Am I hearing this right another rate cut??

[Maggie_May]

Wall Street mostly higher as investors eye biggest job losses in 5 years, bet on more Fed rate cuts. Dollar in freefall.
The unemployment rate, generated by a separate survey, fell to 4.8% from 4.9%, versus forecasts for a rise to 5%. But the drop was a result of less people being in the workforce. Average hourly earnings, the report's inflation component, rose 0.3%, as expected, after rising a revised 0.3% in the previous month.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/07/markets/markets_morning/index.htm?postversion=2008030710

Let me get this right now help me out if I am wrong. We get another rate the dollar falls consumer prices go up right? Also with the dollar going down it doesn't help the interest rates because of the falling dollar. So all in all we shoot ourselves in the foot. We the consumers pay more in just about everything. ????????

[mike_c]

1. were you under the mistaken impression that the Fed gives a rat's buttocks...

...about your welfare? That's only the case if you're a banker or some other species of millionaire.

[HereSince1628]

2. Stocks gloomy according to Standard and Poors

that was 77 minutes ago, and a glance a the DOW's morning says no reason to think otherwise

[Wizard777]

3. If they keep cutting rates like this. Soon you'll be able to take out a loan

and the bank will have to pay you interest.

[Maggie_May]

4. LOL you are probably right

[Tesha]

6. But thanks to inflation, you'll *STILL* be getting a raw deal! (NT)

[Warpy]

5. They are desperately trying to get banks to start lending again

and think rate cuts will do it by making money so cheap to lend that banks will be unable to say no.

Banks, however, are looking at huge losses in hedge funds and the derivatives market. They are averse to any sort of risk right now, no matter how big the difference between the money they borrow and the money they lend out to the suckers.

The situation being what it is, they could cut the rate to 0% and still have this crisis. It's simply not going to do any good. It's been tried by other countries in this same mess.

My own feeling is that he should be hiking rates to make US debt more attractive. Instead, they're lowering rates to a point where the continued fall in the dollar will make taking on US debt totally unprofitable.

GOPs always do everything backwards. Haven't you noticed?

[Maggie_May]

7. My thoughts also

We need to who's broke and who's not. With banks hindering there write downs is also making things worse. Where is the end to this madness.

[Tesha]

8. They're screwed. The good paths were closed-off, oh, 5 or 7 years ago.

> My own feeling is that he should be hiking rates to make US debt
> more attractive. Instead, they're lowering rates to a point where
> the continued fall in the dollar will make taking on US debt totally
> unprofitable.

They're screwed. The good paths were all closed-off, oh, 5 or 7 years
ago as Shrub demolished the Federal Budget with more tax cuts for his
friends and the *HUGE* hit of a war financed entirely on credit cards.
Allowing oil pricing to spin wildly out of control (in large part
because of that same war) was the final strategic error.

Everything else that's going wrong (credit collapse, etc.) can be
traced back to the basic strategeries that the Bush Administration
laid-out in their first days in office.

Tesha

[El Pinko]

9. They're trying to inflate away mountains of debt by devaluing the currency.

I think we're pretty much screwed regardless what the fed does.

Saving the housing market is pointless and impossible in the long-term.

We need to be withdrawing from Iraq and investing in US infrastructure to compensate for the massive job losses in construction. At least there would be some economic benefits.

Iraq is a trillion dollar black hole.

[Virginia Dare]

10. This is just to tie us over until the $600 checks come in..

then all will be well...:sarcasm:

[dbonds]

11. They had better start shrinking the money supply.

If not then we are in for a major crash.

[Dreamer Tatum]

19. That would grease the tracks to another Depression

...which we are trying to avoid. Deflation exacerbated the problems of the Great Depression.

[dbonds]

20. But we weren't dependent on so many products made outside the US then.

With more money in circulation the dollar will be worth less and less and those products will rise in price. Our economy now is serviced based, which in essence means that it is all based on cash flow. The more those products cost, the more money leaves the country the less flow we have.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

12. maybe this is the last attempt to privitize and slash social security

before the Dems take over in the next election

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. And when you add the price of oil.....

Warning .....:rant:

For years since 1913, the Federal Reserve ( which is NOT a Federal/gov't bank, but a private for-profit one) has been creating money out of ...well, nothing. Just wildly printing it.
Then "lending" the printed money to the Government.
At rates the bank set.
Think of it as a national version of the World Bank.

Then along comes Reganomics, the beginning of tax cuts for the rich while piling on the National debt ( US became a debtor nation around 1979-80.)
Bush mafiosa family just built on the same recipe. Every Fed. rate cut makes our money less valuable.
Every Bush budget relied on Congress being an accomplice to the crime by raising the legal ceiling.
For us, it means less money available for our savings, less for our buying,as prices increase. And less jobs...American have become "too expensive" to hire.
Big Business uses its tax free money for stupendous profits, foreign companies are now coming in and buying our cheap ( to them )roads, water services, ports, banks ( Canada just bought a regional bank here in the South). And everything made out of petroleum has tripled in price and will comtinue to rise.
That cute little "rebate" Bush threatens to give taxpayers comes from DEBT, not real money.

This country is going bankrupt.
Bush is trying to hide it until he leaves office.
It's that simple.
It's that terrible.

I don't know if Obama can stop it.
I know Hillary won't.
I know Pelosi won't..her family fortune includes HUGE stock positions in AT&T.

This election is the most important one we have ever had.
And I have a horrible feeling it's rigged.

End of rant...

Have a nice, day, y'all.

:-)

[kineneb]

16. but Reality(tm) will bite BushCo on the arse sooner

the "crash", which actually began in last summer, will probably hit bottom before they are out of office.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/02/still-pretendin.html

The banks can probably keep this gag running a little longer, but not without consequences. My guess is that it spins out of control in March sometime when some more hedge funds blow up and at least one big bank, perhaps Citi, rolls belly up like a harpooned whale. The game is really over, and all the playerz know it. The consequence of continuing to pretend the meta-fiasco of Ponzi endgame is fixable will be an even more shattering depression than the one we're already in for.

[Karenina]

22. Thank You and Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[tom_paine]

14. The Bushies are doing everything they can to forestall the really bad shit that's coming

so that can get the "election" close enough to steal and put McCain on the Imperial Throne.

I would also say that the Bushies in Big Oil will do what they did in '04 and '06, which is to temporarily esist in their theft and defrauding operation by artificially dropping the price of gas from April-Dec. again, but with the dollar a economically weak bankrupt currency of a economically weak bankrupt country and with Peak Oil squeezing them from the other side, they may not have the opportunity to give up their thefts because they may be doing so involuntarily now just to keep gas prices from shooting to $4.

Think about it. Gas was $3/gallon when oil was $70 and $80 a barrel. How can it maintain that or something even close to that (like the $3.20 average it is now) when price/bbl. of oil has risen 20-30%?

But we shall see. The Big Oil Bushies have a lot of control over oil market manipulations, even though it is slipping away as Peak Oil and the Purposeful Destruction and Looting of the American Economy squeezes their ability even as they have no more need to fear from criminal or Congressional investigations, let alone Bushie regulators who are themselves criminals.

It will be interesting to see and we will know in a few months at most. Can the Big Oil Bushies pull one more Phony Price Drop (aka a brief respite in their fraud and theft operations) to help McBush in 2008?

Time will tell. Stay tuned.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

17. Cheapest regular gas was $3.50 a gallon today in California where I live

Premium was $3.80 and diesel was $4.10.

[tom_paine]

18. California typically has the most expensive gasoline in the nation at all times I have noticed

When from high state taxes, the Bushies giving you the Enron treatment, or morelikely, som combination of both.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Hope this link helps you in your day-to-day search for where to fill up. It really is an excellent resource and usually is pretty up to date.

[magellan]

15. 9-11: What can Americans do? "Go shopping", smirked the Chimp.

Americans refused to see what was going on, so dazzled were they by the "free money" the GOP was handing them through tax cuts and deregulations of the financial industries that turned on the lending spigots full blast.

Ignorance has consequences, willful or not. There is NO ONE who can save this country from what's coming, and the Fed will only make it that much worse if they cut rates again. Which they will. And not because they're stupid. If even I could see this coming two years ago (simply by reading), so could these trained financial professionals.

The GOP stooges in the Fed know exactly what they're doing and who they're doing it for. And it ain't for the good of the country.

[Karenina]

21. Hal-lo!

It's INTENTIONAL. :hi:

[Javaman]

23. You see it's like this....

9/11 and the tech bust created a recession that mr greenspan (mr. housing bust creator) had to combat by dropping interest rates to "pump" up the economy.

However, moron* is basically the living form of one long ass version of 9/11. Killing more soldiers than people that died in 9/11, killing many times over the civilians in Iraq than those who died on 9/11, destroying an economy single handedly, and driving this nation into a non recoverable national debt the likes of which won't be balanced until the some ET's come in with a new form of currency.

So rather than end the war, which would instantly stop the bleeding, moron*, his room full of dopes, his gaggle of creative accountants, his* sycophantic news propaganda team, his have even mores and his monkey boy benancke, choose instead to bleed the poor dry.

Because, the problems and issues that weigh this country down like an anvil off a cliff, require people that 1) have actual brains 2) know how to use those actual brains and 3) refer to 1 and 2.

Easy right? the short version: we're fucked.