As expected, the Federal Reserve kept its benchmark federal funds rate unchanged. While it said the economy had "continued to pick up" since its last policy-setting meeting in September, the Fed maintained the rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent.

In 1987 when I started as a "retail stock broker" there were hundreds of high quality “investment ideas” to show customers on a daily basis – literally hundreds. There were dozens of AAA rated fixed income products, many quality high yielding stocks, and pages of conservative, safe, AAA rated insured municipal bonds. Oh how things have changed.

Economy is at the state where every small development is a big deal for this country. Mortgage rates could help this economy or hurt it. Today it is story about rising fears in our economy.

Yesterday's Fed meeting yielded no surprises. The Fed said it would keep interest rates near zero "for an extended period" and would proceed with its previously announced plans to buy up to $300 billion in long-term US Treasuries by autumn and up to $1.25 trillion in MBS. Meanwhile, over the pond, the ECB injected an unprecedented $622 billion in one-year liquidity to boost its sagging economy.

Chalk this bankruptcy filing up to yet another really leveraged commercial real estate deal crafted at the peak of the market, based on unrealistic expectations for future growth. Extended Stay Hotels filed for bankruptcy on Monday. Who were the crack real estate lenders who facilitated this transaction? Why Bear Stearns and Wachovia. Hmmm, those names sound sort of familiar.

Americans are sick of being lied to. Politicians, bureaucrats, Wall Street CEO's, we can't trust a word that comes out of any of their mouths. As a nation we're stuck in an endless skeptical limbo. We're like a plane-load of passengers held captive on a red-eye circling high above La Guardia desperately wanting to land but the pilot keeps coming up with excuses blaming the delay on everyone from the flight attendants to the ground crew.

Hoping to combat the ongoing financial crisis and what looks to most (though some still deny it) a recession, the Federal Reserve announced another rate cut, this one of 1/2 point. This fed rate cut brings the federal funds rate, the interest banks charge on overnight loans, to 1%, a rate last seen in 2003-2004.

As markets worldwide continue to plummet, the Federal Reserve, along with six other major central banks from around the world slashed interest rates simultaneously Wednesday.

Despite attempts to staunch the blood flow, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and all other stock market indices continue to bleed heavily, as the market closed down another 500 points on Tuesday.

For some time now the Federal Reserve has been devaluing the currency and practically giving away American dollars through incredibly cheap money policy. We have just emerged from an era of one interest rate cut after another. The mortgage loan crisis, and the failure of Bear Sterns, made the Fed an interest rate cutting machine of fate that drove the value of our dollar ever lower and the price of oil into the stratosphere.

The Fed lowered the fed funds target to 2%, then issued a policy statement that may as well have been written in Urdu for all of its clarity.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter point this afternoon in yet another (7th to be exact) attempt at saving an economy in free fall. The rate now stands at 2% less than half of what it was in September.