By Nicolas Vega August 3, 2020 | 8:45am | Updated Enlarge Image Minneapolis Federal Reserve President and CEO Neel Kashkari Getty Images More On: federal reserve Why looking at the stock market won't give you full picture of US economy Trump's Federal Reserve nominee closer to approval after key Senate vote National coin shortage has retailers pleading for exact change Federal Reserve reins in bank spending on pandemic fears Locking the country down “really hard” for a period of several weeks could save the economy from long-term pain, the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank said Sunday. In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Neel Kashkari said that the only way to have “a real robust economic recovery” is to quash the flare-ups of the coronavirus that continue to pop up across the country. Shutting things down “for a month or six weeks” would allow the nation’s case count to get low enough that the government’s testing and contact tracing efforts could effectively contain future spreading, Kashkari said, adding that if serious action isn’t taken, the country will “have this raging virus spreading … with flare ups and local lockdowns for the next year or two.” “We’re going to see many, many more business bankruptcies, small businesses, big businesses, and that’s going to take a lot of time to recover from to rebuild those businesses and then to bring workers back in and re-engage them in the workforce,” he added. “That’s going to be a much slower recovery for all of us.” The US economy last week suffered its worst blow since the Great Depression, with the nation’s gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services produced here — 9.5 percent smaller in the second quarter than in the first. see also Why looking at the stock market won't give you full picture of US economy More than 25 million Americans lost the $600-per-week jobless payment bonus introduced at the height of the coronavirus crisis in March, after lawmakers failed to come to an agreement on the benefits. Democrats wanted to expand the $600 bonus until the first quarter of 2021, but the White House and Republicans are advocating for a $200 payment, arguing the current rate is too high and discourages Americans from returning to work. In the interview, Kashkari said that while he did think the $600 bonus could be a disincentive at some point, it would still be helpful now while tens of millions are out of work. “There’s just so many fewer jobs than there are workers available,” he said. “When we get the unemployment rate eventually back down to 5 percent and we want to get it back down to 4 percent or 3.5 percent where it was before, yes, that disincentive to work becomes material.” https://nypost.com/2020/08/03/minneapolis-fed-chief-says-hard-shutdown-can-save-economy/
There won't be any more lockdowns till the weather turns. Turns at least a little anyway. Compliance went down when weather heated up.
Mr. Kashkari is a bit out of his element here. California has remained "locked down" and their July case trend looks very similar to Texas.
There is something in the air there. Minneapolis can be turned into a resort after we fully defund Police and cancel US History classes.
Oh I'd say its not limited to Minny in that regard. Down here, over in Texas and many other places in the south where they didn't get the history memo - the south lost. Put a rag over their mouths instead on the back of their pickups. But I do agree with bone former Clinton guy Kashkari is out of his element.
What are you talking about? He is a life long republican. Started at the Treasury under paulson and GW Bush.
With all due respect, the USA never did a hard shut down anywhere. You could always get gas, get groceries, get cigarettes, get weed. The USA is suffering from its unwillingness to do the hard work.
You can't prevent people from getting gasoline in their car so they can go to the grocery store to buy food? And the hard lockdown stuff would not have worked anyway. Assume you locked down the entire country in some hard mode, shelter-in-place ala a Cold War drill for real. So for 6 months the whole country is stuck inside. The USA is a ghost town. Yeah, that flattens the curve. Well, when you re-open, you'll see the virus cases spike, just like they are now. Like, Why the hell is EEE spreading again in MA? All the mosquitos died over the winter. Where is it coming from? The birds that came back from their winter grounds down south? Well, consider those birds the ones that were locked down, but then were allowed to come back in the spring.