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Showing posts from October 9, 2008

Washington plays blame game as Wall St panics

Business Times - 10 Oct 2008 As Americans despair, a distinct lack of confident leadership a la FDR is felt across the US By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT I T'S not that officials and lawmakers in Washington aren't doing anything about the deepening economic crisis. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve, in coordination with European central banks, announced a half-percentage point reduction in the key interest rate - reducing the target federal funds rate to 1.5 per cent from 2 per cent. And, indeed, the heads of the US central bank indicated that, unlike Republican presidential candidate John McCain, they believed that the fundamentals of the US economy were weak. 'Incoming economic data suggests that the pace of economic activity has slowed markedly in recent months,' the Fed said, and that the financial crisis was 'further reducing the ability of households and businesses to obtain credit'. These comments seemed to correspond with the conclusions by econom