Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, it will make their job very much harder. The Federal Reserve always fights a two front war. They want to stimulate the economy when the economy is slow, which it obviously is now. But also they want to keep a lid on inflation, and the January inflation numbers were high. The total inflation rate on an annual basis was 4.7 percent. And what we call the core rate, which takes out energy and food, was 3.7 percent. Those were both the highest in months. And more troubling, we've seen this core rate drift above the 2 percent level, which is the level desired by the Federal Reserve. So what we are running here is the risk of something called stagflation. Stagflation means you have a slow economy, yet you also have rising inflation. The last time we had that on a serious basis was in the late 1970s. So I think this is going to make the Federal Reserve's job much more hard, but I think that they will come down on the side of stimulating the economy. So I still expect more fed rate cuts in the future."