And a half-point it is

Ben Bernanke and crew were hard at work once again today, slashing the Fed funds rate another half-point, down to an even three percent.

There was one dissenting vote cast by Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher who voted for no change - he needs to get with the program.

Pretty soon, about the best you'll be able to do is about three percent on a Certificate of Deposit. Those Stable Value Funds in most 401k plans are starting to look pretty good again - just like they did about five years ago. You can still get a risk-free low-risk return that will at least beat the government's measure of inflation - real world inflation is a completely different matter.

The entire nation is now being goaded into taking on more risk - part of another series of easy money injections that will attempt to combat the ill-effects of the last series of easy money injections.

Inflation seems to be but a passing thought in the most recent policy statement:
I had a hard time even finding last month's policy statement with all the press releases over the last seven weeks.

Big surprise - gold and silver are up almost one percent and the dollar is down about an equal amount.