Word: short
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Federal Reserve announced Wednesday afternoon that it was lowering its target short-term interest rate to 1%. Big deal. Almost everybody was already expecting the half-point rate cut that the Fed delivered, and the actual federal-funds rate (as opposed to the target rate) has mostly been below 1% for the past three weeks anyway. The stock market's reaction? A yawn, as the Dow closed down 74 points...
...government debt would struggle to cover their costs and still pay a positive return to investors. The Fed has a new facility in the works, the Money Market Investor Funding Facility, that's intended to ease these pressures. Once that's up and running, don't be surprised if short-term interest rates keep dropping, even to 0% - as was the case in Japan from 1999 to 2006. The Fed would literally be giving money away...
...that wouldn't be the end of it. In November 2002, during his first stint on the Fed - as a mere member of the board, not the chairman - Bernanke gave a now somewhat infamous speech about what central banks could do to fend off deflation even after short-term interest rates hit zero. The Fed could target longer-term interest rates, he argued. It could buy private securities, not just Treasuries. It could, figuratively speaking, drop money out of helicopters...
...think is the song of our nation at its best. This is why the two candidates who fared best in this election were the ones who spoke most convincingly about bringing us together. When the two are finally narrowed to one, his mandate will be change, his timetable short and his environment stormy with division. At a historic moment desperate for a successful President, everything will hinge on one man's ability to navigate by the clouded star of common purpose...
...last week, Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera reported that Knox had to fend off lesbian advances of a fellow prisoner.) The prosecution's court-room reconstruction of how they believe the life of the popular British exchange student, known to her friends as "Mez", was brutally cut short. After trying to force Kercher to join in group sex with them and Knox, prosecutors say the men held the victim down, and it was the American who allegedly slit her roommate's throat...