President Donald Trump held a call with top Wall Street executives this week, and it was a complete “sh*t show” according to one of them. In fact, it went so disastrously for Trump that he should abandon the idea of re-opening the economy so soon.
Trump is desperate to reopen the economy as quickly as possible regardless of the risk posed by the coronavirus pandemic that could see a resurgence after people go back to work.
Social distancing and stay-at-home policies are working to flatten the curve and see us through this crisis. But more time is needed to make sure Americans are safe. Sending them back to work could endanger public health and hurt the economy even more.
As part of his desperation, Trump shouted out the names of various companies whose executives he insisted would be on the call. The problem is, according to Politico reporter Ben White, that many executives had no clue they would even be on it.
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“The whole thing was a bit of a disaster, the way they announced this on Tuesday,” White began, “read a lot of corporate CEO names that had no idea they were a part of this effort to reopen the economy, didn’t give anybody really time to plan to be on these calls. Among the Wall Street executives, a lot of them had earnings yesterday and couldn’t be on the call. One JP Morgan executive tried for 20 minutes to get in and couldn’t.”
Indeed, as he explained in his report:
Many of the bankers said they knew nothing about the call until late Tuesday night. Several had quarterly earnings calls this morning that directly conflicted with the timing of the White House summons.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon couldn’t be on the call because of earnings. Neither could JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, though not because of earnings. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan was able to dial in right after his earnings call ended.”
And while Trump undoubtedly hoped executives would agree with his plan to reopen the economy right away, he ended up not getting their support. While Trump is putting profit and stocks first, the executives were more concerned about their workers feeling safe and being healthy.
“What they’re telling the president is, yes, of course we want the economy reopened,” White said. “We want businesses to start up again. But we cannot do that, our employees will not feel safe until the testing regime is much more widespread, until people don’t feel like they’re going out to be guinea pigs to get the virus. There’s simply no way to do it that way. Make people feel safe. Make business owners feel like demand is going to be there and then you can start to reopen. So the whole thing was slapdash in the way it was set up, and slapdash in the way it was executed and I think Trump heard a lot of things maybe he didn’t want to hear.”
Here’s the video via YouTube:
So, if Trump really wants to re-open the nation for business, he needs to do the job people are demanding he do. There is still not enough testing and people do not feel safe enough to resume normal activities. Over 26,000 Americans have died and more than 600,000 have been infected. The risk is simply too high right now.
One executive trashed the call as a “sh*t show” while one who had survived the coronavirus deflected Trump’s awkward praise.
But the executives agree that Trump needs to stop obsessing over the economy and start focusing on the American people.
“He’s got to stop talking about turning the economy back on and start talking about making people feel safe, things that are happening around testing and the health care system,” an executive said. “That’s the only way you will really get the economy reopened over a period of time.”
The question is, will Trump actually listen to them?
Featured image via screen capture
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