White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Tuesday called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass legislation providing aid to the airline industry to keep thousands of industry workers from losing their jobs at the end of the month. “I think the prudent thing for Speaker Pelosi to do would be to put a package on the floor that actually addresses that,” he told Fox Business. Meadows met with airline executives last Thursday as they engaged in a last-ditch effort to get more aid for their industry...

The nation’s CEOs are more bullish than they were in the second quarter but are worried that Washington might fail to enact another relief package. “Further major support from the federal government is necessary to prevent economic recovery from being derailed,” said Joshua Bolten, CEO of Business Roundtable, the group that of big-business CEOs that released a survey of its members Wednesday. The organization’s survey found that an increasing number of executives expect growth in sales,...

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday defended his organization against a report by Democratic staffers that showed companies issued bonds purchased by the Fed while either furloughing workers or issuing dividends to shareholders during the pandemic. Powell said that those purchases were in a secondary market, which normally benefit investors or dealers, and not the company. “We’re buying from another buyer,” he told the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis during a...

The number of new applications for unemployment benefits ticked up to 870,000 last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, as the number of claims has barely budged over the past four weeks. Jobless claims for the prior week were 860,000. Forecasters had projected 840,000 new claims. Jobless claims fell below the psychologically important 1 million mark at the end of August, but have not moved significantly since. New weekly claims remain extremely high by historical standards. As the...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday said that he would consider allowing federal workers to opt out of President Trump's payroll tax deferral plan, an option that would entail logistical headaches for the government sectors participating in the program. “I think that [opting out] is a reasonable issue if people don’t want to participate,” he told the Senate Banking Committee in a hearing on the CARES Act. Mnuchin said he would consult with the White House’s Office of Management and...