Thanks for taking my question, you added a sentence into the statement about the course of the economy depends on the path of the virus is this do you feel this idea or view is not widely enough understood do you feel you had warned back in may that too early reopening or cautious reopening might harm the economy do you feel that message is not heard and some of these reopenings took place perhaps sooner than they should have i think we feel that it might be the most central fact or the most central driver of the economy is the virus were seeing that again. You saw that during the lockdown when we got cases way down you saw the economy reopening. You saw spending go up and hiring go up now that the cases have spiked again. Again, the early data, highfrequency data suggests that theres a slower pace of growth at least for now. We dont know how deep or how long that will be. Its such an important sentence, we just decided that it needed to be in our post meeting statement. Its so fundamental. You know, i think we cant say it enough. Its really important. Think of it as three stages. Theres the lockdown we know what that looks like well get the data i guess later this week on gdp being down very historically large amounts then there was the reopening we would expect that many, many people would go back to work those whose jobs could be done without exposure to lots of people in tight groups, they should be able to go back to work during that phase fairly quickly. But that would depend on being able to keep the virus under control, which will depend on Wearing Masks and other social distancing measures. Thats where we are. Its such an important factor. Were all talking about it, so it really had to be in the statement. Thank you mike mckee. Mr. Chairman, im wondering what it is, you talk a lot about using all your tools governor brainard talked about moving to accommodation. What it is you could actually do youve lowered rates to 0, set up lending programs, hasnt been much take up the tools you talk about are generally in service of keeping Interest Rates low where they already are. Unless you were to go to negative Interest Rates, im wondering what additional accommodation the fed can bring, or is it really up to the fiscal authorities at this point to rescue the economy to add additional help for it. Right youre right we are committed to using our full range of tools to support the u. S. Economy at this difficult time, and we will also remain committed in that sense we feel like we have ways to further support our economy through credit and liquidity facilities, which are effectively unlimited. We can just those programs we can adjust Forward Guidance, asset purchases. There are things we can do we feel like we have the ability to do more but i would not disagree with the importance of fiscal policy with your statement about the importance of fiscal policy. Fiscal policy can address things we cant address, if there are particular groups that need help, direct monetary help alone but an actual grant as the ppe program showed, you can save a lot of businesses and a lot of jobs with those in a case where lending a Company Money might not be the right answer. The Company Might not want to take a loan out to pay workers because theres no business. Lending is a particular tool and were using it very aggressively fiscal policy is essential here. Congresss action early in the pandemic historically large by any standard around the world. Certainly by u. S. Standards its really helping now its really helping. Its going to stand up very well to scrutiny down the Years Congress is very fast and openhanded response has really helped i think as i said very likely will be needed from all of us. I see congress negotiating now over a new package and i think thats a good thing. Okay. Edward lawrence. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for taking the question. You talked about it several times, the statement says the path of the economy is linked to the path of the virus. It looks like a vaccine might come this year either in october or towards the end of the year has the committee talked about how that might change fed policies as a follow, did you see the vaccine getting inflation back to where you want it to be thank you. So we of course the concept of vaccines comes up in our discussions, of course it does i have to say our job is not to plan for upside case the upside case, weve got that covered. Our job is to plan for the full range of things that could happen were assuming were going to continue to assume that our facilities are needed, that our policies are needed and that the public needs the support that were giving the public until shown otherwise. Theres great uncertainty around the development of therapeutics and vaccines all of us went them to happen as soon as possible but we cant plan on that weve got to hope for the worst hope for the best and plan for the worst i guess it goes. In terms of inflation, i dont know i think fundamentally this is a disinflationary shock. I know theres a lot of discussion about how this might lead to inflation over time but were seeing disinflationary pressures around the world going into this. Now we see a big shock to demand and core inflation dropping to 1 i do think for quite sometime were going to be struggling against disinflationary pressures rather than against inflationary pressures thank you ann. Thank you for taking my question as you monitor the rising infections and recovery, could you speak to what would be the trigger be for doing further easing on the flip side of that, when would it be reasonable to expect the fed to consider raising rates again. As we said, carefully monitoring the situation we moved very quickly and very aggressively early weve been monitoring the situation. I think our policy is in a good place, but weve looked at ways of adapting our policy as time goes by and were ready to do that when we think its appropriate. I cant give you a specific trigger. It is when we think it would help would it help more than whether or not were doing now to foster maximum employment and stable prices sorry, your second question was . I cant hear you say again. When it would be reasonable for the fed to consider raising rates again. As i said earlier a while back, were not even thinking about raising rates. Were totally focused on providing the economy the support that it will need. We think it will need highly accommodative Monetary Policy and the use of tools for an extended period, and were absolutely committed to staying in this until were very confident that that is no longer needed i wouldnt look for us to be sending signals about cutting back on facilities or anything like that for a very long time were in this until were well through it i think the picture is you have the lockdown and then the reopening but theres probably a long tail where a large number of people are strugglinging to back to work because heavily affected areas of the economy are going to be challenged to employ millions of people out of work i think 14 Million People are now out of work, who were working in february. Thats going to take a while, i think, in everyones reckoning everyone should know were goig to be there for all that. Thank you katherine with bloomberg. Hi, chair, thank you for taking our questions you mentioned earlier that the playbook market we had was the best weve had in 50 years yet unemployment was double that of whites. I want to ask you, weve seen some economists and Campaign Call for the targeting gap of minority Unemployment Rates. Even if you dont get a mandate on this from congress, is it something you would consider more Going Forward and how would you do that . I also wanted to ask you about former economist claude yap simms rating from last night she gave an account of her time at the fed, described harassment and professional gas lighting that others have spoken to is this your fed reserve. While the aggregate Unemployment Rate was 3. 5 , every economy, every market in every economy is the disparate level between blacks and white its generally twice as high for blacks this was the lowest black Unemployment Rate for 50 years, since we started keeping records, less than 50 years ago. Thats a fact. Its not a good fact we have started in recent years to focus considerable time and attention on disparate levels of unemployment among different racial groups and demographic groups we regularly discuss that in fomc discussions we call them out in testimony and speeches and monetary report to congress youll see it everywhere in all the things that we do so what does that mean i think what we learned is that a tight labor market does things for minorities and people at the lower end of the income spectrum generally but tight labor markets it took eight years it took the eighth and ninth and tenth year of that expansion to get to those benefits. We need more than that thats not a good strategy waiting eight, nine, ten years getting there. Were going to get back there as fast as we can thats what we can do. Society more broadly can affect these things we dont really have tools that can address distributional fiscal outcomes as well as policy and policy generally. Education, health care, all those things are better at doing that in terms of we do you will see that discussed the black Unemployment Rate discussed all the time in what we do i think we clearly understand now that its something to weigh with a tight labor market. It is very much in our thinking. Again, in a world where we dont really have the best tools to address that so something that were doing. I have not seen that i did not see that blog post yet, although someone mentioned it to me weve been in meetings until just before this i will take a look at it i will do that without having had a chance to read about it and think about it and under it, ill say a couple of things. First, i think its fair to acknowledge that theres been a lot of pain and injustice and unfair treatment that women have experienced in the workplace, not just among economists but economists and at the fed. Thats been going on far too long like every other organization the fed could have done more and should have done more. I would say, though, that we have made it a very high priority to have diverse and Inclusive Organization as we can. I think weve made a lot of progress on that we want a place where its free to speak where views are welcome. People can disagree but must do so respectfully. I think a lot of organizations are coming around to understanding the importance of that my experience has been from my career in business, too, that organizations the really successful organizations in our society get this they do. Mostly they get it that if you want to attract the best people, youre going to attract the best people by having a diverse and inclusive workforce and workplace. So weve made diversity a priority this has been a big issue for the economics profession we had the two heads of the aea task force on this, who happened to be named ben bernanke and janet yellen come here and i cohosted an event with them lastiary or the year before which had several00, 500 people listening in about these issues. Were doing a lot. Im sure we can do know. Were doing a lot to foster a respectful environment particularly for women but all people its a very high priority for us as an organization i will look into that when this is over. Okay. Thank you. Don lee. Chair powell, on the labor market, jobless claims rose again recently and new hiring activity has weakened. How big are the risk of the unemployment rising with job growth trending negative this summer so as i mentioned earlier, were watching this High Frequency data of course official labor Market Reports come out once a month. No one has had a good record of predicting what they say in may and june, stronger than anybody expected, particularly in may so i would say some humility is appropriate here in terms of thinking we understand exactly where this is going. I think all we can say today, theres evidence in High Frequency data, the surveys and youre tracking you get pictures of spending, you get pictures of peoples movements it looks like were seeing a slow down in the rate of growth. It might be shortlived, it might not be it seems to be related to the timing of it seems to be related to the spike in cases that began in the middle of june. Now, i really dont want to get ahead of where the data are on this data over the next couple of months will answer that question recent experience suggests we need to wait and see in any case, theres clearly a risk we see a sldown in the rate of growth, Economic Activity and hiring it might be at a robust level. Honestly we will not know until we start to see more data come in thank you victoria guida. Hi, im with politico thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask 133 facilities. Youve used emergency authorities to buy assets you cant buy like Corporate Bonds, etfs i was just wondering, what is the scope of your authority under 133 what type of assets could you buy . Could you be equities, for example . We havent looked at this and we have no intention done if i work or thought about buying equiti equities were bound by the provisions of 133, programs, facilities, broad applicability meaning it cant just be focused on one entity it has to be a broad group of entities theres a lot in 133 about solvency it was rewritten or amended after financial crisis and rewritten in a way that was meant to make it challenging to bail out large Financial Institutions there is a lot to make sure they are going to be solvent. We have to meet those requirements we havent looked and tried and say lets make a complete list using these facilities we could buy Corporate Bonds and municipal bonds, too. So, sorry, just to follow up really quickly is it generally supposed to be directed at debt since you talked about borrowers sflf the statute doesnt say that but you could read it that way we havent tried to push it to whats the theoretical limit its supposed to replace lending. Thats really what were doing youre stepping in to provide credit at times when the market has stopped functioning. Thats fundamentally what youre doing with 133. Youve got to sort of work within that framework. Thank you greg. Thank you for taking my question im from marketwatch one of the things thats unusual is that companies are cutting wages and salaries thats something we havent seen much i was hoping what the fed is thinking about this. It seems to indicate inflation is more volatile in the coming months and coming years. I think the main thing that tells you is the labor market has a long way to go to recover. We had a good labor market it wasnt perfect. Theres always issues. Theres always going to be issues with the economy. The labor market has a long way to go now even with two very strong months of job creation, 7. 5 million jobs between the two months, we still have 14 Million People unemployed. So its just its a long way to go. That leads to a situation where theres so many people looking for jobs we have the economy only partially reopened until the economy or as the economy fully reopens people can go back to work. So its a tough situation. Ive read reports of that. Of course the reported wages went up because of the composition effect low paid workers didnt go back to work. Average earnings went up clearly, clearly the pressure there will not be much upward pressure on wages and compensation if the aggregate level in a world where theres an awful lot of people looking for work the main it underscores again the urgency of doing everything we can to restore the labor force and to support those who are who want to be in the labor force but whose jobs have gone away for some period of time as they find other work due to this Natural Disaster thank you ge jean young. Hi, chair powell. Thank you very much. I want to ask you do you see merits to tying your asset purchases to economic outcomes would you consider inflation and labor Market Conditions as part of those outcomes . And specifically for the labor market what would you like to see before you think about pulling back. Thats a great discussion weve talked about that at past meetings, and i imagine we will at future meetings and havent made any decisions yet on that so youve got a couple ways to go you can tie them to dates. You can say for a specific period of time we will keep rates at x level or say keep them there until you achieve a certain macroeconomic goal it can either be inflation or employment goal as you pointed out. I think theres attraction in all of those depending on the situation, i think for obvious reasons. You can imagine situations where youd really want to be targeting macroeconomic outcomes its also the case that sometimes datebased guidance works, too i think it really is fact specific its not something we havent made decisions on that, so i wouldnt be standing here telling you were going to go this way or that way should the time come for us to change our Forward Guidance thank you hannah. Hi, chair powell. Thanks for doing this today. I wanted to ask on the stimulus bill that Senate Republicans are considering. They said they are weighing where to revive tier one leverage ratio for banks are you concerned doing so given that the feds stress test showed that under the most severe scenarios for economic recovery that several banks approached regulatory minimum requirements so i think what the stress test showed, under the regular weight stress test the banks packed we quickly dropped in three other scenarios, which were, you know, very bad scenarios many of the banks passed, some didnt that was done very quickly, so we pivoted and we used a provision that says we can theres been a Material Change and were going to ask them to resubmit their capital plans we also stopped buybacks, share buybacks and limited dividends were working through the details of how that will work. I think were going to send out the stress scenarios on september 30th so i would say that process is working that way but youre making a connection to it to the col