Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Friday the central bank had stretched the limits of its authority with unusually aggressive actions to help alleviate the economic suffering from the coronavirus shutdown.
“We crossed a lot of red lines that had not been crossed before,” said Powell during an online event hosted by Princeton University.
“I’m very comfortable that this is that situation in which you do that, and then, you figure it out afterward,” he added.
Powell said the coronavirus pandemic and the economic shutdown are “an emergency of a nature that we haven’t really seen before” and that if the Fed had not taken extra steps to bolster the economy, “it would be very hard to explain to the public why we would hold back from doing that.”
At another point during the interview, however, Powell told moderator Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman, that the bank’s unique independence “really means that we need to stay in our lane and just do those things that Congress assigns us to do.”
Earlier in May, Powell reaffirmed that the central bank is committed to using all of its resources and tools to help the economy weather the coronavirus pandemic.
