The U.S. economy shrank at 4.8 percent in the first quarter of this year, the most significant decline since the Great Recession of the late 2000s, as the nation shivers of the coronavirus pandemic measures. With much of America in lockdown, figures released by the Commerce Department showed that the United States entered a recession that will end the longest expansion on record.
The Federal Reserve is not leaving any corner of the U.S. bond market behind in this crisis.
Wall Street closed out the trading week on a high note on Thursday as the U.S. Federal Reserve unleashed another program designed to buoy local governments and businesses crushed by massive closures to stem the coronavirus outbreak.
The Federal Reserve is temporarily relaxing a rule that imposes additional capital requirements on deposits and Treasury securities held by the biggest U.S. banks.
U.S. manufacturing activity contracted less than expected in March, but disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic pushed new orders received by factories to an 11-year low, reinforcing economists’ views that the economy was in recession.
The coronavirus crisis has brought another first to U.S. financial markets — negative yields on government debt.
The Federal Reserve unveiled a host of programs on Monday in order to stabilize the markets in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, which some termed, “quantitative easing to infinity.”
The U.S. Federal Reserve continued to roll out emergency support on Friday as it enhanced efforts with other major central banks to ease a global dollar-funding crunch, backstopped a market essential for U.S. state and local government finances and ramped up its purchases of mortgage-backed securities.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that the Federal Reserve will play a key role in lending funds to businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.
The ongoing spread of the coronavirus has spurred government agencies to warn its citizenry against the use of paper currency and coins. Meanwhile, Central Banks around the world are considering the use of cryptocurrency in the future.
The Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it was setting up a special entity to purchase short-term debt issued by corporations to help keep afloat companies facing a credit crunch because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The S&P 500 rose 6% on Tuesday, a day after its steepest decline since the 1987 crash, as the Federal Reserve took further steps to boost liquidity and stem damage from the coronavirus outbreak that has gripped the global economy.
Stocks fell sharply Monday — with the Dow suffering its worst day since the ‘Black Monday’ market crash in 1987 and its third-worst day ever — even after the Federal Reserve embarked on a massive monetary stimulus campaign to curb slower economic growth amid the coronavirus outbreak.
A day after a dramatic move in interest rates, the Federal Reserve on Monday increased the amount of liquidity it’s offering in short-term lending to the financial industry.
The Federal Reserve, saying ‘the coronavirus outbreak has harmed communities and disrupted economic activity in many countries, including the United States,’ cut interest rates to essentially zero on Sunday and launched a massive $700 billion quantitative easing program to shelter the economy from the effects of the virus.
At the close of business Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1,985 points to 23,186, nearly recouping Thursday’s more than 2,300-point loss. The S&P 500 gained 228 to 2,709 and the Nasdaq Composite was up by 672 points to 7,874.
The U.S. central banking system announced moves Thursday to stabilize the global financial system by putting $1.5 trillion into short-term lending markets, and the purchase of $60 billion in Treasury bonds to fuel the bond market.
Stocks plummeted once again on Thursday after President Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve both failed to quell concerns over the economic slowdown stemming from the coronavirus, leading to a historic drop for the U.S. markets.
The Federal Reserve, in a rare emergency step, cut short-term rates by half a percentage point on March 3 to protect the U.S. economy from the growing fallout of the global coronavirus outbreak.
The Federal Reserve is looking at a broad range of issues around digital payments and currencies, including policy, design and legal considerations around potentially issuing its own digital currency, Governor Lael Brainard said on Wednesday.