MNI TRANSCRIPT: Powell on Covid-19 Vaccine, Main Street Faclty

     WASHINGTON (MNI) - The following is the portion of a transcript from

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's press conference Wednesday:

     Q: Given the amount of stimulus on the fiscal side of monetary policy side

how much weight do you give to finding a vaccine from clearing that uncertainty

you talked about around treatment, for the Federal Reserve pulling back on some

of the fed's actions and raising the rates from the zero lower bound. Also when

does that main street lending facility get deployed? Because you talked about

soon, some businesses are in need now. Thank you.

     A: We don't, we are not in a position to make a reliable assessment of when

a vaccine or therapeutic drug would be ready. We are not going to set our

policies based on our estimate of that. We are going to provide the support that

we can with the tools that we have, and we are going to keep doing that until

the recovery is well under way. 

     In terms of main street, so you know the story, we put out a term sheet, we

got a lot of comments. We took those very much to heart. We spent a great deal

of time here. It's a challenging space, because it's many different kinds of

borrowers, they have different needs, different sizes of companies, and so we

are very close to announcing a new term sheet which will then become operative

fairly quickly. My guess is though that we will keep looking to add products and

add different kinds of borrowers to that as we go. We are well aware of the

importance of doing it as quickly as possible. We are very much in touch with

the urgency of that need.

--MNI Washington Bureau; +1 202 371 2121; email: evan.ryser@marketnews.com

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