WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The roughly $2 trillion emergency aid package being negotiated in Congress is “scaled about right” to match the hit to the economy needed to battle the coronavirus, St. Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard said on Wednesday in a CNBC interview.
With the package expected to be enacted soon, Bullard said the focus now should be on rolling out the program’s benefits for workers and firms as quickly as possible, allowing the shutdowns needed to keep people healthy, and containing the economic hit in the second quarter of the year, from April to June.
“Everything depends on the virus … but the third quarter would be some kind of transition where you can open things up … Maybe testing will be better, other factors will be better and then at some point you’ll be able to say this is behind us,” he said.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider)
