Two cups of coffee and I still can’t put my thoughts into coherent form today, plus I have to go camp out on campus again for finals … so it’s a link love post for y’all.  My brain is in chemistry student mode LOL

First up, I need to get caught up on what little blog carnivalling I’ve been doing recently:

• I’ll be hosting the Carnival of Debt Reduction on May 12th, so fire up those debt reducing and debt killing posts and submit them!
• Quest for Four Pillars hosted the 9th Carnival of Money Hacks, and listed my post about Why You Don’t Get your EPA Fuel Economy MPG as a “Best Slasher” (check out the theme for that carnival

I haven’t been reading the blogs as much recently … but here’s a few that did catch my eye:

• Will the economic stimulus package help you survive a recession? at Credit Withdrawal.  I’ll get to my opinion in a minute…
• 10 Ways new parents overspend on newborns at Moolanomy.  It’s been years since my son was a baby … but I’ve seen quite a few good examples of this over the years.
• Remodeling This Life shares her best financial moves in college … how many of us made good financial moves and decisions at that age? LOL

Now, for the one thing I have actually been reading about … other than organic chemistry: the Federal Reserve FOMC starts their two-day meeting this morning to decide the fate of the U.S. economy (otherwise known as setting the interest rate).  Here’s a few good articles on it:

• Fed expected to cut rates this week and oh I hope not!!!
• However, Fed rate cut not a sure thing as more “experts” are saying what I’ve been fussing and fuming about for months
• and the Fed has the golden opportunity to stop the commodities run-up … and give us average people a break maybe!  Anyone want to take bets?

It’s no secret I have a pretty low opinion of the Fed’s rate cut policy, and I am pretty convinced this “economic stimulus package” payment will end up at most folk’s local grocery store and gas station.  There’s this thing called INFLATION that Ben Bernake seems to be totally ignoring, mostly in the form of rising food and energy costs (which the government conveniently strips OUT of their inflation calculations).

They’ll announce their decision about fifteen minutes before we organic chem students go into the slaughter known as a year-long cumulative final, but y’all can probably guess what kind of post I will write if they do remain stupid and cut the interest rate again.

Now I am off to study again … and finish up a couple of projects due before the finals (which cannot be over with soon enough!!!).