(Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic led to the most extreme levels of financial market volatility since the 2008 crisis and credit markets were likely to freeze up without central bank intervention, Daleep Singh, the head of the markets group at the New York Federal Reserve, said on Wednesday.

“The credit crunch was part of a self-reinforcing feedback loop,” Singh said during a webinar organized by the Long Island Association and Newsday. “My judgment was the sell-off was likely to keep taking on a life of its own with growing intensity unless we acted forcefully and aggressively to break the damaging psychology that was taking hold.”

Singh and Lorie Logan, the manager of the Fed’s portfolio, are overseeing and executing the asset purchases and many emergency lending facilities launched by the U.S. central bank since March.

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