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Politics & Policy

The Economic Response

We Need to the
Coronavirus
A strong recovery requires immediate relief to be coupled with long-
term investment.

By Michael R. Bloomberg
March 19, 2020, 9:00 AM UTC

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 There’s no time to lose. Photographer: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Never before has a public-health emergency created such

Michael R. Bloomberg,
the former mayor of widespread economic paralysis. As government officials
New York City, is the work to slow the spread of the coronavirus, treat the
founder and majority
owner of Bloomberg afflicted, and save lives, it is essential that Congress and the
LP, the parent
president take immediate actions to stabilize a dangerously
company of
Bloomberg News. He

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 is the UN secretary- teetering economy and lay the groundwork for long-term
general’s special envoy
for climate action. recovery.

Read more opinion

Follow @MikeBloomberg The relief bill spearheaded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
on Twitter and signed into law by President Donald Trump
Wednesday was an important first step in helping American
COMMENTS
workers hit hard by the crisis. Its main provisions —
206
including creating temporary paid leave for many workers,
LISTEN TO ARTICLE extending unemployment insurance, and providing more
funding for food stamps and children’s health insurance —
5:06
will strengthen the nation’s social safety net.
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Share But that must only be the start. All over the U.S., small and
Tweet large businesses are closing their doors, and as they do,
Post they are drawing down their lines of credit to pay their bills.
Email
Getting them help now is absolutely urgent — both for their
survival, and to protect the financial system from the shock
In this article that is sure to come.

CL1
WTI Crude In 2008, Congress gave the administration and Federal
13.63 USD/bbl.
+2.06 +17.80% Reserve authority to prevent a financial crisis from
XW1
becoming an economy-wide catastrophe. Now, it must
Generic 1st 'XW'
Future extend the same kinds of authority to prevent an economy-

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 52.35 USD/MT wide catastrophe from undermining the financial system
-2.85 -5.16%
that is essential to recovery.

Those emergency powers were wielded effectively by the

Bush and Obama administrations, including using an
exchange stabilization fund to guarantee money market
funds, protecting millions of individual investors and
ensuring that there is a market for businesses to issue
commercial paper. Today, Congress must again move swiftly
to give the administration the emergency powers that may
prove necessary to hold the financial system and economy
together.

Stabilizing the economy now and helping businesses survive

must be priority number one. But providing immediate
relief shouldn’t be the only strate y for achieving those
goals.

In the months ahead, when the public-health emergency

slows and hopefully passes, one of the fundamental
obstacles to restoring economic growth will be public
uncertainty. Consumers will not resume spending,
businesses will not rehire workers, and investors will not
leave safe havens until they are confident that we are on the
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 road to recovery. In other words, the economic crisis that
American communities will experience could far outlast the
public-health emergency — unless Washington takes
decisive action now to lay the foundation for recovery.

Delay will only prolong the pain. But swift action — by giving
both markets and main-street businesses something positive
to look forward to — can stanch some of the losses now and
speed the recovery later, so that we emerge from this crisis
a stronger nation.

One of the best ways to restore faith in the economy when

the public-health emergency abates would be to ensure that
it coincides with the largest public investment in
infrastructure in generations. I know from my time as
mayor of New York that public investment in infrastructure
is a highly effective way to increase private-sector
investment and business activity — and inspire confidence
in the future.

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 At the same time, an infrastructure bill is a chance to build
the clean ener y economy our country needs — and to
create the jobs necessary to do it. The bill should include
major new investments in wind and solar power, a national
transmission grid, ener y efficiency for buildings, and the
electric-vehicle manufacturing industry, which will benefit
U.S. automakers. Those investments will create millions of
new jobs, including for many Americans who lose work in
the oil, gas and coal industries.

If Congress passes a major infrastructure and clean-ener y

bill before the April recess, shovels can start hitting the
ground when workers, businesses and investors are looking
for signs of hope, indications of growth, and reasons to
believe that the worst has passed. And while it can take
years to complete a project, the act of investment — and
putting people to work — sends exactly the kind of signal to
the marketplace that our country will need.

In my campaign for president, I outlined a comprehensive

plan for repairing America’s existing infrastructure —
47,000 bridges and 2,000 dams require critical repairs, for
starters — and modernizing it to reduce traffic congestion,
cut pollution and carbon emissions, improve resiliency, and
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 spur new economic opportunity, including by extending
broadband to communities that don’t have it.

These kinds of investments were badly needed before the

coronavirus began laying waste to our economy. Now, they
are absolutely imperative. And while they will not be a cure-
all — none exists — they will help restore faith in the future
of the country at a time when we will badly need it.

We have seen this strate y work before. In 1933, President

Franklin D. Roosevelt — himself diagnosed with polio, an
epidemic that also led to closures of public facilities —
declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” We
have come to think of that famous utterance as referring to
public fears about the Great Depression generally. But in
fact, Roosevelt was referring to a specific kind of fear: the
“nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes
needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

In the 100 days that followed, Congress heeded Roosevelt’s

call and began converting retreat into advance. Now it’s
time to do it again.

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 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and
Have a confidential
tip for our reporters? its owners.

GET IN TOUCH To contact the editor responsible for this story:

David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net

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