Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital and former White House communications director, has an optimistic view of the markets going forward despite the headwinds of the COVID-19 outbreak and President Trump's handling of the health crisis.
"We like the market here," Scaramucci told Cheddar on Monday. "I think what happened last week, frankly, is the president's press conferences unnerved a lot of people in the market because this is a scientific issue, this is a clinical issue."
Trump addressed the crisis during a televised press conference on Wednesday where he praised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and announced that Vice President Mike Pence would be taking point on all communications related to the coronavirus. However, the markets ended the week with its worst losses since the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
Scaramucci agreed with the president’s calm take on the outbreak, saying, "It's a lot like what happens in the cockpit when you're flying around in a plane, right? You don't want the guy coming on and saying 'oh my god we're hitting turbulence we're all gonna die.'"
However, he added, "The flipside is you want the information, and you want it done in a way that's digestible. And I think what the president did, frankly, he's very focused on markets, he thought by saying that it was contained or a hoax or some of the stuff he said at the end of last week he thought that would calm down markets, it had the absolute opposite effect."
On Friday, the president took the stage at a rally in South Carolina where he called the spreading coronavirus disease a "new hoax," although he later clarified the term, saying he meant Democrats would try to blame him for the outbreak.
Scaramucci speculated the vice president likely got the nod to head the coronavirus task force because of the value president places on loyalty, asserting that Trump likely chose Pence because "there's literally no daylight between these guys."
"One of the weaknesses the president has is that he wants all the spotlights on the stage to be on him, but he would be better served in this situation, if he really wants to help out the marketplace: put the experts in front, take a backseat, allow the information to be disseminated," the former communications director said. "Having the information that's being let out of the government-controlled by Vice President Pence, I think, is a very bad strategy in a western democracy."
Despite these criticisms, he said he believes the markets will stabilize in the coming weeks as a strategy for containing the disease becomes clearer.
"Could you have another 10 or 15 percent correction in the markets based on bad information, black or white swans? No question about that," he admitted, stating that he believed the lack of liquidity in the markets was an underlying problem even outside of the coronavirus-related issues. But, Scaramucci also predicted that the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world will coordinate to address the issue of liquid capital. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell indicated on Friday that the regulatory body will act "as appropriate to support the economy."
Scaramucci, who briefly worked in the Trump administration but has since become a vocal critic, also weighed in on the Democratic presidential primary race. He says he supports former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's bid for the Democratic nomination and believes the billionaire candidate could do very well on Super Tuesday.
When asked, Scaramucci refused to reveal if he would support a Senator Bernie Sanders candidacy, if he wins the nomination, but said, "I certainly don't like Bernie Sanders' policies, but I don't see him as a systemic danger to the democracy and to institutions of the American government that President Trump has presented."
