You had one job, governments!

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us //link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/20016887.41690/aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9ib3Bpbmlvbg/582c8673566a94262a8b49bdBc9f7e2e8 This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Leviathan of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Governments should remember their [primary role is to protect citizens](. - Contact-tracing tech should [remember to protect our privacy](. - Markets should remember [quarantine may not be a one-and-done]( thing. - Oil traders should remember the [OPEC deal won’t revive oil demand](. Still trying to get a handle on this. Photographer: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images We’ll Need a Better Leviathan Around the world, the governments responding best to the Covid-19 pandemic are neither the biggest nor the most authoritarian. They’re just the smartest and nimblest. That list quite painfully does not include the U.S., U.K., Italy and Spain, to name a few of the most glaring examples. It does include several Asian governments, write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, where in recent years the powers that be have embraced the Hobbesian idea that [governments have ONE JOB, and that is to protect their citizens](. In the West, meanwhile, Germany stands more or less alone in this regard. [Oh, and also Greece](, notes Ferdinando Giugliano. Who saw that coming? Here in the U.S. of A., the current epicenter of the crisis, President Donald Trump not only wasted a weeks-long head start on fighting the disease, but also [still, incredibly, lacks a plan for what to do next](, notes Jonathan Bernstein. And he is just the end result of decades of ideological assault on the purpose, function and efficiency of government. We’re still trying to [kill the Postal Service]( and can’t disburse stimulus money quickly because our [computers are too old](. America isn’t alone, of course, but it and other Western countries need “a wholesale program of modernization in government and a new theory of government to accompany it,” John and Adrian write, to meet this and future challenges. Otherwise the center of global gravity will keep shifting back to the East. Read the [whole thing](. Protecting citizens isn’t just about fighting viruses. Covid-19 both [feeds on and worsens inequalities in the U.S. and around the world](, writes Andreas Kluth. They’re too busy trying to survive right now, but people suffering from these inequalities will remember this awful time. If governments don’t address these underlying problems, then they can expect increasingly hostile responses from the citizens they fail. The post-financial-crisis Tea Party will look like, well, a tea party in comparison. Further Coronavirus-Impact Reading: With reliable information now a matter of life or death for many, [traditional news outlets may regain prominence](. — Pankaj Mishra We’ll Need to Trust Big Tech One of the few ways we can safely emerge from our coronavirus cocoons en masse is with the kind of testing and contact-tracing some of those aforementioned Asian governments have used. The U.S. still lacks the testing part of that equation. But this weekend Apple Inc. and Google announced they’re [teaming up on a contact-tracing app]( that protects privacy. As Tae Kim notes, this is genuinely good news. Whether we like it or not, such intrusions will increasingly be part of our lives, and [we must be able to trust those running it](, from Big Tech to Big Broth… er, Government, writes Tim O’Brien. It has echoes of those post-9/11 days and the Patriot Act and freedoms we traded for safety, some of which we never quite got back. But that’s the Leviathan, baby! We’ll Need Another Cursed Monkey’s Paw Stock markets lately haven’t been mulling such lofty ideas. Their only question seems to be: Are we there yet? And the answer seems to be: Close enough! The trouble is, writes Mohamed El-Erian, [they’re thinking this is all a one-and-done deal](: We get one round of quarantines, one huge round of stimulus to help the economy, and then everything will start getting back to normal, thank you, goodbye. Investors must brace for the possibility of multiple rounds of misery, and everybody must consider what governments can do next, but with more limited resources. We should also beware we’re [repeating the same cursed monkey’s paw deal we made]( during the financial crisis, warns John Authers: We’re shoveling money to Wall Street in a way that will further pervert markets and invite political backlash. Meanwhile, there are companies whose [bankruptcies could have a cascading effect]( through the rest of the economy, writes Peter Orszag. We’ve got to prop them up, unpopular as it may be. Homeowner bailouts were the politically unpopular thing that [sparked]( the aforementioned Tea Party during the previous financial crisis. Fun fact: [We may have to bail them out again](! Danielle DiMartino Booth explains how housing prices are perfectly set up to collapse beneath the coming economic tsunami. And all of this [will devastate small towns]( such as Francis Wilkinson’s Nyack, New York. If they can’t rely on Big Government, then their survival will depend on the locals’ sense of civic duty. We’ll Need Another Oil Deal Stocks were [not so bouncy]( today, however, despite a much-hyped weekend deal Trump made with OPEC+ to cut oil production and support oil prices. Despite Trump’s efforts to [tweet]( them higher, oil prices stubbornly refused to play along. Why, it’s almost as if everybody in the market read Julian Lee’s observation that the [oil-war cease-fire is as flimsy as the prison-grade toilet paper]( we’re all being forced to use these days. Coronavirus is crushing demand for oil, and production will soon be cut simply because the world will run out of places to store the stuff. [Anybody out there gobbling up fracker stocks]( on this deal is in for a nasty surprise, warns Liam Denning. Telltale Charts Governments [started treating debt deferentially in the tax code]( in the year of the Spanish Flu, notes Andy Mukherjee. Little wonder global debt keeps rising to unsustainable levels. The current pandemic is an opportunity to finally change this. As you may already have learned by studying the evidence on your dining-room table, [this is a boom time for puzzles](, writes Sarah Green Carmichael. Further Reading Just when [Bob Iger thought he was out](, coronavirus pulled him back in. — Tara Lachapelle All of [Africa needs debt relief]( to fight the pandemic. — Abiy Ahmed Suddenly, Masayoshi [Son’s impatience is not a virtue]( for SoftBank. — Tim Culpan Trump doesn’t have the [constitutional power to stop the election](. — Cass Sunstein Telling [churches they aren’t essential enough]( to open gets on dicey legal ground. — Stephen Carter From plague doctors to the Beatles, a visual [history of the medical face mask](. — Virginia Postrel Quarantine brainteaser: [solving a corner-cut chessboard](. — Scott Duke Kominers ICYMI Trump claimed [he alone could reopen]( the economy. Bernie [Sanders endorsed Joe Biden](. Maybe [ventilators are part of the problem](. Kickers Uganda’s 75-year-old president [releases a quarantine workout video](. (h/t Zoe DeStories) Neanderthals [may have had math skills](. (h/t Scott Kominers) Wildlife is [reclaiming Yosemite National Park](. The office [dress code should never return](. Note: Please send workout videos and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Twitter]( and [Facebook](.  Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](.  You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022