As quarantine circumstances go, Neel Kashkari’s got it pretty good. The Minneapolis Fed president isn’t in a COVID-19 hotspot, has plenty of room to socially distance and mountain bike at his rustic northern lodge, enjoys the company of two extremely large dogs to stave off loneliness, and has plenty of cheap beer and seasoned wood (and, presumably, Gilette Fusion razors) to keep himself warm (and bald) for however long this lasts. And that’s good, because the most interesting man in central banking thinks this is going to last for a long time.
Kashkari said the nation should be looking at an 18-month strategy for the economy and health care system based on other countries further along in their recovery from the coronavirus outbreak, and acknowledged that while the U.S. economy cannot be shut down for that long, officials need to identify ways for those who are not infected with the coronavirus to return safely to work…. “This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us until we get to either an effective therapy or a vaccine,” he said. “It’s hard for me to see a V-shaped recovery under that scenario.”
Kashkari says Fed’s coronavirus response is “as aggressive as possible” [CBS News]