Chair Powell: Fed ‘days away’ from first loans in Main St. lending facility

on propping up Main Street lending

The Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said the central bank’s long-awaited program to lend to small- and medium-sized businesses is about to get off the ground.

The loan program will be run through The Main Street lending facility, which will target companies with up to 15,000 employees. It has been difficult to set up but is just about ready, Powell told Princeton University economist and former Fed official Alan Blinder in a webinar interview Friday.

Powell added, “We’re days away from making our first loans in Main Street. We have three facilities that are part of it. They’re meant to reach out to different parts of that broad space. In the meantime, many of those companies are finding that they can borrow from banks. Others are waiting for us to get our facilities up and running.”