BofA CEO sees US economy to bounce back after health crisis

Bloomberg

Bank of America Corp. (BofA) Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan expects the US economy to bounce back fairly quickly once the coronavirus health crisis is resolved.
“There are no structural issues in the economy — it’s a health-care crisis, and I think if we mitigate that health-care crisis, you will see on the other side of this a rebound,” Moynihan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Consumer spending by the bank’s customers rose 2% to 3% in March even as the virus started to crimp activity in the latter half of the month, he said.
“There will be a deeper downdraft” in the second quarter, but “our internal economists believe, on the other side, is a reversion back to where the economy almost gets back to the same size sometime in the next year.”
The lender has made $70 billion of commercial loans this month, Moynihan said. That’s up from a $50 billion figure Moynihan gave in an interview with CNBC.
Some of the biggest banks have also ramped up lending to US companies wrestling with the impact of the coronavirus. They’ve made about $400 billion in loans to small and large American businesses in the first quarter, up 12.7% from a year earlier, according to the Bank Policy Institute, a trade association representing major financial firms.