No matter what the doomsters say, the Coronavirus is not the end of the world. But, it might trigger a global economic and financial reset.While nobody really knows what the world will look like on the other side of of the coronavirus pandemic, everyone has an opinion from economists, financiers, executives, all the way to policymakers. Bloomberg asked a variety of leaders from around the world for their best guess on how our lives will be fundamentally changed. Below is a summary of some of the responses that we found interesting. The Economists: While some forecasters say a bottom is near in the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression, few expect the economy to snap back to the way it was before the pandemic.  James Galbraith: Professor of government at the University of TexasThere will be a vast tangle of unpaid debts that cannot be cleared, and—what is different from 2008 and 2009—the model of foreclosures, evictions, and repossessions to deal with them is going to be absolutely unacceptable. People sheltering at home without income are in no way responsible for their circumstances and will refuse to accept the terms of those contracts. So, the contracts will have to be suspended, and the debts cleared away, or there will be a confrontation on a vast scale. So, the whole financial system will have to be reset. This is not an ideological point but a practical necessity for reestablishing an economic system. Kathy Matsui: Chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.The pandemic has proved the extent to which we can still be effective and create value away from our office desks. For a country like Japan, where there is still a tendency to measure performance by hours spent at the office, I believe there could be important implications for gender diversity in the workplace. If Japan embraces greater flexibility in working styles, and if the unprecedented amount of time some Japanese men are currently spending at home encourages them to take on a greater share of housework, then I hope we will see more women being liberated to pursue full-time careers. These are big “ifs.” But the economic boost could be substantial. Alan Patricof: Venture capitalist and managing director of Greycroft who helped build and grow companies including Office Depot, Apple, and AudibleWe're all learning about each other as family groups. The family meal is a tradition that maybe will be restored again. There may be a kinder, better world—and I don't mean to be too schmaltzy—but I think that's a very probable outcome. Mike Corbat: Chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc.In our industry, financial activities viewed as inviolably “high client touch” are moving online by necessity. From putting letters of credit on blockchains, digitally onboarding clients, and conducting virtual roadshows for IPOs, bankers are ripping up some of the last paper trails we have left. Consumers who might have not done a lot digitally until now are engaging remotely. Many of those core activities will never go analog again. Susan Lyne: Managing partner at BBG VenturesI can't imagine companies are going to go back to spending as much on business travel. Everyone has been forced to figure out how to do business across country using Zoom or whatever video products. And there's a ton you can get done, there's no question, and it can be very intimate, in fact. I hope it’s going to have a lasting impact on things like co-parenting. That would be a beautiful thing. Peter Gleysteen: CEO of AGL Credit ManagementThere are so many unintended consequences that we don't understand yet. The markets will continue to be very volatile, because with this degree of unprecedented uncertainty, analysts and others can't really create the dimensionality around which you can create models for valuation purposes. There are just too many variables and interacting differently. They defy being modeled. James Gorman: CEO of Morgan StanleyClearly, we've figured out how to operate with much less real estate. Do I think everyone is going to be working from home? No. The mentoring, the connection, the team bonding, the brainstorming, the creativity that comes from being in groups of individuals, like-minded and not like-minded, that's how great organizations thrive. But can I see a future where part of every week, certainly part of every month, a lot of our employees will be at home? Absolutely. People have been functioning extremely well. We will have less footprint. The Executives: The travel industry won’t disappear, but it may look a lot different. Ditto for fashion, shopping malls, sports, and digital payments, to name just a few. Al Kelly: CEO of Visa IncThe new global consciousness about the migration of germs—not just within a household, but within a community, state, country, and across the world will continue to impact the way societies at large go about their daily lives. We now understand how the actions of a single person can impact literally thousands of others globally. The underappreciated role of hand-washing and being careful about what your hands touch—especially outside your home—is and will continue to be top of mind. We are rethinking how to push an elevator button, open a door, or greet a friend. And adjusting the way we shop, too—how we inspect produce, where we place our phone, how close we stand to one another in line, and even how we pay. Glenn Fogel: President and CEO of Booking Holdings Inc. and Coronavirus survivorCertain jurisdictions are going to ask you to download an app to track where you are. Because they want to know—if you've come from another country—and you turn sick, they're going to want to know who you've been close to. People may have to give up some of their privacy if they want to go to certain countries that are going to be more hesitant about letting people in.Meg Whitman: CEO of video-streaming service Quibi and former chief of EBay and Hewlett-PackardDon't you wonder whether work from home has changed forever? I think it may have. We've all learned how to do this. I've been going into an office for 40 years, and all the sudden I've had to figure this out. Which, you know, it's been pretty easy. I happen to be a tech exec, but still. It's pretty efficient. I wonder if this will change how families communicate. Every weekend now we're on with both my husband's family and my family for an hour and a half, doing a Zoom call. We never did that before! Jon Wertheim: Executive editor of Sports IllustratedUsually in times of crisis, sports bring us together. Whether it's 9/11 or Katrina or a war, sports have this unifying quality. In this case, I can't think of anything worse than sports. You've got this communicable infectious disease; you've got this terrible virus. What could be worse than putting 60,000 people in one place and telling them to all stand in tight quarters? It's really problematic. The big question is how creative are sports willing to get? Sports have really been moving toward the viewer at home, the viewer on their phone and away from the arena. Media rights matter more than ever. Maybe this will accelerate. But even if there are no fans in the stands, you've got players, officials, someone's got to operate the camera, someone's got to be in the broadcast truck. Even without selling a single ticket, you're still talking about hundreds and hundreds of people on the ground. The threshold for when is it healthy enough, and when are we economically desperate enough, is going to be really interesting to monitor. Eric Yuan: CEO of Zoom Video Communications Inc.After this crisis, the way we work will be very, very different. To work from home might become very common. Now is like a stress test to see if working from home works or not. I think it does to some extent. Also, for Zoom, the boundary between the consumer use case and business use case is not very clear anymore. We need to rethink how on the one hand, we keep serving our big business customers and—given there are so many consumer use cases—make sure we balance that and really focus on privacy and really focus on security. The Policymakers: While the virus has emboldened nationalist politicians, it’s also sparking hope among some policy wonks that global leaders will be reminded how important it is to work together. More collaboration would be good news for some of the world’s most daunting challenges, everything from fighting climate change to strengthening supply chains. Stanley McChrystal: Retired four-star U.S. Army general who is overseeing Boston's response to the virusThe pandemic stresses us. It reminds us that we are connected. It reminds us that global supply chains, personal relationships, everything is connected. We don't win alone. We don't even win as small groups or nations. We win more broadly than that. We start to think a little more broadly about problems like global warming, like income inequality, and other things that dog society. Our way of working is going to be different. It was sort of a shock to a lot of organizations and people to have to work from home. But a lot of people are finding that they can stay connected. Businesses are going to migrate to a new normal that's sort of a hybrid from what we used to be. We won't do away with offices entirely, but we're going to do a lot more connected. It's going to widen our reach. The most aggressively networked organizations, whether military or businesses or governments, are going to come out really well. Robert Reich: Secretary of labor for President Bill ClintonI hope I'm not looking at it through rose-colored glasses, but it's possible we may understand that at least with regard to minimum safety nets, and minimum health care, we need to do much more for our country and each other than we are doing now. We can't ever afford to find ourselves so unprepared and lacking in the basics. The richest country in the world can't even make sure all its people are safe. That makes no sense. Americans as a whole are gaining a deeper appreciation of how important government is. When government does not really function as it should, most of the time for most of us it's just an irritation. Now it's a matter of life and death. That changes the calculation. It changes the stakes. Jean-Claude Trichet: Former president of the European Central BankA lesson of the crisis would be to increase resilience of all economies and entities, public and private, and prepare for what we’re seeing now—namely, a sudden stop of part of both production and demand in many economies of the world. We shouldn’t be depending on only one source for any particular service or manufactured good just because it keeps down costs. The idea of risk management and risk diversification at the level of the planet will be a key part of the concept of sustainable globalization. Anne Krueger: Former IMF officialThere is a compelling case for international cooperation and coordination in addressing the crisis and keeping its devastation to a minimum. If that coordination takes place and is successful, it could provide the basis for the next stage of international cooperation, integration, and economic growth. If, however, many countries choose to insulate themselves from the rest of the world and fail to act with others, the crisis will last longer and the chances for increased nationalism and diminished integration will greatly increase to the detriment of the entire world.Source: Bloomberg May 12, 2020

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