Comparing the post-crisis economy vs. post-pandemic economy
As the economy continues to recover, Julie Hyman, Myles Udland, and Brian Sozzi discuss the many factors affecting the recovery in the post-pandemic economy that differed from the post-crisis economy.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: I want to take it to what I alluded to a few moments ago, and that's what you wrote about in the "Morning Brief." Pretty simple here, supply demand mismatch. But as you pointed out-- and you sort of began this thread, I think, yesterday, or the other day-- when you talked about how different this is from coming out of the financial crisis, coming out of the coronavirus crisis is a completely different animal in terms of the supply-demand picture.
At that point, we had ample supply of stuff, right? We had ample supply of people who wanted jobs, we had an ampler supply of homes, and now we're seeing a tightening of conditions, really, all over the place, whether it's people for jobs, whether it's houses for people. And so, that's where you get inflation from.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I mean, look. You can take from this view, I think, any conclusion you want. You can say this is inflationary, you can say fiscal policy works really well, you can say that fiscal policy is inappropriate, as we see Stan Druckenmiller out in the "Journal" and on CNBC this morning talking about his view on where fiscal and monetary policy is.
But I think, again, to capture the recovery in the broadest of possible senses, I see this as the not enough recovery. This-- and again, we talked about this on the show, Julie-- this goes back to the beginning of the pandemic when there was not enough PPE and not enough tests, not enough medical professionals. Now we have not enough crypto assets, I guess. We have not enough chlorine, we don't have enough homes. We don't have enough used cars. We don't have rental cars. There's no flights available. There's not enough for all the things that people want to do.
And we got so conditioned after the financial crisis about abundance, about let's, you know-- I mean Marie Kondo was really an echo from the financial crisis. There's too much stuff, we must pare down the things we have. And I think now we are seeing that that scarcity, that real scarcity of experiences, of staff, of materials to build and do the things that people are desiring to do right now is just-- it completely inverted-- it's a 180 from the last recovery-- and I think it is why there is still so much flat footedness out there, whether it's in corporate America, from policymakers, from the media, perhaps, in how we're benchmarking our view on this recovery.
I mean, shoot, even the inflation conversation, I think, is probably an anachronism of the last crisis, which was credit based concerns about the financial system. And yes, we can all read the textbook on how inflation dynamics can follow from certain over leveraging, which was-- we don't have to go into the whole history of the financial crisis. But I almost kind of think, right, that the obsession with inflation is a carryover from the post-financial crisis recovery and plays a lot differently in this one, Sozzi.
BRIAN SOZZI: Myles, I would say there's not enough you. I need more newsletters from me. I really enjoy reading your newsletters every single morning. But nonetheless, listen. I have a story right now on the home page talking about what Marriott CEO told us yesterday. He's seeing a labor shortage, notably in Florida, where demand is now spiking. So here's a company-- Marriott is out there now holding job fairs, incentivizing people to go work in their hotels, and they still can't find these bodies to get into the hotels and start servicing this demand. So my question, Myles, to you, is, what gets people back in the jobs if it's not money and promises of gaining more skills?
MYLES UDLAND: Well, I mean, I think it will be money, Sozzi. But right now you are getting paid by the government to not work, people don't feel safe going to work, and, you know, depending on the industry that you're in, a lot of people have had a moment of, is this really what I want to do with my life. The fragility of life has certainly been made very clear to us over the last year and I think that that is not really an economic factor per se-- you can't measure it-- but I don't think anyone thinks their perspective on the world has not been changed if you were fortunate enough to have survived the last year, and that is something that cannot go unsaid and unnoticed and unremarked upon as we think about the future of the economy.
