US: National bank puts virus stability before economy

ANKARA

One of the national banks in the U.S. has urged U.S. decision-makers to reopen the country's economy once businesses are confident of a "stable" return to work amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

"We'll bring people back -- first, when we're allowed to -- but we'll also bring people back on a view that we don't want to the change course of action until we know it's going to be stable," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said on a press call, cited by Politico on Wednesday.

"Once we got the people here, we actually have the luxury to hold off longer," Moynihan added.

U.S. President Donald Trump has recently been pushing country to prepare plans to reopen portions of the economy, declaring his "total" authority on the matter. However, Trump also said on Monday that he would prefer to work with states on the issue of reopening.

Meanwhile, the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Delaware and Massachusetts have formed a regional advisory council to plan a "safe and coordinated" reopening.

California, Oregon and Washington also have agreed to work together on a shared approach for reopening their economies.

On Wednesday, several U.S. banks, including the Fifth Third Bank, BB&T, Alliant Credit Union and PNC among others, have reported service issues under the high volume of traffic, as 80 million Americans were scheduled to receive their coronavirus stimulus checks as part of CARES Act.

The coronavirus relief checks are a one-time direct payment of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child under 16 years old.

People with dependent status won't be eligible for checks either, as well as people over a certain income threshold.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced on the same day that it developed a Get My Payment web tool to help people receive their stimulus checks faster by providing direct deposit information.

The U.S. has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases and fatalities worldwide, with nearly 640,000 cases and almost 31,000 deaths, according to the data compiled by the Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University.

In all, the country recorded more than 52,700 recoveries.

Overall, the virus has spread to 185 countries, infecting over 2 million people, and killing over 137,100 worldwide since it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. Nearly 518,000 have recovered from the virus.