stuck in quagmire, Fed likely won’t raise rates
Addressing either inflation or growth will probably cause other to worsen




%


WASHINGTON - An ugly brew of rising unemployment, spiking foreclosures and gyrating energy prices is plaguing the country and making life difficult for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as he tries to right the economy.

Bernanke and his central bank colleagues are faced with dueling problems: weak economic growth and advancing inflation. To treat one risks aggravating the other. So the Fed is widely expected when it meets Tuesday to leave a key interest rate alone.

"It is caught between a rock and a hard place. The (Fed) will stand pat," predicted Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University.

WASHINGTON - An ugly brew of rising unemployment, spiking foreclosures and gyrating energy prices is plaguing the country and making life difficult for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as he tries to right the economy.

Bernanke and his central bank colleagues are faced with dueling problems: weak economic growth and advancing inflation. To treat one risks aggravating the other. So the Fed is widely expected when it meets Tuesday to leave a key interest rate alone.

"It is caught between a rock and a hard place. The (Fed) will stand pat," predicted Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University.

yep the first 2 quarters of this year was postitve growth, the last quarter of last year was only negative growth, so not a recession yet by the defintion of the word of 2 back to back quarters of negative growth, probably better to leave the interest rates alone, but i would kinda like to see them go up, just got through buying the grands some school cloths, the store was packed, but this is the no sales tax weekend for kids cloths and school supplys so it was busy busy,