Fed chair says full economic recovery could take 18 months

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Sunday that the full recovery from lockdowns intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus could take until late 2021. "This economy will recover; it may take a while," Powell said on CBS's 60 Minutes.

Powell described the crisis as the "biggest shock that the economy's had in living memory." The coronavirus lockdowns have brought much of the economy to a halt, leaving tens of millions of Americans jobless. Powell has urged Congress and the White House to provide more support for individuals and businesses if the pandemic drags on. He said that the economy would recover steadily in the second half of 2020, "assuming that there's not a second wave of the coronavirus."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.