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now is a good time i think to talk about the future um because a lot's being written and talked about what the impact of this experience might be uh in many different regards but i want to focus on on two things first beyond the human behavioral perspective and also from an economic perspective both of which are linked because human behavior shifts economies clearly but um how do you how do you feel about the future what are your what are your thoughts well uh max let me just add to you said the two are connected uh human psychology and and the economy actually if you think about it they're one and the same because what is an economy it's a group of people who get together and interact on in economic transactions and markets there's nothing to the market or to the economy other than people and people make individual decisions and their collective decisions uh move the market and the economy um so you know the interesting question is where are we going to be in the future as you know my last memo april 14th was entitled knowledge of the future and i like oxymorons and i think that's an oxymoron because we don't know anything about the future we live normally by understanding the past and extrapolating it into the future but it doesn't always apply um and in this case we've had unique events we've had one of the greatest pandemics in history one of the worst economies in history the biggest uh stimulus package in history the biggest price the kind of oil prices in history so if you if if you have all these superlatives and you've never seen anything like this before uh one of the things i say is if you can't if you haven't seen something before you can't say you know how it's going to turn out and i think that's true of of where we stand today but of course we have to hypothesize about the future and i'm willing to do that um i believe that when this is over when we have a testing for immunity and testing for the disease and when we have vaccine and the vaccine works and and uh it can prevent people from getting um the uh disease and uh it prevents it from being handed on um i think things will go largely back to normal now one of the characteristics of these crises that i've been through is people say oh life has changed forever but one of my heroes john kenneth gobbray says that one of the outstanding characteristics of the financial markets is shortness of memory and you know people say that's it i'll never take risk again i'll never go into the market again it's just the way to lose money when the market's been up a few years and people look around and see their friends make money uh they tend to go back into the market and take risk again likewise in most ways i think our behavior will revert to what it was right now it may be hard for some people to believe they'll ever get on a plane again or stay in a hotel again or take a cruise again or go to a sporting event or a concert or a movie and eat in a restaurant and and so forth but they will and you know the question is how long it'll take to come back and the game i play with myself is i i think about different industries and i say okay two years from now april of 2022 uh what will be going on uh for example in uh hotels and in hotels two years from now assuming that the virus is under control and we have an effective vaccine i think that um you know business travel will be uh 90 back to where it was in 2019 and holiday travel will be 70 or 80 percent now there'll be some people who want to be over cautious and don't go back but but i think most will um uh you might think that oh you know never nobody's ever going to step foot on a cruise ship again because those we have the image of those cruise ships that were caught offshore and people sickening uh and so forth no port would take them but the truth is that the cruise ship companies will uh offer 50 off sales and free drinks and people will go back but so i would think that in 2022 uh 60 of the business that was done in 19 will be done again so in some cases a lot in some cases still uh having an after effect the important question would be something like um like office space we're all working from home we're getting our work done uh i don't think it's as as enjoyable as interacting with my colleagues and i don't think it's quite as creative because i think when we sit in a room together and and the american term is spitball uh we throw ideas back and forth i think we we create more um but on the other hand you know the companies are going to see that people worked okay from home and maybe they'll say okay you group over there you come in half the week that other group they come in the other half of the week so we only need half the office space and um you know it may be a while before the before people get as sanguine about the outlook for commercial real estate now when you talk about commercial real estate you want to include retail and retail looks like it's in a downdraft um that'll never be uh erased the the occupancy of retail space was already in decline and the malls were showing declining custom uh and this of course brought it to zero and and so you you have a um an exacerbating exogenous factor at a time of uh of declining systemic growth and it's going to be tough for retail real estate i think that's that's true there's there's there are some industries clearly that were already in decline and one of the things that recessions and crises do is to accelerate existing trends so i you know i i would i would um i would tend to agree with that and we shouldn't underestimate the power of free drinks on cruises either so that could something that pulls people back to the sea you
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