The Federal Reserve on Tuesday took another step to try and prop up the American economy, saying it would begin buying up a type of short-term debt companies use for funding, known as commercial paper, to help keep credit flowing to households and businesses.
The program, enacted using the Fed’s emergency lending powers, pulls a page from the central bank’s 2008 financial crisis playbook and is an attempt to keep the economy and financial system functioning by backstopping a market that some of America’s biggest companies use to raise cash.
