Behind a flurry of activity in Washington Tuesday was an increasingly urgent problem for a nation grappling with the novel coronavirus pandemic: the growing risk that millions of businesses and households won’t be able to pay their everyday bills—rent, payroll, utilities—as business activity grinds to an unprecedented halt. The Federal Reserve launched a program to provide short-term loans to businesses in commercial paper markets, while White House officials and lawmakers scrambled for ideas to get funds into the private...

Source: Wall Street Journal March 17, 2020 22:32 UTC