by Laura Conaway

The Federal Reserve lowered its key interest rate for the second time in three weeks. The Fed knocked another half percentage point off the federal funds target rate, lowering it to 1.

NPR reports:

The last time interest rates were this low, under former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, they sparked excessive borrowing. "I think the Fed worries about that," [Wall Street Journal economics editor] David Wessel said. "The conventional wisdom inside the Fed now is with the benefit of hindsight they kept rates too low for too long during the Greenspan years and that created this housing bubble ... And they'd like to avoid that again.

"But you don't want to fight the last war, and with the economy suffering so much, with so much at stake, they are doing the only thing they can do, which is administer this low interest rate medicine," Wessel said.