Fed’s Powell: Opening Before Pandemic Is Licked Is Worrisome
The chairman of the Federal Reserve warned that reopening the economy too quickly could lead to more covid cases that will in turn hurt the economy. "We will reopen too quickly, people will too quickly return to their old practices, and we’ll see another spike in cases.”
The Washington Post:
Fed’s Powell Says Reopening Economy Too Quickly Could Cause New Coronavirus Spike
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell warned in an interview broadcast Sunday that reopening the economy too quickly could lead to another worrisome jump in coronavirus cases, arguing that the country has not completely turned the corner and that the pandemic continues to pose major risks to any recovery. Powell, speaking in a “60 Minutes” interview, also said that the coronavirus pandemic had exacerbated economic disparities in the United States and that this could take time to address during an uneven recovery. (Siegel, 4/11)
The Wall Street Journal:
The Other Reason The Labor Force Is Shrunken: Fear Of Covid-19
A little over a year ago, Chanee McLaurin was a few weeks into a new job selling insurance when she began to hear coughing in her office. Co-workers, one after another, stopped showing up. Then she overheard a colleague whispering into her phone that she had been diagnosed with flu-like symptoms. “I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to go home. And I’m probably not going to come back,’” said Ms. McLaurin, who is 29 and lives in a suburb of Dallas. (Guilford, 4/11)
In related news about covid's economic toll —
The New York Times:
How Covid Turned Food Pantries Into ‘Mini-Costcos’
The good news is that there’s plenty of food being distributed to the city’s hungry, about 1.6 million people, according to the Food Bank for New York City, a nonprofit that does a lot of the distributing. This means that smaller food pantries on the receiving end are bursting at the seams with products but struggling without the infrastructure to store and share them. (Laterman, 4/9)
