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My Chat with Mr. Big …

Two men look out the window from One World Trade Center
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
July 13, 2021

A short lifetime ago, back in the earliest days of the pandemic, and around the time that Tom Hanks announced he had Covid-19 and the N.B.A. upended its 2020 season, I started talking to one of the most powerful financial minds on Wall Street, a leader in every sense of the word. For the purpose of this article, and for future emails, I will to refer to him as Mr. Big, which sums him up pretty nicely. I will be interviewing Mr. Big about the most important issues on Wall Street, from time to time, over the coming months. (For those of you who enjoyed my interview last week with Jamie Dimon, all I will say is that he is not Mr. Big, although he is a very important person on Wall Street. But no more hints. Sorry.)

During those early weeks and months of our conversations, I was struck by the impressive balance he was able to strike between abject fear and calm confidence. And I was entranced by Mr. Big’s analysis of the virus—of the need for I.C.U. beds and incubators—and the second-order effects it might have on Wall Street. There was no question that the pandemic was wreaking havoc across the country, testing our healthcare system and our economy in horrific and unexpected ways. How could the most powerful and richest country on Earth have been so woefully unprepared for the pandemic, and then, once it was upon us, how could we have handled its deadly repercussions so poorly?