White House report lauds U.S. economic response to coronavirus crisis

Increased transfer payments and expanded liquidity measures aimed at companies should help buffer U.S. households and businesses from the worst of the economic crisis unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic in coming months, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said in a report on Thursday. Nonetheless, the economy would recover faster and with less scarring if agreement were reached on additional support, Tyler Goodspeed, the CEA's acting chair, told reporters in a briefing on the report.

The report said the U.S. government acted with "unprecedented scale, speed, and coordination, surpassing past efforts to mitigate previous crises," and said it had helped ameliorate a stark economic contraction while improving expectations for a recovery in 2021. However it cautioned that its findings were based on data through mid-July, and the longer-term impact was still evolving.