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The Fed Fights The Virus : Planet Money The central bank is trying to prevent a health crisis from becoming a financial crisis. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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The Fed Fights The Virus

The Fed Fights The Virus

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US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gives a press briefing after the surprise announcement the FED will cut interest rates on March 3, 2020 in Washington,DC. (Photo by Eric BARADAT / AFP) (Photo by ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
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ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gives a press briefing after the surprise announcement the FED will cut interest rates on March 3, 2020 in Washington,DC. (Photo by Eric BARADAT / AFP) (Photo by ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images

One more thing to worry about: The economic collapse caused by the novel coronavirus could cause massive problems in the financial system, and those problems could make the economy even worse.

That worry has prompted the Federal Reserve to do a bunch of dramatic things in the past few days. Today's show is a quick, emergency pod to explain what's going on. It's not really about interest rates. It's about the Fed stepping in and lending into a potential panic.

On the show, we discuss repo lending, the discount window, swap lines, quantitative easing and, yes, interest rates.

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