Welcome to the NewsHour. The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate today for the third consecutive time, once again by a quarter of a point.

Many are hoping the cut will have a clear effect on interest rates, what banks and other lenders charge and what consumers pay.

But the Fed also suggested there won't be as many interest rate cuts in the year ahead as it once planned.

Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters today's cut wasn't an easy decision because of higher inflation in recent months.

Today was a closer call, but we decided it was the right call because we thought it was the best decision to foster

achievement of both of our goals, maximum employment and price stability.

We see the risks as two-sided, moving too slowly and needlessly undermine economic activity

in the labor market or move too quickly and needlessly undermine our progress on inflation. So we're trying to steer between those two risks.

And on balance, we decided to go ahead with a further cut.

After the announcement, the markets plunged.

With the Dow falling more than 1,100 points, the NASDAQ dropped more than 700 points.

The S&P 500 also ended sharply lower.

For more on today's decision and what could be ahead, we're joined now by Nick Timrose, chief economics correspondent for the Wall Street

Journal. Welcome back to the program. Thanks for having it. So there had been some question

leading up to today about whether the Fed would move forward with another rate cut, given that

inflation has been stickier than many

Fed officials had hoped.

But give us a sense of why the chairman went ahead and moved forward with this third consecutive

rate cut.

Well, the justification was much the same as the last time.

Inflation has come down, and Fed officials had raised interest rates so much in the last

couple of years that they thought they were really standing on the neck of the economy if they has come down and Fed officials had raised interest rates so much in the last couple years

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