Welcome to Part 1 of a special two-part edition of Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Michael Zezes, how the Public Policy Research and Municipal Strategy for Morgan Stanley.

And I'm Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S. Economist for Morgan Stanley research.

On the special edition of the podcast, we'll be talking about Congress's response to the

coronavirus impact on the economy.

It's Wednesday, April 22nd at 2 PM Eastern time.

So Ellen, it seemed like it was just a few weeks ago

that Congress passed the CARES Act, which was 2 trillion plus dollars of economic aid.

And now we're on the precipice of adding another 400 to 450 billion dollars backfilling

money to the CARES Act, and most of that money seems like it's going to be going to backfilling loans for small businesses.

Why are we here again? Why do you think this is important?

Well I think you and I have talked about this in the past, you know, the small businesses are the backbone

of the economy. They employ 60% of the labor market and so it was important to get money to them in order to try to help them

through this difficult time as quickly as possible.

Now obviously there was a great need because why are we here talking about more funds

for small businesses? It's because that initial program was exhausted so quickly with more

than a million applications approved eating up that 350 billion

that was initially allotted to it very quickly.

So the need is there and clearly this program needed to be expanded.

But at the outset, it's all about giving businesses the best chance of reopening

on the other side of these most negative impacts from coronavirus. You do that and you

give the economy the best chance for bringing the unemployment rate down more quickly.

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