Press conference exchange between CHRISTOPHER CONDON and Fed Chair Jerome Powell:

user: You have emphasized many times including today that the Fed can only lend and not spend and sometimes the latter is what’s really needed But to the extent that a $600 billion lending program for small and midsize companies could help what exactly is wrong with the design or function of the Main Street Lending Program which has purchased just I think $14 billion in loans so far? Eric Rosengren at the Boston Fed has said recently that Congress should clarify how much risk it wants the program to take But Congress has already appropriated substantial funds for the 13(3) programs and these are funds that are explicitly designed to absorb losses Meanwhile my colleagues who cover the banking sector say they’re being told by commercial banks that the Treasury Department is advising them to target zero losses—zero losses in Main Street Program loans So if I may why is it that the Federal Reserve the Congress and the Treasury apparently cannot agree on a loss tolerance that should be applied to the Main Street Lending Program in a way that would allow badly needed credit to reach these companies? Thank you

assistant: Sure. So, a couple things about Main Street. It, it reaches the whole nation. It’s got more than half of the banking industry assets signed up among the banks that are part of it, and it’s making loans. The number is more like—it’s close to $2 billion now. So the numbers are going up. Banks are joining; borrowers are coming. And it’s significant. It’s, it’s relatively small now, but it can scale up in response to economic conditions, should that be— should that be appropriate. You know, if you look out in the lending world, surveys generally find that, that firms are not citing credit constraints as a top problem. And that, that is a lot of PPP, bank credit lines, and syndicated loans. There’s a lot of credit being let out there. So—but you’re right. We, we are looking at some things. We’re looking at—some lenders are concerned about the underwriting expectations. So banks are going to—their approach is likely to be that they’re going to underwrite this loan roughly the same as they underwrite any loan. They’re keeping part of it, and, you know, what, what we want to do is make sure that—that they know that they should take the payment deferrals and other things in, in place, and also that—you know, it’s, it’s really—it’s really a, a facility for, for companies or borrowers that, that don’t have access to, to “regular way” borrowing now. Otherwise, why would we need Main Street? So that’s what we're working on. And we’ll be doing some, some—we’ll be making some changes in that respect. I don’t—I saw what President Rosengren said. I, I can’t really comment directly on that. I just would say that, you know, this is 13(3). If you look at the law under section 13(3), it’s very clear that we are to make loans only to solvent borrowers. And, and the CARES Act is quite specific in keeping all of the terms of, of section 13(3) in effect, including the requirement that we, you know, gather good evidence that the borrower is solvent. This was—this law was amended in, you know, under—in Dodd-Frank, and the idea was, was to make it challenging and put hurdles in place before we made loans—at the time, the thinking was to banks. So now we—now we’re using that same law for, for smaller business borrowers, and, you know, it doesn’t—it’s not a perfect fit. And, and, I would also just say, for many borrowers, they’re in a situation where their business is still relatively shut down, and they won’t be able to service a loan, and so they may need more fiscal support. Having said that, we’re, we’re continuing to work to, to improve Main Street, to make it more broadly available—make it pretty much to any company that needs it and that can service a loan.

user: And can you just very briefly address the reports that the Treasury is advising banks to target zero losses? Is that appropriate?

assistant: I can’t say. I don’t—I don’t know about that. I haven’t heard those reports. You know, again, if you think about it, we, we weren’t—we’re, we’re going to have to go through the banking system to do this. We—we’re not going to have a hundred thousand or a million loan officers working for the Fed and the Treasury. So we’re going to go through the banking system, and the banks—banks like to make good loans. That’s what they do. They’re trained to make good loans. So you should expect that they—and we expect that they will do some underwriting. We also want them to take some risk, obviously, because that was the point of it. And the question is, how do you dial that in? It’s, it’s not an easy thing to do. And, you know, we’re getting some loans made, and we’re hopeful that we’ll, that we’ll clarify this and that credit will continue to flow.