Fed moves to backstop funding for companies as coronavirus fallout spreads

(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday acted to ensure companies can continue paying workers and buying supplies through the coronavirus epidemic, restarting a program it used to backstop a key financial market during the 2007 to 2009 crisis.As the Fed and other U.S. officials continued fine-tuning their crisis response and debating further steps to support the economy, the central bank said it would reopen the so-called Commercial Paper Funding Facility to underwrite the short-term..