for answers to that and more, we once again turn to david wessel, director of the hutchins center on fiscal & monetary policy the brookings institution. david, welcome back. >> good to be here. as we just mentioned, last time we loor,d, in decemhe fed was raising interest rates. now they're lowering thewhm. >> they have three reasons. one is that they've made ast e in december. the economy isn't as strong as they had anticipated. two, they're worried inflation too soft. they expected inflation to be moving towards their 2% target, and it hasn't moved there quite as effectively as they had hoped. >> that's prices going up. prices going up. it's hard to believehe fed ying to get inflation going up. for old-timers like us, that seems like an impossible thing. we're used to the fed doi the opposite. the third thing is they're worried about risk to the global economy, not so much the united states, but chairman powell mentioned china and europe and also made clear, and he said this seral times, that trade tensions, president trumphu trade war iting the economy largely because it's depressi

expecting them to cut rates for the first time since the financial crisis in 2008 joins me is david wessel david, where is the crisis for a rate cut this time around? >> well, there isn't a crisis, but you don't need a crisis to cut rates. i think the reason the fed is likely to cut rates, threefold one they think they overdid it in december. two, they're quite concerned that inflation has softer than they expected. they want to prevent inflation and importantly inflation expectations for weakening third they see a lot of risks over the horizon particularly in the global economy, so they're basically buying some insurance. >> but a we heard, and i'll bet it curious to see if it does dissent, that he send that insurance isn't free and the corr could be financial stability. you've got to admit the bod yields are wacky around the world. >> two reasons not to cut. since the last might, the economy data has been more positive than negative so maybe they can afford to wait, but the second is the point that eric makes, with interest rates so low and people expecting them to go lower still, are we