Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:39, and sunset is 6:57, for 12h 18m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 99.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Library Board Development Committee meets at 4:30 PM and the Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1942, Spring Valley endures a flood:
On the evening of September 17, 1942, after a day of heavy rain, water began rolling through the streets of Spring Valley, in Pierce Co. The village, strung out along the Eau Galle River in a deep valley, had been inundated before, but this was no ordinary flood. By 11:30p.m., water in the streets was 12 to 20 feet deep, flowing at 12 to 15 miles an hour, and laden with logs, lumber, and dislodged buildings. Throughout the early morning hours of Sept. 18th, village residents became trapped in their homes or were carried downstream as buildings were swept off foundations and floated away. One couple spent the night chest-deep in water in their living room, holding their family dog above the water and fending off floating furniture. The raging torrent uprooted and twisted the tracks of the Northwestern Railroad like wire, and electricity and drinking water were unavailable for several days. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.
On this day in 1945, General Douglas MacArthur moves his general headquarters from Manila to Tokyo.
Now’s the time for Whitewater to make good on improving national conditions. (The best way for the city to do so is to set aside the low-quality work but above-average sense of entitlement of the aged special-interest men who have kept Whitewater back for a generation1. See of yesteryear’s serial mediocrity Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.)
Of those improving national conditions, Jeff Cox reports The Fed’s biggest interest rate call in years happens Wednesday. Here’s what to expect:
For all the hype that goes into them, Federal Reserve meetings are usually pretty predictable affairs. Policymakers telegraph their intentions ahead of time, markets react, and everyone has at least a general idea of what’s going to happen.
Not this time.
This week’s gathering of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee carries an uncommon air of mystery. While markets have made up their collective mind that the Fed is going to lower interest rates, there’s a vigorous debate over how far policymakers will go.
Will it be the traditional quarter-percentage-point, or 25-basis-point, rate reduction, or will the Fed take an aggressive first step and go 50, or half a point?
Fed watchers are unsure, setting up the potential for an FOMC meeting that could be even more impactful than usual. The meeting wraps up Wednesday afternoon, with the release of the Fed’s rate decision coming at 2 p.m. ET.
“I hope they cut 50 basis points, but I suspect they’ll cut 25. My hope is 50, because I think rates are just too high,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “They have achieved their mandate for full employment and inflation back at target, and that’s not consistent with a five and a half percent-ish funds rate target. So I think they need to normalize rates quickly and have a lot of room to do so.”
A rate cut of either size will be good for all America, including small-town Whitewater.
- One might wonder why these aged men didn’t have more time to choose well for Whitewater when they were younger. Wonder not: exaggerating, tale-bearing, pretending, posing, scheming, memorizing trickle-down jargon, and shoving themselves to the front of the line takes a lot of time, for goodness’ sake. ↩︎
