Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will be joining a Brookings Institution webinar on Thursday to discuss the economic fallout from the coronavirus and the Fed’s myriad of recent policy actions:
- What: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on COVID-19 and the economy
- When: Thursday, April 9, at 10-10:30am EDT
- How: You can register here
You can also submit a question for Jerome Powell when registering or via Twitter. Brookings, another DC-based think tank, will later post a recording of the webinar, if 10am EDT isn’t a convenient time for you.
Update: You can watch the webinar or listening to the audio here and the full transcript of Powell’s remarks are available here.
From Powell’s prepared: “All of us are affected, but the burdens are falling most heavily on those least able to carry them. It is worth remembering that the measures we are taking to contain the virus represent an essential investment in our individual and collective health. As a society, we should do everything we can to provide relief to those who are suffering for the public good.” He’s right, and it’s a subtle push for Congress to do more.
And a from his Q&A with moderator David Wessel of Brookings (see min. 23:17): “We need to have a plan, nationally, for reopening the economy, what we all want it to happen as quickly as possible. We all want to avoid a false start, where we partially reopen and that results in a spike in coronavirus cases, and then we have to go back again to go to square one. We all want to avoid that.” Let’s avoid shooting ourselves in the foot by prematurely trying to reopen the economy and exacerbating the public health crisis