Professor Elam

The FED attempted to move decisvely this morning by cutting the Discount Rate 3/4 of a point. That is a good bit for a slow moving bunch of political appointees. With markets melting round the world 5-10% in two days, it was time to do something.  Did it work?  Well the market stopped going down, but we did not a positive cloes on the day, the DOW was down 128 but up from about 500 points down earlier in the day.  We should see a modest recovery in rpices the rest of the week.  If not there will really be some long faces in Washington DC this week. The Volatility Index VIX hit an extremem associated with the extreme last seen in August so we should get a bit of short term relief.