NEW YORK/WASHINGTON As the risks of the coronavirus outbreak continue to rise, U.S. officials are wrestling with what to do in the worst-case economic scenarios, if large numbers of people can't go to work, are told to stay home, or stop going out in public entirely.
ST. LOUIS One evening last fall, Jawad Rahimi held forth in his downtown bodega as a steady stream of hockey fans en route to a St. Louis Blues game mingled with his neighborhood regulars. | Video
WASHINGTON Two former top staffers at the U.S. Federal Reserve have joined in urging the Fed to say explicitly what it will do if interest rates hit zero again, and warned that even with the best laid plan the central bank "might simply run out of...firepower," if a downturn is bad enough. | Video
CHAMPAIGN, Ill The Federal Reserve's emergency decision to slash interest rates this week in response to the coronavirus outbreak was actually fairly straightforward, policymakers said, as economic risks piled up fast and confidence faltered.
WASHINGTON U.S. Federal Reserve officials have slashed interest rates half a percentage point because of the coronavirus.
RALEIGH, N.C./FRESNO, Calif. - John Verdejo moved to North Carolina by way of the Bronx, with only basketball great Michael Jordan and the folksy humor of the Andy Griffith television show as references, neither particularly relevant to a Puerto Rican family in the mid-1990s.
TOKYO/FRANKFURT/WASHINGTON The world's top three central banks look set to take steps to limit the economic damage from the fast-spreading coronavirus, with the heads of the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan issuing emergency statements on Monday that echoed one from U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell late last week.
Cratering markets are pushing global central banks to the point they all warned against and worried about, of an evolving global economic shock hitting at a time when their capacity to respond in force is in doubt even as investors hound them for action.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday said the central bank will "act as appropriate" to support the economy in the face of risks posed by the coronavirus epidemic, though he said the economy remains in good shape overall. | Video
FORT SMITH, Ark. Federal Reserve rate cuts are "a possibility" if the coronavirus outbreak intensifies into a global pandemic, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard said Friday, while adding that market pricing for a rate cut will not force the central bank's hand.
Twenty-one people aboard a cruise ship that was barred from docking in San Francisco have tested positive for coronavirus, U.S. officials said on Friday, adding to the more than 100,000 cases of the fast-spreading illness across the world.