The trauma we saw during the depression. Unlike the 1930s, of course, we have good reason to believe this economic collapse is going to be shortlived, though how many of the jobs lost and how much of the lost income for so Many Americans will ever be recovered, at this point we just dont know. Frustrated by the scale of the economic damage, more and more americans are demanding a restart, and this was the first full week that most states is have reopened many businesses closed by the lockdown. So far at least we havent seen a big increase in coronavirus cases. But as more people return to the work force, the virus will presumably start to spread again. Some new models suggested this week that deaths from the disease could jump significantly as Society Moves towards more normalcy. That there will be further spread of the virus certain, but should that really stop us from conducting any form of Economic Activity . When the lockdowns were first proposed, the idea, remember, was they would flatten the curve meaning they would reduce the expected surge in deaths and keep Hospital Systems from being overwhelmed. Its clear now that that at least seems to have been achieved. If you look at whats happened in new york, for example, the epicenter of the virus, the pressure on Health Care Systems is way down from what it was a few weeks ago. The curve has, indeed, been flattened. So a lot of people are asking why shouldnt we now get the country back to work. As President Trump said this week, there will still, obviously and sadly, be many new infections, but at some point the economic damage that were doing has to be weighed against that risk. Some people be affected . Yes. Will some people be affected badly . Yes. But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon. Gerry a new study of recently hospitalized victims in new york finds most were not out working but, instead, following the states stay at home orders. So do we perhaps need to rethink what weve been doing . First well look at the economic fallout and what its going to take to get the economy fully up and running again. For that, i had a chance to talk with jared kushner, Senior Adviser to the president if, whos been spearheading efforts to get testing and vital supplies to hospitals and, of course, or hes also the president s soninlaw. Mr. Kushner, thanks for joining us. Its great to be with you. Gerry first of all, weve seen these economic numbers, highest Unemployment Rate since the Great Depression, 20 the million jobs lost in april alone. How much longer are americans going to have to suffer these Enormous Economic consequences of this lockdown . So the april numbers were not unexpected. It shows theres a lot of hardship based on the policies to save as many lives as possible. Initially we thought based on projections that as many as 2 Million People could die based on the pandemic, and weve done Everything Possible to mitigate that number. And now were focusing on the reopening. We have over 44 states that are reopening safely. Weve put out guidelines. Were working with the governors, and a lot of the keys to reopening is is about having the necessary supplies and environment in order to do that. So we have we just passed 8 million tests. We have more than tests, more than double anyone else in the world. That number continues to grow rapidly. Were now producing massive amount of ventilators every week, even exporting ventilators so well is have all the surge medical capacity we need. And i think that people are really learning how to adjust to life as new. So the hope is, is that well slowly and smartly start safely reopening the economy and get americans back to work in the right way. Gerry when do you think the Unemployment Rate will start to come down again . Well, it really depends on a lot of factors. Again, President Trump is doing Everything Possible to make sure that we can move very quickly. When you benchmark the way weve been able to respond versus the rest of the world, again, more tests than anyone else in the world by more than double, weve brought in oaf a billion pieces over a billion pieces of personal protective equipment, and were trying to work with a lot of companies and trying to share best practices quickly. Youre seeing some states are dialing it up, some states dialing back, but people are starting to open up in a safe way with. I think that youll see over the next couple months confidence will start coming back as the disease is contained. And a big part of what were doing now is focusing on the fall to make sure were restocking the stockpile, working on a vaccine and doing Everything Possible so that once we open up, we never have to lock down again. Gerri the federal government has pumped close to 3 trillion in the economy, the democrats on capitol hill are proposing another stimulus. Are you open to that . President trump will do whatever it takes to make sure that we keep our country healthy both dealing with the disease, but also in dealing with our economy. And President Trumps policies before the, the progrowth policies led to one of the strongest economies that americas ever had. We had the lowest Unemployment Rate in over 50 years. Everyone in america was on a trajectory to do really well before this, so a lot of the policies the president put in place beforehand will remain in place. But, again, President Trump was able to build the economy to a great place before, and hell be able to do it again. I think also putting in place resiliency, we want to make sure were not relying on other countries for our materials, for our supplies and making sure that we emerge much stronger than before. So President Trump is looking at a lot of policies. Hes very flexible in the way that he thinks about problems, and hell be creative to do it. He knows what he needs to do. He wants to get america back to work in a safe way, and his hope is, you know, itll take us some time. The third quarter, he thinks, will be a transition, but he thinks the Fourth Quarter and next year has the ability to be spectacular. Gerry is the president open to more support for states in particular that are facing bankruptcy . That goes back and forth. I think he wants to see, first of all, he wants to see what the impact will be of the close to 3 trillion that weve already put into the economy. I think that thats starting to get in. A lot of people have gotten their stimulus checks. Weve seen a lot of data. Some, obviously, is encouraging. And so we want to see the results of the tremendous and historic programs that weve put in place before we, we decide what we want to do in the next step. But i will say that the president right now is looking at a lot of ideas, hes having a lot of discussions with his economic team, with outside advisors, and hes got a lot of different, a lot of different plans that he could put in place depending on where the data starts going. But the most important priority is getting the Health Crisis under control, and youre seeing now that the president s historic Public Private position where we have more testing than anyone else in the world. The testing is expanding rapidly. We have all the ventilators we need and then some. And in addition, were getting a lot of supplies into this country. And using data to get them to the places where theyre needed. Gerry lets talk about some of those medical measures. Obviously, as we know, Gilead Sciences has come up with a drug, remdesivir, which has been shown to show promise in treatment of covid19 patients, and theyre making supplies of this drug available on an emergency basis. There have been some concerns expressed, weve reported this in the journal and elsewhere, that those supplies are not getting where theyre really needed. Can you guarantee those supplies of that really vital drug will get to hospitals in communities where there are the largest number of covid19 patients where they really need to be treated . Yeah. What i can guarantee you is that the people in the government have been working around the clock, weve been working with the states, monitoring the data closely. I think we sent out the first shipment working with the company to donate these doses, which was a very big, which was a very big step forward. We want to get it to the people who need it as quickly as possible. Well continue to send it out in a very targeted way. And, again, were working very harded to make sure that happens in the best way possible. Gerry i want to talk more about the administrations Coronavirus Response next. Whatd we decide on the flyers again . Uh, fifteen minutes could save you 15 or more on car insurance. I think were gonna swap over to over seventyfive years of savings and service. What, were just gonna swap over . Yep. Pump the breaks on this, swap it over to that. Pump the breaks, and, uh, swap over . Thats right. Instead of all this that ive already . Yeah. What are we gonna do with these . Keep it at your desk, and save it for next time. Geico. Over 75 years of savings and service. Tell me, what did verizon build their network for . People. And when peoples every day is being challenged. Thats when a Network Shows what its made of. Verizon customers are making an average of over 600 million calls and sending nearly 8 billion texts a day, every day. Businesses are using verizons added capacity to keep them connected with customers. And when people are depending on you for those connections. What do you do . Whatever it takes. Gerry im with white house senior advr jared jared kushner. Theres been some criticism that you personally brought in a lot of to volunteers to work on helping to distribute p if pe, and theres been some concern expressed that maybe they didnt have the experience, they didnt know what they were doing, a whistleblower report has said they werent functioning effectively or actually gumming the process up. How do you answer that . I just think its just not true. I think that, you know, the wall street journal actually had a great oped about a week and a half ago saying that trumps really rewritten the way, the playbook for how you respond to a global pandemic. And in this time of crisis, the president used a lot of creativity and mobilized the private sector, the federal government, and he has a lot of success to show for that in terms of accomplishing incredible things in a short amount of time. So a lot of these people came down to washington to help out. They were, shadow main expertise. None of themed had Decision Making authority, we left that to the federal government employees. But the reality that they helped source over a billion pieces of ppe, they were involved in setting up project air bridge, the fema administrator and the dod people who are working with them all found them to be quite helpful, and they did a great job. They were also involved in last year america did about 30,000 ventilators that we produced this year, well to about 150,000 in ant a four month in about a four month period. A lot of governors were asking for things that, quite frankly, were not based on data. They were able to help us correct collect the data. No american died because they werent able to get a ventilator when they needed a ventilator, and thats, i think, a very important thing that weve been able to do. And then on the testing supply chain, some of our people who were domain expertise helping us figure out how to get the mobilization done as quickly as possible. At the end of the day, weve looked at what they did. I dont think these people should be harassed for coming down and helping their country in a time of need. Weve seen in the Obama Administration they brought in volunteers, Gavin Newsoms brought in volunteers ark a lot of the states have done it. I think what happened is these people came in, did a great service, and were very proud of the job they did. Again, i think the results speak for themselves. Gerry what about a vaccine . Project warp speed, we know thats key, how close are we to getting a vaccine . Well, i dont want to get ahead of any confidential information, but the president is moving heaven and everett to get a vaccine done by the end of the year, if not sooner, to have it produced. Were simultaneously working on the supply chains so that we can Scale Production rapidly. Were doing that simultaneously. But no expense is being spared, no effort is being spared, and the president really has the full team committed where a very, very with a very, very ambitious goal, and we will do everything that is humanly possible to achieve that goal because it is an integral thing to get done. Jer a lot of people very critical of china. Do you think china covered this up . Do you think they should be held account signal. Id say right now, again, my role mostly on the response and trying to make sure we have the equipment we need for health care workers. Weve worked with china on that, a lot of shipments have come out of there, and theyve facilitated that. My sense is as we get to a place where were done with, with the response, then i imagine therell be some very serious discussions thatll have to be had. Theres a lot of data were looking at. The president s been having his team study and get back to him with very precise answers on what happened, when and how. And the president will to what he thinks is right to represent the american people. But i will tell cow this, is that weve tell you this, weve learned a lot from this situation, and President Trump is committed to getting the economy back as strong as possible as quickly as possible and as safely as possible but also making sure that he puts in place policies to allow this to never happen again. Gerry my great thanks to jared kushner. Jared, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us. Great to be with you. Gerry coming up, ill h prizet about the impact of the break and what could be tone to help us us return to our done to help us return to our everyday lives once again. 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Weve always believed in the power of working together. Thats why, when every connection counts. You can count on us. Muck publish gerry joining me now is the corecipient of the 2018 nobel prize in economics, former chief economist at the world bank and is now professor at nyu. Hes with me via skype. Thank you for joining me. Great to be. Gerry professor, weve got these, obviously, very bleak job numbers, unemployment almost 15 , more than 20 million jobs lost. Perhaps the expectation is that misery is going to continue for a while yet. How bad is it going to get and for how long . In terms of how bad it could get, theres a very plausible analysis that suggests unemployment could get to 30 , so well above even the worst of what we saw in the Great Depression. In terms of how long it lasts, that depends on what our policies are. And i think theres a critical variable to keep in mind here which is confidence. Policy might let people have the freedom to go back to work, go back to daily life, but will people actually have the confidence to return . Gerry we, obviously, we cannot go on with the economy locked down like this. Weve seen the damage already, 20 , as you said, possibly running to 30 unemployment, an economy essentially in the deep freeze. But at the same time, we cant, it seems, just completely lift lockdowns because we all fear the virus has not spread anything like as much to the communities it would need to in order for us to develop general immunity. So we cant do one or the other. How do we get out of this bind . Yeah. Its, its there is a very sharp tradeoff here, and i think that one side of it is the measures that we used to flatten the curve which, as you said, worked in new york city these were emergency measures, and no one thought through what is our plan for the next 24 months. Assume it takes that long to get to a vaccine. What is it that we do on that time horizon . We cant survive, i dont think as a nation, the conditions of, you know, worse than the Great Depression for 24 months. On the other hand, the people say, well, lets just open up, i dont think theyve thought through the fact that it will take more than a year if we try to keep deaths at the level that we can handle in our Health Care Systems, 2500 a day, it will take more than a year to work through the Million Deaths that will be involved in having the virus spread throughout the whole population. Gerry so whats the middle path then . I know youve come up with a detailed plan that you think would work. Give us i want to talk about that. Give us an overview of what that looks like. Yeah. Well, theres a few ways you could go quickly. One is to let the virus spread very quickly through the population, but this would overwhelm our Health Care System and, i think, would bring carnage that would not be tolerable. The other is to take the lockdown measures, which are succeeding because they prevent people who are infected from going out and iniffecting others infecting others. We need to switch from locking down everybody or as many as we can because we dont know whos infected, we need to switch to isolating the few who are infectious. Then everybody else could go back to work and the economy could thrive. To get there, youve got to have a way to figure out whos infectious. One path is what im proposing, just test everybody every two weeks and give us those proofs that i can show my dentist, my den can show me. The other is that we use this notion of Contact Tracing. Every time you find somebody thats infectious, you go strays everybody that theyve trace theyve interacted with, and thatll help you find everyone whos infectious. Its worth pursuing both of these. They both require a lot more capacity for testing. I like the simple one where you just test everybody because we know it will work if we invest and get it set up. We dont know if we can make Contact Tracing in our culture work whether or not were using some digital app to try and a assist. Gerry whats the reasonable expectations for how quickly we could get the economy working, the time frame for how quickly we could get the economy working again . Yeah. I think that we can radically scale up testing within two months if this nation makes it a priority to do it. It could be that it takes since months. But even if it takes six months, its worth doing because in six months on the current path were the till going to be in this still going on in this them ma of just enormous pain and no solution. Gerry paul romer, thank you very much, indeed. Well see whether your proposals are acted upon and whether that is the way out for the u. S. In this crisis. Thank you very much. Just ahead, this week we saw one chapter in more than history put to rest. Ill explain. Looks like they picked the wrong getaway driver. Theyre going to be paying for this for a long time. They will, but with accident forgiveness allstate wont raise your rates just because of an accident, even if its your fault. Cut sonny. Was that good . Line the desert never lies. Isnt that what i said . No you were talking about allstate and insurance. I just. When i. Lets try again. Everybody back to one. Accident forgiveness from allstate. Click or call for a quote today. Heres the thing about managing for your business. S when youve got public clouds, and private clouds, and hybrid clouds things can get a bit cloudy for you. But now, theres the Dell Technologies cloud, powered by vmware. A single hub for a consistent operating experience across all your clouds. That should clear things up. And my side super soft . Yes. With the sleep number 360 smart bed, on sale now, you can both adjust your comfort with your sleep number setting. Can it help me fall asleep faster . Yes. By gently warming your feet. But can it help keep me asleep . Absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. So, you can really promise better sleep . Not promise. Prove. During the memorial day sale, save 1,000 on the sleep number 360 special Edition Smart bed, now only 1,799. Only for a limited time. To learn more, go to sleepnumber. Com gerry this weeks decision by the Justice Department to drop charges against President Trumps shortlived National Security adviser general Michael Flynn prompted predictable outrage in much of the media. The New York Times editorial board, of course, felt a need to remind us that general flynn pleaded guilty twice and that even President Trump said that he had lied to the fbi. But it has become increasingly clear in recent weeks that the charge to which general flynn had admitted guilt of lying to fbi agents had come as a result of a carefullylaid trap by prosecutors. As the Justice Department said asking the court for the charges to be dropped, the interview in which he was said to have lied came about a after the agency had already decided there was no underlying case against the general. It was, quote, untethered to and up justified by, unquote, the fbis earlier counterintelligence investigation. The Bigger Picture has become clear in the last year that the fbi and agents such as peter strzok used aggressive and possibly even improper tactics to try to make a case that the Trump Campaign was in bed with the russians. That was a case that was 9 11 proven. The never proven. The investigation yielded nothing of any real evidence, the agency reached further and further to try to make the case. The russia collusion narrative was pushed for years by zealous and hostile prosecutors and fed by a media just as eager to damage or even bring down the presidency. It will unfortunately stand as one of the more troubling episodes in the nations recent history. For the latest show updates, be sure to follow me on twitter, facebook and instagram. Ill be next week where my guest will be white house adviser Peter Navarro right here on the wall street journal at large. Thank you for joining us, and a very happy mothers day to all of you mothers out there. Barrons round table sponsored by jack welcome to barrons roundtable where we get behind the headlines, im jon otter. We jack otter. We begin with the three most important things investors should be thinking about right now. Stocks keep climbing in the face of devastating unemployment level ares. How long can this last . Volatile markets have some investors looking at the safety of cash. With Interest Rates still low, well tell you how to maximize your returns. And alcohol sales surging, well tell you what consumers are stocking up on as they hunker down a