Fdic Has 700+ Problem BanksFinancial Well Being‪)‬

John M. Mason-- The Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System meets today. No one is expecting that there will be any change to the Fed's target Federal Funds rate. The reason given is that the economy still remains exceedingly weak with the unemployment rate remaining just below 10 percent and the inflation rate as measured by the consumer price index less food and energy, the Fed's preferred price measure, hovering between a one percent and a 1 ½ percent, year-over-year rate of increase. This latter fact combined with the information that there is a lot of unused capacity in United States manufacturing is believed to be the primary argument for keeping the target interest rate at such a low level.