Wall Street Economists Channel Powell's Fiscal Vision
With Congress at an impasse over additional Covid-19 aid, I asked economists from the largest Wall Street institutions what a technocratic approach to federal spending would look like.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
“This is the time to use the great fiscal power of the United States to do what we can to support the economy and try to get through this.”
Those words came from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in late April, about a month after the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act became law. It was one of the clearest examples of a concerted effort by the central bank’s leadership to signal to lawmakers that the unique challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic — namely, shutting down parts of the economy and encouraging Americans to stay at home — would require the federal government to spend like never before and that such steps to support households and small businesses were the right thing to do.