Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that the economic recovery following the COVID-19 coronavirus-induced shutdown “can be robust.”
Powell spoke during a webinar for the Brookings Institution the same morning that the Fed announced a new $2.3 trillion financing initiative directed at small and larger businesses as well as households and state and local governments.
“At the Fed, we are doing all we can to help shepherd the economy through this difficult time,” he said in prepared remarks. “When the spread of the virus is under control, businesses will reopen, and people will come back to work. There is every reason to believe that the economic rebound, when it comes, can be robust.”
Powell pointed out that the economy has been strong before prevention efforts aimed at halting the coronavirus spread put a large share of the U.S. productive capacity offline.
President Donald Trump is planning to launch a second coronavirus task force that focuses on his administration’s response to the economic devastation caused by the pandemic. The second task force will include Trump’s new chief of staff Mark Meadows, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, NBC reported.
Kevin Breuninger and Christina Wilkie for CNBC:
Trump could announce the second task force as soon as this week.
The new group would be formed alongside the existing COVID-19 task force, which is led by Vice President Mike Pence and includes health experts such as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and response coordinator Deborah Birx.
Earlier this week, conservative economist Stephen Moore gave CNBC further details on a commission or task force he said was being envisioned by the White House, focused on re-opening the economy. “The idea would be getting leading authorities, world renowned business people, economists, experts to come up with ideas about steps that could be taken to reopen the economy.” Moore added, “I think what’s being envisioned is a totally independent group that wouldn’t be funded and organized like a presidential commission, but instead would be more informal, and able to work more quickly and efficiently.”
Moore suggested that conservative economist Art Laffer, who recently received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump, be tapped to lead the commission.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is right and we’re in for a robust recovery ASAP!
“Robust,” as in robustly leveraged. The R’s are embracing MMT.
It’s sad, embarrassing and simply irresponsible. The D’s have loved it for awhile
No responsible individual or family, would herald these methods…nor would they be allowed to do so. I’d like you to met the IRS, if/when you do.
No one is debt free when living within/under a leverage (to the f’g hilt) govt.
Why do you say repubs are recently embracing government prop-up of private industry? Repubs have been proven time and again to be the biggest piglets at the government teat since the Civil War. They have merely covered up their graft with patriotic flag waving.
Of course back then repubs were progressives. Lincoln was viewed as a radical liberal, assassinated by a conservative. Inevitably, the Southern Coalition took over the party, injecting populist social control themes to the campaign rhetoric while increasingly allowing corporate malfeasance. It always was the corporations controlling the parties, but in the last few decades media deregulation has unleashed massive smokescreens of foreign and domestic misinformation. Hence the actions of the party that the bases fervently support are seldom aligned with the rhetoric the people are fed. It’s all show biz entertainment that feeds rabid uninformed voters, and of course builds distrust and division. Big companies let the distracted voters fight while they manipulate the congressional puppets on both side of the aisle. The actions of the corporations cannot be distinguished from one another either — take Microsoft and Apple, for example. Both outsource. Both pushed for lax tax laws that allowed them to route profits through many international shell companies. Both demand more H1N workers. Both deliver products using defacto monopolistic methods. Both claim to support the common man while paying executives insane compensation. Both play Wall Street games, buying back stock primarily to enrich the executives. Two different flavors of Kool Aid. Same non-democratic practices.
Now it is the dems who tax and spend, mostly on domestic needs, fully acknowledging the need for representative government to both help and oversee the excesses of the private sector. Repubs deficit spend, bail out their corporate owners, and blow billions on foreign wars, attempts at imperialism, while claiming debts don’t matter. Both sides need to shape up, because the Putin trolls have effectively driven a wedge between each side of Kool Aid drinkers. Now the US can’t agree tondo anything together.
more fasscist double-speak from the inventors of oligarchy.
M<ay all the republcans self-infect and die a thousand bhorrible deaths.
Then we can tramp the dirt down for good.