A former Federal Reserve Governor (from 2006‐2008) and a former Treasury official discuss the Fed's and U.S. government's response both to the global financial crisis a decade ago and to the recent outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Both speakers view the Fed's swift and decisive response to the pandemic in March 2020 as a reflection of lessons learned from the financial crisis, which provided a “dress rehearsal.” After the pandemic was officially declared on March 11, 2020, the Fed accomplished in one week what had taken a year during the 2006‐2008 crisis. At the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on March 15, the federal funds rate was cut to zero and a huge set of credit programs announced. Congress also passed the $2 trillion CARES bill very quickly. Had the Fed and Congress not taken such measures, the U.S. may well have experienced an escalation of bankruptcies and a collapse of the financial system. At the same time, the panelists noted that Fed lending to banks has been much lower because bank balance sheets and the rest of the financial system were much stronger in March than they were at the beginning of the financial crisis.

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哥伦比亚商业学校圆桌会议：美联储对全球金融危机的应对-现在是大流行

一位前美联储理事（2006-2008年）和一位前财政部官员讨论了美联储和美国政府对十年前全球金融危机以及最近爆发的COVID-19大流行的反应。两位发言者均认为，美联储对2020年3月大流行病的迅速果断反应反映了从金融危机中学到的经验教训，这为“彩排”提供了条件。大流行在2020年3月11日正式宣布后，美联储在一周之内完成了2006-2008年危机期间一年的工作。在3月15日举行的联邦公开市场委员会会议上，联邦基金利率降至零，并宣布了一系列庞大的信贷计划。国会也很快通过了2万亿美元的CARES法案。如果美联储和国会没有采取此类措施，美国 可能已经经历了破产升级和金融体系崩溃的情况。同时，小组成员指出，美联储对银行的贷款要低得多，因为3月份的银行资产负债表和金融体系的其余部分比金融危机开始时要强劲得多。