Category: General

Fed cuts interest rates to 3.5%

Chicago Board of TradeChicago Board of Trade, originally uploaded by eddymanzano

The Fed just cut rates by .75 in an emergency action today:

The Committee took this action in view of a weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth. While strains in short-term funding markets have eased somewhat, broader financial market conditions have continued to deteriorate and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households. Moreover, incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets.

The Fed is expected to cut another .25 off the rate next week at their usual meeting.
Today will be a bloodbath.

Slums: The problem

Border line...Border line…, originally uploaded by cayoyin

Lebbeus Woods on Slums:

The only thing we can learn from slums today is that they cannot be tolerated in any form, or under any circumstances; that poverty, their most terrible feature, must, as rapidly as possible, be alleviated; that the wealth and resources of any community—which prominently includes its human resources—cannot be controlled for the benefit of an elite, under whatever name or ideology it goes; that the survival of the emergent, global society depends on its reformation of institutions—public and private–presently managing society’s material and cultural wealth; and that reform must come not by violence from the lower social strata, but from enlightened leadership from the higher, if not the highest, strata of the social and economic structure.