Business-Insider

by Ryan Teeples

A prominent member of the Federal Banking Scene hinted today that we're not out of the recession woods, and stated more rate cuts are a strong possibility.

"A slowing economy requires a lower inflation-adjusted interest rate. The prominence of downside risks means that further easing ultimately may be warranted," said Jeffrey Lacker President of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank in prepared remarks.

Lacker voted in favor of cuts in the Jan. 31 FOMC meetings.

His comments are timely, considering the Dow lost a whopping 370 points today on bad news from the service sector. It was another drop in the seemingly overflowing bucket of recent bad news in the US markets.

The concensus from Wall Street after the Jan. 31 rate cut was that the recent cuts, combined with the Economic Stimulus Package, would mostly prevent a recession and right the USS Economics ship.

Unfortunately, equities were up and quickly down after the rate cut, as the bad reports from multiple industries burst everyone's bubble. Today's move was the most dramatic, showing that investors are skittish about a recession, and not comfortable bellying up to the equities table quite yet.

Outside of another emergency cut, the next time the Fed would cut rates is March 18, as the Fed doesn't meet in February. Until then, we can probably expect to see similar speculation and pontification we saw leading up to the cuts in January.

Here's the Dow for the last few days. We also have lots of free videos, technicals, fundamentals, data and more at http://www.pfxglobal.com


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