News Buzz: Central Banks Cut Rates to Jolt Economy, Debate Aftermath

Interest rate reductions are praised, but the IMF warns the United States could slip into recession

By U.S. News Staff

October 8, 2008 RSS Feed Print

Fed, Central Banks Cut Rates to Jolt World Economy: In an attempt to stem the growing global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve and six other central banks worldwide, including the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, slashed interest rates today. Although the coordinated action was lauded by analysts as a step in the right direction, many said that it will not be sufficient to reverse disturbing financial trends. Wall Street greeted the news tentatively, rising slightly after the announcement. In more worrying news, the International Monetary Fund projected today that the world economy will slow suddenly this year and like will expand just 3 percent next year, compared with 5 percent in 2007. The United States probably will slide into a recession, the IMF said.

McCain, Obama Trade Barbs in Town-Hall Debate: Last night's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain was followed by each campaign releasing tough ads today. Obama goes after his rival's healthcare plan, while McCain contends that Obama is a tax-and-spend candidate. Given both campaigns' rhetoric of late, one apparent omission from the debate, which covered the financial crisis, healthcare, and foreign affairs, was any mentioning of either Charles Keating Jr. or William Ayers, each a potential liability to one of the candidates. While both candidates tried to defy their stereotypes during the town hall-style meeting, analysts agreed that the debate was hardly a "game-changer"—leaving the election in favor of Obama, at least for now.

Gates Asks Allies to Send Troops to Afghanistan: Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked European leaders to move their troops from Iraq to Afghanistan today, citing the "urgent need" for more security in Afghanistan. The members of the Southeast European Defense Ministerial, whom he addressed, have a combined 5,100 troops in Afghanistan now and 6,900 in Iraq. Commanders in Afghanistan have said that they need as many as 10,000 more forces, in addition to the U.S. Marines and Army soldiers that will be sent later this year and in early 2009.

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Federal Government

I feel that the federal government should help the people that want to help the people that want to be helped. The people that need the money to pay the bills, and the mortgage. People that may have been laid-off, or have had a terrible illness or injury that put them in debt from hospital bills.

Mostly people are laid-off because of debt, but in this case it is because the economy is so horrible. The on going war, and rising prices of oil, gas, which means transportation the price of grocery’s. Everything else’s prices are raising as a result of the uncertain economic times.

Another reason for Federal Government help is hospitalization. The hospital bills of the sick or injured people are outrageous, they are burning holes in peoples pockets. There is not much more that we can do, when you get sick the bills raise, and in most cases people loose thousands of dollars on medicine, and doctors. So once you spend all of that money on doctors, and etc..Where does the money come from that pays your light bills and mortgage. It doesn’t come from anywhere except possibly the government.

Car sales are going down the drain. One in ten people in our country are effected by the automobile industry. If the three major manufacturing companies: Ford, GMC, Chrysler were to go bankrupt the economy would really crash. We wouldn’t have hardly any money left.

Today I was CNN and they said that “The Federal Reserve joined today with five central banks around the world in an uncommonly concerted round of interest rate cuts meant to bolster confidence in the markets and improve access to credit. In explaining its half-point cut to 1.5 percent, the Fed pointed to recent turmoil in the markets and economic data that show a marked slowdown in recent months. "Moreover, the intensification of financial market turmoil is likely to exert additional restraint on spending, partly by further reducing the ability of household and businesses to obtain credit," the Fed said in its announcement.”

With the way the economy is going, everywhere is going to go bankrupt. The world of money will be destroyed if no one cleans this mess up!

lauren of SC 10:49PM November 12, 2008

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