ROI Editor on the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in NJ

Steve Adubato speaks with Tom Bergeron, Editor & Chief Content Officer, ROI-NJ, about the significant economic impact of the COVID-19 public health crisis on the state of New Jersey and the role of the state and federal government during a public health crisis.

4/4/2020 #402

Excerpt:

"Welcome to a very special edition of State of Affairs I’m Steve Adubato we are in fact taping this program on march 20th it'll be seen after that I want to make it clear we're not the news we're not CNN we're not NJTV news we're not the folks you're going to get the most up-to-date information from but we are the folks here at state of affairs together with our colleagues here at east main media studios in little falls jersey where we are in fact taping with a skeleton but very brave and proud and strong crew here trying to make sense longer term what does this all mean so the interviews that we're about to conduct are with people who aren't just simply covering the coronavirus story but thinking about it from a variety of levels our our first guest I’m going to introduce is tom Bergeron he is the editor and chief content officer at ROI NJ most importantly tom as we speak right now you and your family doing okay? We're all good we're hanging in there like everybody else taking precautions trying to figure out the best way to get through this and you know things are changing by the day and the hour. And obviously speaking of being safe social distancing requires a remote Skype other forms of interviews and we're on blue jeans just want to acknowledge that there are all kinds of ways people are communicating I’m not sure that tom's wearing his jeans jokes are inappropriate right. Yeah I was thrilled when you said blue jeans that's our standard--[laughter] working apparel so all good. Let me try this tom every day every minute every hour the numbers are changing in terms of and numbers are people however if we take a step back and ask what do you believe the most significant economic longer-term impact could be likely to be if this goes on for the next couple of months what could it be on the state of new jersey particularly as it relates to business, employment et cetera. Well look obviously when when we'll come out of this on the other side I think it's fair to say that there's going to be some unemployment numbers up there's going to be some businesses that don't quite make it through and and from a lot of the business leaders that I’ve been talking to there's a lot of uncertainty and we can get to that for a second but the the people that are in the most trouble now are you know look we've had a great run with the economy for five ten years now and people who weren't in the best position had been..."