One major agency stands above the others for its preparedness and swift action during the coronavirus crisis: the Federal Reserve. jbarro explains why
Fed chair Jerome Powell. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images As other countries have looked enviously at South Korea’s effective response to the coronavirus crisis, we keep hearing that that country had the advantage of a dry run: In 2015, South Korea faced an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a coronavirus that is more deadly but less contagious than the one we’re fighting now.
Of course, this crisis is mostly outside the Fed’s zone of responsibility and so its efforts can only go so far. The Fed can’t kill the virus. It also can’t stop the severe economic disruptions that come from the extensive shutdowns of business and social activity caused by virus-fighting measures. What the Fed can do, and has done, is to prevent the epidemic from causing a financial crisis, which would in turn cause an additional shock to the economy at large.
The Fed directly controls interest rates on short-term government debt, but if banks and other market participants are reluctant to lend because the economic outlook is shaky, lower rates won’t necessarily flow through as lower costs or credit availability to borrowers.
All of this active market participation from the Fed would once have been wildly controversial. Indeed, it was wildly controversial when the Fed brought out some of these tools in the 2008 crash and the following years. Conservatives complained the Fed would spark rampant inflation by buying so many assets and that it was “picking winners and losers” by easing the credit markets instead of letting more weak companies go bankrupt.
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