Fed orders emergency rate cut to 1.5 percent

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The Federal Reserve, acting in coordination with other global central banking authorities, cut a key U.S. interest rate by half a percentage point Wednesday to steady an economy teetering on a collapse reminiscent of the 1929 stock market crash.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues ratcheted down their key rate by 0.5 percentage point to 1.5 percent. The action revives the central bank's rate-cutting campaign which had been halted in June out of concerns that those low rates would worsen inflation. Since then, however, economic and financial conditions have dangerously deteriorated, forcing the Fed to reverse course.