Let me now turn to our open market operations. As tensions and uncertainty rose in mid-March, investors moved rapidly toward cash and shorter-term government securities, and the markets for Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, started to experience strains. These markets are critical to the overall functioning of the financial system and to the transmission of monetary policy to the broader economy.
In extreme instances, this led to checks moving from city to city before eventually ending up at their destination.