WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday that he would ask Congress to reinstate powers that were used during the 2008 financial crisis to support the economy as the coronavirus threatens to grind business activity in the United States to a halt.

The comments suggest that the White House is bracing for a widespread downturn that could harm sectors well beyond the travel and cruise ship industries, and that the federal government could need to return to the type of crisis-era measures that were ultimately scaled back by lawmakers in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

Mr. Mnuchin and Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, have been in daily conversations about how to buttress the economy, which faces the prospect of a deep recession as the coronavirus spreads around …continued .
[Source: New York Times]