U.S. stimulus package is biggest ever, but may not be big enough

The Federal Reserve has offered more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases in recent weeks to stop the U.S. financial system from seizing up, but it has not yet directly helped large swaths of the real economy: companies, municipalities and other borrowers with less than perfect credit. That is partly because America’s central bank is not allowed to take much credit risk itself, and loans to lower-rated borrowers have a higher chance of losses. The risk is exacerbated by efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus which have brought economic activity to a screeching halt.

To alleviate that constraint, the U.S. Treasury – whose job it is to manage the government’s finances and help the Fed keep the economy steady – has taken on some of the risk that Fed loans will not be paid back. It has contributed about $50 billion from a pool of money called the Exchange Stabilization Fund. That money will be used to absorb losses from Fed loans that go bad. Assuming only a fraction of loans will default, the Treasury contribution has allowed the Fed to lend much more without taking on additional risk.

On Friday, the Treasury got about $450 billion more from Congress as part of a $2.2 trillion U.S. stimulus package, greatly increasing its ability to support the economy. Before the bill passed, the stabilization fund had about $93 billion in assets as of the end of February. But investors and economists said even this additional money may be insufficient, and Congress will likely need to pony up trillions of dollars more before the Fed and Treasury can make a significant dent in the real economy. If it does not, many U.S. companies and local governments are at risk of defaulting on debt or even going under. That is because of the sheer size of the world’s largest economy, the unprecedented scale of economic disruption caused by attempts to contain the virus and higher credit losses if the government has to step in to support weaker borrowers, according to these experts.

U.S. stimulus package is biggest ever, but may not be big enough, Reuters, Mar 30