rachel siegel is a "washington post" economics reporter. >> rachel siegel, thank you so much for joining why, quite simply, if you can there is a simple answer -- why is this money taking so long to get to the people who need it? >> well, thank you for having me. and i'll try to give you a simple answer, with the caveat that this has been such a complicated process for so many months. first, there was no infrastructure going into the pandemic to quickly get emergency rental relief into the pockets of people who needed it quickly. and so what happened was that states and cities essentially had to set up the application programs in an emergency. and they were dealt with technical glitches and overwhelmed systems that at times had to be shut down. people didn't know where apply, or if they didn't have internet how they could apply at all. that is a huge obstacle to getting money to renters and landlords. at the top, there are questions what more the biden administration could have done to streamline application policies, but unfortunately we're dealing with some of the questions as some peo

rachel siegel at the washington post. >> thank you, michelle, and thank you chair powell for taking our questions. i wanted to follow up on what you said about there tending to be less in the way of economic implications from each wave of covid cases. could you elaborate on what you've seen to that end during previous waves? and then looking forward, how vulnerable is the labor market to the delta variant? i'm thinking or wondering if you have concerns that jobs that may have come back in travel or tourism could be susceptible if people started reconsidering their travel plans, or if caretakers were suddenly faced with the prospect of schools not reopening. how do you see some of those risks going forward? thank you so much. >> sure. if you remember the summer wave last year of covid, which was largely southern and western states, the economy just performed much better than anyone expected. you know, we were coming off the spring wave where there were a lot of shutdowns, and then this big second wave hit. and i think the natural thing to do is to expect that it would have a real impact