The Federal Reserve has done much to support markets, stabilise financial conditions and backstop key areas of the US debt and credit markets. But challenges remain. One big one is to get its Main Street Lending Program up and working well. As the Fed describes it, this program “is intended to facilitate lending to small and medium sized businesses” by ...

It took a moment of carelessness for plague to strike the French port city of Marseilles in 1720, despite an edifice of strict health measures. A boat carrying silks from the Ottoman Empire was allowed to skip the usual 40 days’ quarantine to unload its cargo, unleashing an epidemic that wiped out almost half the city’s population and which didn’t ...

Small Indian companies getting decimated by the world’s harshest coronavirus lockdown finally see a ray of hope. Details are still sketchy, but the Indian government plans to backstop banks if they increase overdraft limits by 20%, providing $39 billion of new working capital to smaller enterprises, Bloomberg News has reported. A state-sponsored fund will absorb losses. Seeing how the US ...