In a surprise move, the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee cut interest rates by one-half of a percentage point on Wednesday. For the second time this year, the interest rate change was decided during an emergency conference call between scheduled meetings. The Fed offered numerous reasons for the cut including slow business investment, tapering consumer confidence, unsteady foreign economies, and a continuing slide in the US stock market. This year alone, the Fed interest cuts have totaled 1.5 percentage points. In response, the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 399 points on Wednesday. However, many economists are pessimistic that this flurry of interest rate cuts will be enough to fight the impending recession. "It is too late to prevent a recession. The process that leads to job losses is already in motion," commented Anirvan Banerji, the director of research at the Economic Cycle Research Institute in New York.