Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A grim economic outlook highlights the need for the Federal Reserve to step up quantitative measures to boost growth, with official interest rates already effectively at zero, Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, said on Saturday. Evans said that based on the outlook for rising unemployment, falling industrial production and a wider output gap, economic models suggest rates should be below zero. "If it were not constrained by zero, those models would want to push it below zero, but that's not possible," Evans told reporters after a panel at the American Economic Association's meeting in...

Whoa! In Ohio this morning...The wind chill temp is below zero....Brrr! Not even the last week of December yet. At least there's no real accumulatiaccumulation where i'm at...Glad i've got some packets of hot cocoa stashed with my Hot Pot.

Temperatures plummeted across the eastern half of the nation Monday, approaching an all-time record in northern Minnesota and freezing the Gulf Coast as a river of Arctic air pushed southward. Thermometers registered a low of 54 degrees below zero at Embarrass, Minn. "You keep living, but it gets old after a while," said Christine Mackai, the town clerk for the community of about 1,400 people in northeast Minnesota. Minnesota's record is 60 below, set on Feb. 2, 1996, in Tower, about 10 miles north of Embarrass. The cold at Embarrass didn't stop the regular customers from getting their morning coffee...