Federal Reserve press conference, 2020-03-03 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Heather Long, Washington Post): Heather Long from the Washington Post. There’s been some rising concern about credit markets and possible insolvencies and defaults either from businesses or individuals from the coronavirus. Can you speak to—is the FOMC talking about this? Are we likely to see any emergency provisions from the CRA activated or things that you normally do during, you know, a hurricane or that type of disruption to the economy?
Answer: So we don’t—we don’t see any of that happening yet. Of course, we are—we are thinking about what we can do should those things happen. There’s no evidence of it yet. The economy continues to perform well—perform well. As I mentioned, we do hear concerns, particularly from those most directly exposed, but there’s nothing in that nature: Financial markets are functioning in an orderly manner and all that sort of thing. I think when it—when it comes to those sorts of issues, though, we will be—the supervisors will be working with banks to assure that they work with their—with their borrowers and that sort of thing. So I can imagine us doing those sorts of things, but it’s—those things are not upon us at the moment.