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The virtual event will bring together government, community, health, and business leaders to discuss visions for how Chicago recovers from the COVID-19 crisis.

The discussion moderated by Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, will look at how Chicago can meet the public health challenge of COVID-19, rebuild the economy, and ensure all residents share in a strong future for the city.

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You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

This page was updated on June 8, 2020 to reflect the Federal Reserve’s announcement to expand the Main Street Lending Program to allow more small and medium-sized businesses to be able to receive support.

The virtual event will bring together government, community, health, and business leaders to discuss visions for how Chicago recovers from the COVID-19 crisis.

The discussion moderated by Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, will look at how Chicago can meet the public health challenge of COVID-19, rebuild the economy, and ensure all residents share in a strong future for the city.

François Gourio is a senior economist and research advisor on the macroeconomics team in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In this position, he conducts research and policy analysis on business cycles, investment, firm dynamics and financial markets.

Before joining the Chicago Fed in July 2012, Gourio was an associate professor of economics at Boston University, and a visiting assistant professor of finance at the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his position at the Chicago Fed, he serves as associate editor for the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. Gourio received an A.B. in economics and statistics from ENSAE (France), an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. The views I’ll express are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) or others in the Federal Reserve System.

Before I begin my remarks, I want to take a moment to reflect on the police incident in Minneapolis that led to the death of George Floyd and the protests that have spread across the country. Like you, I am outraged and horrified by injustices toward the black community. Racism has no place in our society, and each of us has a responsibility to combat it. At the Chicago Fed we have made diversity and inclusion a priority in our own corporate culture. It is a responsibility we all share.

We are also together in grappling with the worst pandemic in more than 100 years. Almost overnight, the health care crisis has developed into the sharpest economic downturn we’ve ever experienced. My hope is that states can safely reopen their economies and that, in due...

The virtual event will bring together government, community, health, and business leaders to discuss visions for how Chicago recovers from the COVID-19 crisis.

The discussion moderated by Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, will look at how Chicago can meet the public health challenge of COVID-19, rebuild the economy, and ensure all residents share in a strong future for the city.

The Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) provides a comprehensive weekly update on U.S. financial conditions in money markets, debt and equity markets and the traditional and “shadow” banking systems. Because U.S. economic and financial conditions tend to be highly correlated, we also present an alternative index, the adjusted NFCI (ANFCI). This index isolates a component of financial conditions uncorrelated with economic conditions to provide an update on financial conditions relative to current economic conditions.

The NFCI and ANFCI are updated on a weekly basis at 8:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, and cover the time period through the previous Friday. When a federal holiday falls on a Wednesday or earlier in the week, the NFCI and ANFCI will be updated on Thursday.

If you are in town to see Hamilton the Musical, visit the Money Museum to see Hamilton the Exhibit. Learn about the man who inspired the musical and see what it meant for him to be the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Understand how his vision led to the eventual creation of the Federal Reserve System. Learn more in the press release.

This webinar is an opportunity for minority and women-owned businesses and interested parties to learn about the Main Street Lending Program and to get answers to questions from senior officials from the Federal Reserve. The session will include an overview of the program, and information about eligibility requirements, loan terms and conditions, and how to get started.

The Main Street Lending Program is designed to support small and medium-sized U.S. businesses and their employees during this period of financial strain by giving these businesses access to loans. The program is intended to help businesses that were in sound financial condition prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic maintain operations until conditions normalize. Small and medium-sized businesses are integral to the U.S. economy and create jobs for a large share of the U.S. workforce.

Interested participants are encouraged to visit the Federal Reserve Bank of...

Federal bank regulators have issued statements and guidance throughout the Covid-19 pandemic encouraging financial institutions to “meet the financial needs of their customers and members in areas affected by Covid-19.” In the past, regulators have indicated how financial institutions can prudently respond to disasters and national emergencies, and how examiners will view a financial institution’s good-faith efforts to address its communities’ and customers’ needs. The agencies more recently issued an interagency Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) “to clarify how agencies will consider activities responsive to community needs during the Covid-19 emergency,” with regards to financial institutions’ responsibilities under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).  

The FAQ explains how a bank’s retail and community development activities will be considered for CRA examinations, including: 

We use two primary data sources in our analysis: weekly county-level initial UI claims and daily Google Trends indexes for the unemployment topic (see note 2). The county-level initial UI claims data are for Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, and Washington, and we get them from their state governments (through the Haver Analytics database). To these data, we then add Google Trends unemployment topic indexes at the designated market area (DMA) level, which is the smallest level of geographic disaggregation available that is consistent with the county-level UI claims data. We normalize the daily Google Trends indexes for each metro area against the national index to obtain data that are comparable across jurisdictions.3 We then average the daily indexes using the UI claim reference weeks. Finally, we aggregate the county-level UI clams data up to the DMA level to obtain a consistent metro-area-by-week panel of data.4

Figure 1 shows maps of initial UI claims per 1,000...