That broadly speaking if we dont get that, there would certainly be Downside Risks certainly through the channel i mentioned. Thank you cnn. Thanks for taking my question chairman powell, give us an update to the policy framework and repeated calls for this and this event, is the fed open to other parts of the economy such as income inequality and Affordable Housing we monitor everything we think is important in the u. S. Economy. In a broad sense, all of it goes into thinking about Monetary Policy you mentioned inequality so disparities in income and Financial Wellbeing demographic and racial categories, something we monitor carefully, inequality, which i would point to its a multifaceted thing, stagnation of nat the lower end of the income and lower mobility those are things that hold back our economy. They are the thing is we dont really have the tools to address those. We have Interest Rates and Bank Supervision and Financial Stability policy and things like that, but we cant get at those things through our tools when we lower the federal funds rate that supports economy across broad range of people and activities but we dont have the ability to target particular groups notwithstanding that, we do talk about it because these are important features of our economy. You know, i think those distributional issues are issues that are really for our elected officials. I would say i take them seriously as holding back the economy. The capacity of the economy is limited when not everyone has the opportunity, has the educational background and the health care and all the things that you need to be an active participant in our workforce so i think we can if we want to have the highest potential output for our economy, we need that prosperity to be very broadly spread in the longer run. Again, i would just say the fed, we can talk about those things a lot. When we think about maximum employment, in particular, we do look at individual groups. High unemployment in a particular racial group like africanamericans, we would look at that whether were at maximum employment we would look at that with a lot of other data. The answer is we do look at all those things and do what we can with our taools ultimately these are issues for elected representatives. Thank you edward lawrence. Thank you, chairman powell, for the question i wanted some clarity here at what point do you think its prudent to shift the bond purchases from market stability, as you had said from shorter term maturities, to longer term, more stimulus related . So you know, we think that our asset purchases are doing both those things today. We think clearly theres been great progress in terms of market function. If you remember early in the spring when the acute phase hit, market function is very low. Its improved rapidly and in many respect is perfect. Asset purchases which total 120 billion a month, much larger than last Asset Purchase Program during Global Financial crisis and recovery there from, we think thats accommodative financial conditions and growth and we think thats fine were also aware there are ways we can adjust that, you know, to do various things, make it smaller and larger and target different sectors of the curve were going to continue to monitor developments and prepared to adjust our plans as appropria appropriate. Thank you victoria victim guida. Hi. Thank you for taking my question i wanted to ask a couple of things first of all, if we dont get a vaccine until well into next year, what does that mean for the economy . Somewhat related, i was wondering if you could provide more detail about stress scenarios youre going to release for big banks an whether that is going to be another full blown stress test, whether were going to publicly see results and what it might mean for bank payouts. Great so on the first one, whats happening is basically were learning to live with right now were learning to live with covid which still spreads. Were learning to engage in Economic Activity. All of this recovery weve seen is in a context where, you know, people are still at risk of catching it and yet were able to resume lots and lots of economic activities. And that involves, as i mentioned, the more social distancing we can preserve as we go back into the workforce wearing masks, keeping our distance, that kind of thing, the better well be able to get Economic Activity back up close to where it was. I do think, though, there are areas of the economy that are going to really struggle until we have a vaccine thats in wide usage and widely trusted those are the ones really close together i also think testing to the extent you have cheap and rapid testing, you can do a lot with that in the workforce. You can build confidence in the workforce if you have regular very regular testing, doesnt cost very much and you get the results really quickly if you do that, youll be able to open a lot of work forces particularly in cities where the overall case numbers are quite l low. That will help a lot were going to find lots of ways to get out towards where we can. Theres always going to be that for some time certain activities that will be hard to resume so i think thats the only way i can say it trying to we all when we make a forecast, we make assessments about that its really hard to say. Theres no template here theres no experience with this. So frankly for the last 60 days or so, the economy has recovered faster than expected that may continue or not we just dont know i think we should do those things that we control to make sure we can recover as quickly as possible. The main thing again is wearing a mask and keeping your distance while youre in the workforce. Thats something we can all do that will limit the spread and let people go back to work, avoid major outbreaks and things like that. In terms of the stress test, so, i really dont have were getting ready quite soon to be making announcements and saying things publicly. Theres not much i can say with you nothing, really, i can say thats on that today i dont have anything for you. Thank you chris. Thank you, michelle good afternoon, chairman powell. You have emphasized many times, including today, that the fed can only lend and not spend and sometimes the latter is whats needed to the extent that a 600 billion Lending Program for small and Midsized Companies could help, what exactly is wrong with the design or function of the main street Lending Program, purchased 1. 4 billion in loans so far. Eric from the boston globe said recently congress should clarify how much risk it wants the program to take. But congress has already appropriated substantial funds for the 13 3 programs. These are plans specifically designed to absorb losses. Meanwhile my colleagues who cover Banking Sector say they are told that the Treasury Department is advising them to target zero losses, zero losses in main Street Program loans so if i may, why is it that the Federal Reserve, the congress, and the treasury apparently cannot agree on a loss tolerance that should be applied to the main street Lending Program in a way that would allow padly needed credit to reach these companies. Thank you. Sure a couple things about main street. It reaches the whole nation. Its got more than half of Banking Industry assets lined up close to 2 billion now. The numbers are going up banks are joining and borrowers are coming and its significant its relatively small now. It can scale up in response to Economic Conditions should that be appropriate if you look out in the lending world, surveys generally find that firms are not citing credit constraints as a top problem thats a lot of ppp, Bank Credit Lines and syndicated loans theres a lot of credit being let out there. Youre right we are looking at things some lenders are concerned about underwriting expectations. So banks are going to their approach is likely to be underwrite the loan roughly the same as any loan they are keeping part of it. What we want to do is make sure we know they should take payment deferrals and other things in place and also that its really a facility for companies or borrowers that dont have access, otherwise why do we need main street. Thats what were working on well be making some changes in that respect i saw what president roczsaid if you look at the law under 13 3, its clear make loans only to solvent borrowers and c. A. R. E. S. Act quite specific in keeping all the terms of section infect including the borrower is solvent. This law amended in dodd frank the idea is make it challenging and put hurdles in place thinking at the time two banks now were using that same law for smaller business borrowers and it doesnt its not a perfect fit. I would say for many borrowers they are in a situation where their business is relatively shut down. They wont be able to service a loan and they may need more fiscal support having said that, were continuing to work on that to make it more broadly available, pretty much to any company that needs it and they can service a loan. Very briefly address the reports that the treasury is advising banks to target zero losses, is that appropriate . I cant say i dont know about that. I havent heard those reports. You know, again, if you think about it, we are going to have to go through the Banking System to do this were not going to have 100,000 Loan Officers working through the fed and treasury, were going through the Banking Systems. Banks like to make good loans. Thats what they do. They are trained to make good loans. We expect they will do some underwriting we also want them to take some risk, obviously, because that was the point of it. The question is how do you dial that in . Its not an easy thing to do were getting loans made and were hopeful well clarify it and that credit will continue to flow thank you chr chris. Hi, thanks for taking my question chair powell, youve talked a couple times about parts of the economy that may not recover as fast as weve seen so far. Presumably referring to airlines, hotels, other parts of the economy that rely on close contact. How are you thinking about that in terms of this overall impact. Is that sector large enough to, say, keep unemployment above far above your maximum goals are you expecting that to come back with a vaccine or are a lot of those folks going to have to find new jobs and new industries and should we expect the fed will keep rates at zero until all that allocation is done. We cant be really sure we know the answers to those questions. But i would say the likely path is that the expansion will continue as i said, its well along it will move most easily through parts of the economy it will still take some time the parts that werent directly affected, didnt involve getting people in large groups together to feed them, fly them around, put them in hotels, to entertainment, like that, those are the places that are very challenging. So they will be the places affected and thats challenging. It is. We dont know how long thats going to be. Its millions of people. As i mentioned we had Something Like 11 Million People in the Payroll Survey have gone back to work out of 22 million who lost their jobs in march and april, so thats half of them 11 million, particularly the pace of returning to work slows down, its going to leave a large group of people. It will be very meaningful from a macroeconomic standpoint our commitment is not to forget those people as i mentioned, we want the sense of our Forward Guidance is that policy will remain, as i said, highly accommodative until the expansion is well along, really close to our goals. Even after if we do lift off, we will keep policy accommodative until we actually have a moderate overshoot of inflation for some time. So those are powerful commitments we think will support the full recovery including those people as long as it takes. Thank you mike mckee. Mr. Chairman, Michael Mckee from bloom beberg radio and television keeping accommodative into the recovery, as far out as three years in your latest projections, is that basically it for the fed since Interest Rates are your main tool, the things can you do could push down on Interest Rates, but is it the case now that the only additional stimulus that can come to the economy is the fiscal side no. I certainly would not say were out of ammo. Not at all first of all, we do have lots of tools. Weve got the lending tools, the balance sheet, and weve got Forward Guidance, further Forward Guidance so theres still plenty more that we can do we do think that our rate policy stance is an appropriate one to support the economy. We think its powerful as i mentioned, this is the kind of guidance that will provide support for the economy over time, the idea being that policy will remain highly accommodative until the recovery is well along, really very close to our goals, then will remain accommodative even after we lift off. I think thats a really strong mass for rate policy to be but again, we have the other margins we can still use so no, certainly were not out of ammo. If i can follow up, in terms of the balance sheet, are you concerned that your actions are more likely to produce asset Price Inflation than goods and Services Inflation in other words, are you risking a bubble on wall street . Of course, we monitor financial conditions very carefully. These are not new questions. These were questions that were very much in the air a decade ago and more when the fed started doing qe i would say you look at the long experience of tenyear expansion in history, quantitative easing and low rates for seven years. I would say it was notable for the lack of emergence of some sort of a financial bubble, a housing bubble or some kind of a bubble, the popping of which could threaten the expansion that didnt happen and frankly it hasnt happened around the world since then that doesnt mean it hasnt happened of course we monitor carefully after financial crisis a whole division of the fed to focus on Financial Stability. We look at it from every perspective, fomc gets briefed on quarterly basis at the board we talk about it more or less on an ongoing basis. It is something we monitor i dont know that the connection between asset purchases and Financial Stability is a particularly tight one but again, we wont be just assuming that, well be checking carefully as we go by the way, the kinds of tools that we would use to address those sorts of things are not really Monetary Policy, more tools that strengthen the financial system. Thank you don lee. Chair paul, id like to ask you about the labor market as you know in august there were about 30 million persons claiming Unemployment Benefits if the jobs for august show 13 1 2 million unemployed, about 6 million more than before the pandemic, i wonder how you reconcile that and what you think the labor Market Conditions are. I think the overall picture take a step back from this the overall picture is clear the labor market has been recovering but its a long way, a long way from maximum employment thats the bottom line on it within that, claims in particular, the number of claims, quantity of claims, the fact pua claims are new, pandemic unemployment assistance claims, thats a new system that had to be set up the actually counting of the claims is volatile and very difficult to take much signal about the particular level people were setting them up. When they got them set up they had them counted certainly what you see is the level of initial claims has declined sharply from the levels of march and april and now at a lower level. Appears to be flat or gradually decline and thats good. Its worth noting that level is maybe five times the level of what claims were claims were around 200,000 now they are 900,000, in that range weekly for initial claims. That just tells you the labor market has improved but its a long way from maximum employment and a long way to get back there. Thats a way to think about it in many parts of the economy, theres a lot of disruption. Its really hard to say precisely where we are ill give you another example. We say unemployment is 8. 4 . If you count those who are misidentified as employed when they are actually unemployed and add back some part of the participation numbers if you had a job and in the labor force in february and you lost it because of the pandemic, some of you are now reported as being out of the labor force i would more look at those people as unemployed if you add those back the level of unemployment is probably 3 higher on the other hand by that metric, the unemployment would have been in the 20s in april. So the improvement is quite substantial under any measure but the level is still high. Is the feds goal to get back to 3. 5 . Yes, absolutely i cant be precise about a particular number but let me say theres a lot to like about 3. 5 no one will say that number is the touch stone or maximum employment you ask about 3. 5 , a 3. 5 Unemployment Rate showed gains shared widely across the income spectrum, going more to people at the bottom end of the spectrum, Labor Force Participation coming up, up above many estimates of its trend as people out of the labor force were pulled into a tight job market theres a lot to like about a tight job market particularly in a world where we didnt see inflat