Fed chief Jerome Powell to make rare TV interview appearance on Thursday

Powell will be interviewed on the NBC Today show at 7:05am New York time (8:05pm in Singapore). PHOTO: AFP

WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will make a rare televised interview appearance in a broadcast on Thursday (March 26), as the US central bank deploys an unprecedented array of tools to prevent the coronavirus health crisis from becoming a financial one.

Powell will be interviewed on the NBC Today show - one of the country's main morning television programs - at 7:05am New York time (7:05pm in Singapore), according to an advisory released by the Fed.

It will mark the Fed chief's first public remarks since he held an unusual Sunday press briefing by teleconference on March 15. That was following a policy meeting that the central bank conducted days early in order to speed stimulus to the economy and financial system.

Communication from the Fed chair has for decades been carefully choreographed, given the importance of signals to the public and to investors in particular. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan famously curbed on-the-record interviews with the press after a 1987 appearance on ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley," following which stocks dropped.

Ben Bernanke, who led the Fed during the financial crisis, made his own rare appearance in a televised interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" program in March 2009, at the tail end of the global financial crisis that had hobbled the US economy.

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