Free Republic

Universal testing for COVID-19 would be the best way to get the U.S. economy back up and running, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said Tuesday. Bullard, speaking on a conference call organized by the St. Louis Regional Chamber, said closing nonessential businesses “is appropriate for now but it’s a crazy inefficient policy. You don’t really want to go back to this quarantine policy in the future if you don’t have to.” He said that after coronavirus infection numbers start to drop, but without a vaccine available, the nation’s goal should be to get healthy workers back on...

...James Bullard, CEO of the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve, was recently on CBS’s Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan to talk about the state of the economy and what could be done to stem the outbreak of the virus. Toward the end of the interview, Bullard says, “You know, I have good news for you, MARGARET, because we have a- there is a solution using available technology today to fix the economic part of this problem. The solution is universal testing. What you want is every single person to get tested every day. And then they would...

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said Friday the central bank should continue to ease monetary policy because of the recession signal being flashed by the bond market. “The yield curve is inverted here. We’ve got one of the higher rates on the yield curve here. That’s not a good place to be,” Bullard told CNBC’s Steve Liesman. The so-called yield-curve inversion refers to the 10-year Treasury yield trading below its 2-year counterpart. This briefly happened earlier this week and last week. Experts fear a yield-curve inversion because it has historically preceded a recession.