Washington Post via MSN News
In late February, the Trump administration said it planned to spend $2.5 billion to fight the coronavirus. A month and a half later, President Trump signed off on spending almost a thousand times as much — $2.35 trillion. And that amount doesn’t include the Federal Reserve’s efforts, which are harder to measure but seem likely to blow past the $4 trillion mark. The dual rescues, each historic in its own way, put the country on track to eclipse World War II-era highs in the national debt and the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. All told, the U.S. government has committed more than $6 trillion to arrest the economic downturn from the pandemic. The moves appear to have calmed stock market investors but may not be enough to hold the economy together if the health crisis drags through the summer. When you combine the steps taken by Congress and the Fed and account for how the two interact, America’s national coronavirus response represents more than a quarter of U.S. economic output. To feel the weight of that sentence, try thinking of “quarter” as a measure of time, not a fraction.
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