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“Our actions were in no way an attempt to relieve pain on Wall Street,” Powell said Wednesday in a hearing before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. “We’ve done basically all of the things that we can think of.”
The Fed chief added, “we’re looking to do more.”
Powell defended the Fed’s Main Street Lending Program, which has been slow to start and seen little uptake from small-to-medium sized businesses.
“The current facility would not work for much smaller loans,” Powell said in answer to questions from the subcommittee. “We’d have to start a new facility that had much less protection for the taxpayer.”
Powell has a busy week of testimony before Congress. He was grilled along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Tuesday on the need for more stimulus to shore up the U.S. economy’s recovery from the coronavirus slump.
The Fed’s Main Street program was also a focus of Tuesday’s hearing.
On Thursday, Powell and Mnuchin are scheduled to testify together again — this time before a Senate committee on the economic response to the pandemic.
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