Former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh said Friday that he expects the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world to act soon in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Warsh spoke Friday morning to CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He recommended the Fed act as quickly as Sunday to assuage financial markets that have been in an aggressive swoon all week as the virus has spread.
“This thing’s moving pretty darn quickly,” he said. “At the very least, a statement on Sunday night before Asian markets open would buy them a little time and let us all learn a little bit more about where things are.”
He said the Fed doesn’t have a lot of ammunition to help markets and the economy so it needs to act quickly.
“They’ve got a knife. There’s a gunfight,” he said. “You might as well go find some friends that also have knives and see if you can’t to it together.”
Speaking the day after he published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling on the Fed to cut interest rates, Warsh said he wishes the Fed would have more ammunition to help in the time of crises.
A Fed official during the financial crisis in 2008, Warsh has been critical of Fed officials for not normalizing interest rates sooner and thus leaving themselves more room to act in times of crisis.
“We certainly didn’t know this virus was coming. But we knew that complacency in a world like this sets itself up for big tail risks,” he said. “But you go to market with the Fed you’ve got, not the Fed you want.”
Wall Street has been in turmoil as the virus has spread beyond China’s border and to other countries around the world. Stocks entered correction mode Thursday, with the 10% drop being the quickest in market history.
For their part, Fed officials have issued cautious statements, saying they are monitoring conditions but believe it’s too soon to tell how bad the damage will be.
Economists have been marking down their growth estimates for the first quarter, with Bank of America saying global GDP gains are likely to fall below 3% this year for the first time since the financial crisis. Goldman Sachs added that corporate profits, which had been expected to rise close to 8% this year, now could be wiped out by the damage the coronavirus will do to global supply chains.
Despite the most recent indications from the Fed for no moves on rates this year, the futures market is anticipating four cuts.
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Warsh spoke the day after he called for the Fed to cut interest rates in response to the outbreak.