News galore.  What in the world is going on?  Happy Halloween from the Fed.  The Fed Reserve performed as expected and cut the Fed Funds rate by a quarter point.

The move comes as oil prices near $100 a barrel. That’s viewed as a deterrent to consumer spending, which drives two-thirds of the economy. With oil at a record high, consumers will have to shell out more for gasoline, home-heating fuels and other products.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues on the board made the decision to cut the rate after a two-day meeting and in spite of a report Wednesday indicating that the overall economy has some resilience. The gross domestic product rose 3.9 percent during the July-September quarter.

(FYI, if it wasn’t for the national housing sector the GDP would have grown 4.9%)

“The economy is facing a perfect storm right now of a crisis-related tightening of credit, higher oil prices and lower house prices,” said David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors, a Denver forecasting firm. “We are going to see a significant slowing in growth.”

Which coincides with the markets reaction the following day of the Feds rate cut as the DOW dropped more than 360 points.

The bad news.

Oil prices were broaching $100 a barrel. Consumer spending slowed drastically in September. Foreclosures doubled for the last quarter.

The flip side article to that outlook shows solid economic growth. (I am not followingthis one, but the one thing that is apparent is that most people are having a hard time trying to figure out where the economy is headed, and what effect exactly the Fed rate cuts will have on the economy.