Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on "Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy" in Washington, July 10, 2019. Erin Scott | Reuters

On Thursday, April 9, the market learned that the economy was even worse than most had thought, as the Labor Department reported that another 6.6 million Americans had joined the ranks of the jobless. That meant that in just a three-week period, more than 16 million Americans, or 10% of the workforce had been sent to the unemployment line. To the naked eye, it looked like the U.S. economy was in free fall and with no hope of avoiding a downturn that would rival the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve, though, had other ideas. At literally the same minute the government released the jobless claims data, the Fed had an announcement of its own — a series of programs aimed at big and smaller business alike as well as households and governments representing an unprecedented $2.3 trillion in economic stimulus. The programs were far and away bigger than anything the central bank attempted during the financial crisis, and were announced in much less time than the 2008-09 efforts.

The move also put a capstone on a dizzying laundry list of initiatives. The actions began with an emergency interest rate cut and continued through an alphabet soup of credit facilities aimed at keeping money flowing through the financial system — to businesses, households, and municipal and state governing bodies bereft of revenue as the American economy has been sidelined. "None of us has the luxury of choosing our challenges; fate and history provide them for us," Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in remarks that accompanied Thursday's rollout. "Our job is to meet the tests we are presented."

Fed acts while Congress argues