Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said “the economic data is very ugly reflecting the shutdown in the activity, furloughs and layoffs,” due to coronavirus pandemic. “Fed is working to help markets function and support businesses so they can be ready when economy reopen”, She said. “It will take some time for the economy to pick back up and the Fed is trying to limit the economic damage.”

Mester also support the idea of reopening the economy in stages. She emphasized, “no one wants to go backwards. Everyone wants to kind of get back to work but everyone realizes that how you do that really has to be done very carefully.”

Separately, New York Fed President John Williams said there will be “a lot of economic pain” and “that’s likely to continue for some time”. He added, “I still think we’ve got some tough days ahead and that’s why we’re working so hard to support the economy during this period.”

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said the plan to reopen the economy in a staged approach “makes sense”. “When I looked at the president’s plan it seems consistent with the advice and the feedback that we’ve heard from health experts, that there is a way to slowly reopen the economy,” he said.

“Obviously we want to try to avoid the virus flaring back up again and giving back the gains that we’ve had, and I think a staged approach, looking over the horizon, makes sense.”

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said monetary policy is going to “stay low until we really see the economy starting to recover back to our dual mandate”. Exactly how long that is a “function of how quickly medical science and industry can put in place the tools, the testing regimes, the vaccines etc. to keep the American public safe.”

But he warned, “the worst thing we can do in my mind is rush this” and have a “significant rebound… which would just set us back”.

New York Fed President John Williams said yesterday, “the coronavirus pandemic has created circumstances we have never experienced before in our lifetimes. The reality is that the full scale of the economic consequences is still unknown.”

The economy is “going to be underperforming for some time”. “There’s a lot of uncertainty about how long it will take,” Williams added, and Fed will “use all of our tools as appropriate” to support the economy.

Fed’s Beige Book report showed that economic activity “contracted sharply and abruptly across all regions” in the US as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. And,  “all districts” reported highly uncertain outlooks among business contacts, with most expecting “conditions to worsen in the next several months.”

Regarding the job markets, contacts in several Districts noted they were cutting employment via “temporary layoffs and furloughs” that they hoped to reverse once business activity resumes. The near-term outlook was for “more job cuts in coming months.”