COVID-19 Video Conversations

Michele Wucker has been in high demand for commentary on why so many pandemic warnings went unheeded and what we need to look for coming down the road including debt crisis. Here’s a compilation of recent video appearances.

Leadership Insights Episode 024
Brough Leadership Institute (South Africa)
Conversation with Andy Brough
July 8, 2020

An Insolvent World: Can We Avoid a Global Debt Crisis?
UN Global Compact Leadership Summit
Panel with Navid Hanif, Director of Financing for Sustainable Development Office United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA); Shari Spiegel, Chief of Policy Analysis & Development Branch, UN DESA), and Sebastian Grund, Harvard Law School
June 15, 2020

Transcending the Crisis
CEO Roundtable and Context of Things
Whitaker Raymond in Conversation with Michele Wucker
May 8, 2020


Is COVID-19 a ‘Gray Rhino’ Event?
Wildtype Media/Asian Scientist Magazine (Singapore)
Michele Wucker interviewed by Juliana Chan
May 22, 2020

Leadership Through and Beyond the Crisis
Micro Strategies
Michele Wucker in conversation with Lisa Nemeth Cavanaugh and Beverly Geiger
Micro Strategies
May 8, 2020

Twenty Minutes from the Future: Gray Rhinos and our Future
ImpactsCool (Italy)
Christina Pozzi in conversation with Michele Wucker
May 26, 2020


The covid-19 pandemic is not a Black Swan but a Gray Rhino: latest development of the pandemic in Europe and US 
Nottingham University Business School (China/UK)
A Dialogue with Michele Geraci, former Undersecretary of Finance for Economic Development for Italy
May 14th, 2020

Fireside Chat with Champions
A conversation with Deepak Pareek (India)
May 25, 2020


Black Swans, Gray Rhinos, and Tigers..Oh My with Michele Wucker
RCM Alternatives Derivatives Podcast with Jeff Malec
May 28, 2020

Global HR Forum (Seoul)

Video from my comments at the Global HR Forum in Seoul, South Korea, November 2, 2011, on a panel “Are We Headed Towards Another Global Economic Crisis?” with Professor Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University, Professor Weiping Huang of Renmin University of China, and Moderator Seunghoon Lee, Professor Emeritus, Division of Economics, Seoul National University

(My comments begin at 53:20) The short answer is no -we’re not in another global economic crisis because we never left the one we already have been in.

CNBC Worldwide Exchange on Greece

February 13, 2012 -As violence erupted in Greece, I guest-hosted CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange talking about economic policy challenges. Watch the video by clicking on the image below:

Michele Wucker on CNBC Worldwide Exchange

Europe’s Debt Crisis: CNBC Video and Commentary

I’ve been arguing that Europe needs an orderly debt restructuring for Greece to avoid much worse consequences.  There’s video below of my guest host appearance on CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange with Nicole Lapin May 23, 2011, discussing the challenges facing Europe as it struggles with Greece’s debt crisis.

A CNBC follow-up article, “Will Eurobonding Save the Day?” further discussed a proposal which I support -originally made by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel- to pool European debt into a more liquid Euro-bond. Actually, it would involve two kinds of Euro-bonds: senior “Blue bonds” representing debt under 60% of each nation’s GDP, and junior “Red bonds,” for higher amounts, which would trade at much higher yields reflecting the increased risk.  The Bretton Woods Project also has cited my argument for an orderly pre-emptive default in a June 13 article, “IMF’s European Austerity Drive Goes On Despite Failures and Protests

Chronicle of a Debt Foretold

Today’s debt crises among European sovereigns and US underwater mortgage holders both have much in common with a similar chronicle of debt foretold in Argentina a decade ago: the answer that involves the least amount of pain is a swift restructuring. In “Chronicle of a Debt Foretold,” a new paper for the World Economic Roundtable, organized jointly by the World Policy Institute and the Economic Growth Program of the New America Foundation, I argue that the answer is similar to the stitch in time that was proposed for Argentina, on which policy makers failed to act, modeled on the Brady Plan debt restructurings that resolved the 1980s sovereign debt crisis. We need a new Brady Plan for both the troubled European sovereign debtors, and for US underwater mortgages, before we lose another decade, as we did in the 1980s.