U.S. Treasury chief says reserving capital to add to Fed coronavirus lending programs

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday he is keeping some $259 billion worth of coronavirus aid capital in reserve for new or expanded Federal Reserve Lending programs, but is not considering further aid to airlines at the moment.

Mnuchin told reporters during a video news briefing that all of the unallocated capital would go to broad-based Fed lending programs.

"I didn't want to allocate all the money up front," Mnuchin said on a Zoom chat. "I wanted to leave some in reserve to see how each one of these programs did, to see if the programs needed more money and to see if we needed to do more programs."