Michael Every's pessimistic reports on the global economy have seen him labelled an alarmist in previous interviews on The Country - and that was before Covid-19.
Today, Rabobank's head of financial markets research Asia-Pacific gave Jamie Mackay his frank account of whether believed the world could recover from this pandemic and
Covid 19 coronavirus: Michael Every on how the global economy can recover
On a global basis, if we're talking about everyone all around the world, we don't get out of this until we deal with the virus. Everything else is a secondary issue.
Can we deal with the virus? Overnight, we've had the US announcing what they're calling Operation Warp Speed, which is going to be a Manhattan-style project to link pharma companies and the military, and the government funding it to try to find a virus vaccine by the end of the year.
That is good news, because we need all the big guns, all the big brains and all the big bucks coming together to try to work out how we're going to deal with this. I'm optimistic that if we get enough of them together, we might - just might - get lucky.
But there's no guarantee in life. We don't have a vaccine for lots and lots of other viruses that we long to get rid of. Just because you're trying hard doesn't mean you will necessarily succeed.
So if we can get rid of the virus with a vaccine, or there's a massive increase in testing to the point where everyone can be tested almost instantaneously, until you get some combination of those two working at a global scale everywhere, you can't go back to normal - and we're nowhere near that.
We are many, many, many months away from achieving those two outcomes - if we ever achieve them - in terms of achieving an actual vaccine cure of prevention, rather than just mitigation.
Nonetheless, you don't have to be much of an economist to see how much damage the lockdown has done and how much damage people being nervous about catching this virus is going to continue to do through voluntary social distancing. Where people just don't mix, don't socialise, don't go out, don't spend and companies don't invest as a result.
So, in response, we're seeing things I have openly talked about to New Zealand crowds in the past. As I said in 2017, if we actually ended up with a global downturn, central banks [would] basically turn into cash machines, or ATMs for the government.
So the government would say, "Right, interest rates are basically zero now forever, we're going to borrow from the central bank and we're just going to spend as much as we possibly can to try and refloat the economy" and even in conservative New Zealand you are seeing that.
Interest rates of zero are not going to go in the air for a very, very, very, very long time and the government is continuing to play a larger and larger role in the economy - helped by the RBNZ, which is the right thing to do locally and it's the right thing to do internationally. But it completely rewrites all the rules of the game.
How you understand business and markets and trading is going to change irrevocably because it's not longer about supply and demand on a global scale - it's about what bureaucrats sitting somewhere in an office decide is important for the economy.
It's about what politicians decide is important for national security and that is going to have massive implications, even if one includes your food and agri sector.
• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website
So that's a very gloomy backdrop, as I said we don't get out of it until we deal with the virus and there is some good news there today potentially - at least facing in the right direction ... but the economy has been completely upended, there's no real indication of when we get out of that particular tunnel.
If we do get out of it, we get out of it in completely different shape to how we went into it with bureaucrats running things in a way in which they haven't done for a generation or more, and internationally tensions are going to escalate to a worrying level.
Mackay: I'm escalating my tensions to a worrying level. I want to if I can, try and finish on a bit of a positive because obviously this economic downturn is making the GFC look like a walk in the park. It's going to be the equal or, who knows - greater than the Great Depression - but New Zealand as a high-end, high-quality food producer - surely, if anyone's in a position to maybe get out of this with some skin left, it might be New Zealand. Tell me some good news, Michael.
Every: We're all deep, deep in a pit. There are layers of bodies in that pit and New Zealand's right at the top. You're in a very enviable position within what is a very bad scenario.
So none of us want to be here and yet some countries are still digging and New Zealand [is] clambering towards the surface and can just see the first little rays of sunshine.
If you're worried about your outlook, imagine what it's like for any number of countries in Africa or South Asia, thinking, goodness me, we're going to have tens, if not hundreds of millions of people potentially going hungry - imagine what that does for stability.
You're a country with too much food to sell, which is an incredibly different situation to be in. Yes, obviously that presents problems, but in the relative scheme of things, again, you are absolutely winners.
The biggest issues that businesses in New Zealand, agribusinesses are going to have to deal with is, what is the re-ordered world going to look like?
The re-ordered economy ... where interest rates are low, currencies are very volatile, central banks are saying they're going to get involved in national security along with governments.
What does that mean for your previous models? And one thing I can assure you is it doesn't mean business as usual. It doesn't mean just keep pumping out products and selling them to China.
If you wanted to pick a country to be in at the moment in what is a tremendously difficult situation for everybody and an absolute tragedy for a huge swathe of mankind - you would want to be in New Zealand.