Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that he wants to see a plan for reopening the economy, but he wants to ensure it doesn’t happen too soon and allows the coronavirus to take hold again.
“I do think itâs time to have a serious public conversation and a lot of analysis” about reopening, Powell said during a virtual briefing with the Brookings Institution on Thursday. “We need to have a plan, nationally, for reopening the economy.”
“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,” he said.
Earlier on Thursday, the Federal Reserve said it would provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to bolster the economy by ensuring credit flows to households, small and midsized businesses, and state and local governments.
