The U.S. economy is caught in a strange sort of limbo right now, no longer in shutdown, but not fully reopened either. And with COVID-19 cases surging in much of the country, it looks like we'll be in this state for a while, months if not years. In The New York Times today, Jim Tankersley and I looked at how economic policy can respond to this new phase. It won't be easy: The policies that made sense in the first stage of the pandemic might not work now, but our normal recession-fighting tools aren't well-suited to a pandemic, either. Policymakers will have to get creative. Here's one thing almost every economist agrees on, though: The virus is the boss. There's no way to get the economy back to normal without controlling the pandemic. That means the government needs to invest in testing and tracing. And it can't push businesses to open up before it is safe to do so. For more steps that policymakers should be taking now, see our story in today's Times. #COVID #Economy #Unemployment #EconomicPolicy …see more