Here comes the rate cut train again, open wide!!!

[Javaman]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23164148/

Bernanke: Economic outlook has worsened
In testimony, Fed chairman says central bank is ready to cut rates

updated 52 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Thursday that the country’s economic outlook has deteriorated and signaled that the central bank is ready to keep on lowering a key interest rate — as needed — to shore things up.

[Kittycat]

1. If it gets low enough...

We're refinancing our already low 30year fixed mortgage. I think we're in at around 5.87% right now. :shrug:

[Prefer]

11. It is not affecting mortgage rates yet.

I don't quite understand why, but the rates have gone up since the last cuts.

I heard someone say the bond market eats it up.

[Kittycat]

13. It was a down a bit last time I looked,

But that was after the midnight rate cut a while back.

[Angela Shelley]

2. Easy money in the beginning, easy money in the end.

[lurky]

3. OK, when do they start paying me to borrow money?

That is when I'm going to start borrowing! ;)

[flamin lib]

4. And Congress is considering investigating why credit card companies

aren't lowering rates to consumers and why the ARMs keep re-setting.

The fat cats are just keeping the profit . . .

[WCGreen]

Credit card rates, from my understanding, are not tied to the federal

discount rate...

[radfringe]

7. but they sure as hell use it as an excuse

to raise the rates

[WCGreen]

9. You were expecting a loan shark to grant favors...

[warren pease]

14. Suppliers never give their addict customers any slack...

If anyone needed further evidence that congress includes an abnormally high percentage of hypocritical idiots and clueless fools, just imagine conducting a serious inquiry into why mortgage lenders and credit card companies are gouging their customers.

It's the nature of the beast. Expecting them to modify their behavior is about as dumb as expecting a vulture to quit eating carrion and go vegan. So they have to gouge their customers. It's the sacred, inviolate free market law of supply and demand and it must be obeyed.

Congress, stumped, befuddled and a half-step behind as usual, can't seem to figure this out; they seem to be incapable of understanding that they can't simultaneously extol the virtues of an unregulated free-market and then snivel when that system works exactly as it should.

But they still try to score points with their constituents by posturing and speechifying and threatening and conducting hearings -- all sound and fury producing nothing, followed by the customary "strongly worded letter" sent to the most unsympathetic targets, which go directly into the shredder.

The loan sharking industry is just taking advantage of loopholes big enough to drive a train through. They benefit from the complete absence of federal usury laws and predictably light oversight of lending practices. Like all cash machines, these companies want an ever-expanding revenue stream and predictable improvements in earnings every 90 days.

So how to fix this scam that institutionalizes corruption and encourages profiteering? You probably can't. There's too much money invested in the status quo -- much of it in the form of bribes to their bought-off trollops in congress and on various regulatory agencies stay bought.

Absent a huge turnover in congress that gets rid of every single GOP-lite faux dem and puts progressives in control, nothing will change. Absent the abolition of the our utterly corrupt bribocracy and shifting to public financing of campaigns, nothing will change.

Nor will anything of substance change under a Clinton or Obama presidency. They'll just tinker around the edges while leaving untouched the rot at the core of the system that the elites and our corporate massuhs have put in place. All you have to do is look at http://www.opensecrets.org/index.asp">who's supplying the money for their campaign war chests to figure that one out.


Cheers,

wp

[katty]

5. low, lower, lowest...the slippery slope

[Javaman]

6. Down down down we slide without a hope. nt

[katty]

8. pls cry for u.s., argentina...

[MadHound]

10. Yay! More inflation! Just what this country needs

The fed is keeping the markets afloat at the expense of the rest of us. The trouble isn't that the rates aren't low enough, it is that the banks aren't loaning and people aren't buying.

But this will pump up the markets some more, making that upcoming bubble burst all that much more spectacular.

[katty]

12. banana republic of america! it's not just a store anymore