Press conference exchange between HEATHER SCOTT and Fed Chair Jerome Powell:

user: Heather Scott this time, right? Thank you, Chair Powell, for taking the question. You say that you’re—that you’re not out of ammo. So I’m wondering, then, what is the next tool you expect to be able to roll out? Would you consider some credit program for state and local businesses—state and local governments that are facing real budgetary pressures?

assistant: So when I say we’re not out of ammo, I’m looking at, you know, a couple of our tools, mainly. As I mentioned, the asset purchase program—there’s a number of dimensions in which we can adjust that if we deem it to be appropriate. Right now, we like the job it’s doing. We could, you know, if, if the facilities are extended, we could certainly look at new facilities. If—you know, if things deteriorate, that would be the case where you’d want to maybe continue the facilities and, and, and maybe change them and maybe have new ones. Who knows? But, certainly, the facilities have been doing a lot of work and been very successful, I think, overall in accomplishing that job. So I do think there, there are things that we can do. But, remember, we’ve always said this will take a whole of government approach, including health-care policy and fiscal policy too. So it really is, if you—if you want to get the economy back as quickly as possible to where we want it to be, then, then really it should be all of government working together.

user: If I could just follow up on that quickly. I mean, you spoke about the small business lending program. But that has only reached 400—there’s only been 400 loans. When you say the programs are effective, do you not think there’s more that can be done with another type of program or another redesign either for small businesses or for assisting state and local governments?

assistant: Yes. There’s a bunch of programs. I would say that the, you know, the corporate—the larger corporate market-based lending program has been very successful without making a single loan—I think, unambiguously, has been a big success. I think the success—I think the state and local government program has also restored market function so that—whereas, you know, there were the, the individual investors who wind up funding loans in the muni market through. through mutual funds, they, they had withdrawn a lot of money, and, and that—we’ve had many weeks of consecutive, I believe, of, of inflows there, and you’re largely back to a normal functioning market. I think that’s also been a success. I think the other—certainly the, the funding market programs have been a big success. The—Main Street is just—is just a bigger challenge than all of them. Reaching out to small and medium-sized businesses through the banking system, which we had to do, is, is quite challenging. I do think, you know, the grant programs, the PPP, were, were a great way to reach smaller companies. You know, what you hear out there is that demand—you talk to banks, and they’ll say demand for loans is very, very low right now. Companies are not borrowing. And, and the reason is that, you know, activity’s at a relatively low level. They don’t want to run up their debt. You know, so I—we put, we put an awful lot into Main Street, and it is very challenging to reach a lot of those companies. But I—you know, I think we, we are reaching many of them now, and, and I hope that the new changes will help us reach more.