based valuation could be higher and probably will be higher that doesnt mean the vast majority are doing well. And that they will not be doing well. So to replace the stock market with the mainstream economy they are not the same thing. Where will that be januar january 2021 . My view is were arguing if its a two digit by one digit number. I had to get to the 10 percent but until you really get Small Business main street america restaurants, movies, sports and entertainmen entertainment, hotels, conventis , and tell those are up and going i know how you get the other 10 percent of people. Im afraid we have run outun of time thank you for your ftime and expertise also for your leadership for all of us on campus. Please come backse to campus. For everyone that joined us today there is more programmingre coming go to our website and sign up for the newsletter in the days and weeks to come thank you again thank you for your time
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