Peter - shame on you. You forgot me, et.al. - the old folks on fixed incomes. A great deal of us have very conservative investments like CD's and saving accounts. Hey, that's where the dinning out and vacations come from - along with presents to grandkids and such. Low interest = none of the above. Now, if we were a small segment of society it would not mean a hill of beans but were not.
We may still be breathing, but I would not count on much near future support in the service industry.

Peter, thanks for the really informative and useful information. Most of us have been sledgehammered, eventhough we are well educated, with all the financial jargon and wall st. lingo & keep trying to divine meaning from the past few months news. Keep up the good work.

I was making 0.5% on my savings in the Firefighters Credit union does this mean that I will have to pay them to save now?

We should all unite and take our savings cash out of the accounts and put it into safety boxes in the bank so they can't make anymore money from our hard earned cash.

We have been squeezed dry by wall street. Enough is enough

I just lost more interest on my CD. This means I will only go out to dinner once a month now instead of once a week and I will go to Walmart instead of the local well known grocery store to buy food. That new car will have to wait a few more years to buy and I will slash my purchases even farther. The Fed is more interested in driving up inflation and so I will buy more expensive gas instead of HouseS, Cars, Trips, Clothing and other consumer items that keep people working. No more Starbuck coffee, that is a gallon of gas. The tires on my car can last another year. One gallon of milk a week instead of two. More spagettii and less meat. No more cereal in the morning, skip breakfast. My income just got cut 15 percent more and I am closing my wallet............

Once again, another outstanding post. Banks, to strengthen shareholder value, have no choice but to increase spreads from prime to maintain profitability with less capital to lend.

Meanwhile, CD's are less attractive, which have led me recently to look at currency plays, which have evidently been better for me than CD's, and help defeat a devaluing dollar compared to other currencies. Of course, jumping into a currency ETF has more risk than a CD, but its not operational risk like a company, it's macroeconomic risk between countries. And I think it's safe to say a currency play between the Chinese RMB strength and the US dollar weakness offer a relatively favorable risk/reward ratio.

Another short-covering rally 400+ points 2 weeks in a row this time by engendered by a 75 basis point cut. Hopefully, the V IPO encourages a little more capitalization to the equities markets Wednesday, although it'd be dilutive for Mastercard with a new competitor in a sector where we once only had one player to choose from. I get the feeling we may see some more deleveraging/profit-taking on Thursday though.

Yes, there is a huge segment of our society who depends on fixed income to supplement their SS benefits, and I am one of them.

I will not be helping the economy, quite the contrary, as I saw my interest income decline somewhere around 30 to 40 %, and Humpty Dumpty apparently is not through lowering them further.

If and when I get the rebate, it will go straight into the bank, like most people with half a brain will do. That's a full one quarter more brain than our scholarly leaders, who are intent on sending 97% of us straight to hell.

BAIL OUT of the fat cats. if you went down to
the bank and wanted to borrow $30 bil secured
by paper that might be worth $15 or 25 bil, what
do you think you would hear? meantime, the inflation damage to the average guy ala gas, food,
lower rates on cd's. what is the fed going to do
when they run out of bullets? they only have 2.25
bullets left.