{"id":"asset_f903d8f6af6a","type":"text/plain","category":"text","name":"10-covid-crash-2020.txt","size_bytes":3967,"title":"10 covid crash 2020","description":"An analytical account of the Federal Reserve's March 2020 response to financial market dysfunction during the COVID-19 crash, examining the policy decisions made, their immediate effects on different classes of borrowers and investors, and their longer-term consequences for financial stability and inequality.","extracted_text":"# The Month We Nationalised Credit Risk and Called It Liquidity: March 2020\n\nThe S&P 500 fell 34 per cent in twenty-three trading days — the fastest descent\ninto a bear market on record. More alarming to anyone watching the plumbing, the\nUS Treasury market stopped functioning normally in the second week of March.\nBid-ask spreads on the most liquid security on earth widened to levels not seen\nin 2008. Investors selling Treasuries to raise cash found no buyers at the screen\nprice. The dash for cash was so indiscriminate that gold fell too.\n\nThe Federal Reserve's response had no precedent in scale or speed. Rates to zero.\nUnlimited Treasury and agency MBS purchases. Dollar swap lines to foreign central\nbanks. Facilities for commercial paper, money market funds, municipal debt, and\nsmall business loans. And then the line that had never been crossed: the Primary\nand Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities, through which the central bank\nof the United States would buy corporate bonds — ","attributes":{},"usable_for":["period detail on 2020 market conditions","fed policy decisions and their rationale","distributional effects of monetary intervention","argument about fiscal versus monetary authority"],"provenance":"original-work","provenance_note":"An original analytical essay by its author.","kind":"analytical essay","reliable_for":"The author's argument about the Fed's March 2020 interventions and the evidence and reasoning it presents.","describe_v":6,"price_sats":{"card":0,"full":200},"content_available":true,"available":true,"retained_offered":false,"embed_offered":false,"licences":{"single-task":{"sats":200,"grants":"use for one task, then let go"},"retained":null,"embed":null}}