It blunts the systemic edge of the crisis, but it takes the pressure off the Senate.
What you're not hearing about the Fed's new $2.3 trillion lending program
Thursday, April 9, 2020
This isn't 2008: this time, the Fed is putting foam on the runway before the plane crashes.
Update to Strategic View
Powell cleverly announced the Fed’s $2.3 lending facility a half-second before another record jobless claims number was reported. There’s very little new beyond what was already announced on September 23, but now the programs are funded by Congress’s top-up of the Treasury Exchange Stabilization Fund. But Powell’s pin-point timing focuses markets on a more consequential timing issue: this is the first recession in which such monetary relief – we don’t like to call it “stimulus” – has been applied pre-emptively.