It was the first rate reduction since November 1998, the first half-point rate cut since 1992 and the first time the central bank has changed policy between meetings since October 1998, a time when the global financial crisis was threatening the United States.
Yesterday's was the first rate reduction since November 1998 and the first half-point rate cut since 1992.
Ford estimated that total light vehicle sales this year would be 13.7 million to 14.2 million, a considerable drop from the first half's annualized rate of 15 million.
In between, in exactly 100 chapters of exactly four pages each, numbered 1 to 100 like the squares of the board game, are what purport to be the memoirs of the scandalous Schlossberg: like Zelig, like Forrest Gump, one of the great witnesses to the 20th century -- its first half, at any rate, until his disappearance on Everest in 1946.
McCall was the first to concede his side did not play brilliantly with the wind at their backs in the first half but he rated the second 40 minutes among the most resilient displays of his time in charge.
For example, Kenneth E. Volpert, head of taxable bonds and a portfolio manager at the Vanguard Group, noted that in the first half of this year, rates on corporate bonds eased even as those on Treasury bonds climbed sharply.
"I enjoyed the first half, the work-rate and the effort of the players to get around the park was excellent.
Moody's Investors Service said Tuesday that 136 issuers worldwide defaulted on a record $54.1 billion of junk bonds in the year's first half, but the rating agency forecast an end to the steep increase in defaults by early next year.
If July sales were the norm, the industry would be selling cars at a rate of 11.24 million vehicles a year, a sharp increase over the first half's depressed sales rate below 10 million units, but well off 2007′s 16.1 million vehicles sold.
At the worst of the crisis, in the first half of 2009, the rate of unemployment for the Creative Class barely topped five percent, even as the rate of unemployment for the nation crested over ten percent and the unemployment rate for blue-collar production workers surged above 15percentt or more.
