Word: feds
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...economy, not the markets. Right? The markets had quieted down about the Fed and just about given up on the possibility that Greenspan would give them anything at all before the May 15 meet. A cut then was still considered a given, 25 or 50 points off the top, but with a month to go nobody was really waiting around. Yet what seemed to be a self-inflicted rally had taken root over the holiday week, and this week it was holding up. Maybe Greenspan was just waiting for Wall Street to stop begging...
...other kind of earnings news comes along - some of Wednesday's euphoria will inevitably be sold off, and probably sooner rather than later. But Greenspan's first concern was never the "reverse wealth effect" Wall Street had only just stopped screaming about (rallies will do that). For the Fed it was the Main Street stuff - jobs, malls, cars and houses - that was going to turn this slowdown from a correction to a disaster...
...Wednesday's surprise makes it harder to argue that Greenspan and the Fed haven't done all they could to start the U.S. economic pulse beating again. The Street, for the time being, is all smiles, and the shocked financial commentariat (present company excepted) will have to finish their humble pie before starting to squawk anew...
...slowdown. The bad news is that there's obviously no room for companies to raise prices to try and bulk up their profits, and that's going to keep the corporate earnings outlook pretty grim for a while. The good news is that this would seem to give the Fed tremendous latitude to cut rates quickly...
...find it hard to believe that the Fed can sit back and wait until the middle of May to cut interest rates again. Today was more evidence that the last leg holding up this economy, the consumer, is buckling. They're looking for a lifeline from the Fed, and the Fed is not providing...