According to CBS News, for the second day in a row, Sarah Palin focused the entirety of her attacks against Barack Obama on the Democratic nominee’s tax plan, rather than his personal associations.

“Just yesterday, we learned that America’s GDP actually fell in the third quarter of this year, and that confirms what we already know, and that’s that our economy right now is shrinking,” Palin said. “This is the worst possible time to raise taxes, but Barack Obama still wants to.”

Palin repeated her mantra that Obama has “an ideological commitment” that compels him to raise taxes.

“Now, his whole tax plan, really, it is, it’s so phony that it’s already starting to unravel, and we’re gonna call it the way that we see it,” she said.

Palin said that Obama’s definition of what constitutes the middle class seems to be evolving.

“And just this morning, Gov. Bill Richardson, a top surrogate for the Obama campaign, he who is working so hard to get Obama elected, Richardson said Obama’s tax plan would define middle class as $120,000 a year and under,” Palin said. “So now, we’re down to less than half the original income level and, just give it a little more time, and Barack Obama will be back to raising taxes on folks earning $42,000 a year.”

Appearing on KOAM radio this morning, Richardson said, “What Obama wants to do is he is basically looking at $120,000 and under among those that are in the middle class, and there is a tax cut for those,” according to a YouTube clip of the interview.

Richardson’s comments appear to have been a slip of the tongue, since the Obama campaign has not announced that it has changed its policy that everyone making less than $200,000 a year would get a tax cut and no one making under $250,000 a year would be burdened with a tax increase.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the Obama-Palin Tax Plan. The true definition of the Obama tax plan appears to be elusive; it seems that everyone has a different opinion of exactly who will pay more, and who will pay under the democrat’s plan. Is it “fair and balanced”? It depends who you ask!

According to the New York Times, it appears that the Federal Reserve is close to lowering the federal funds rate - the rate the banks charge each other on overnight loans - to 1 percent; down from 1.5%.

The fed funds rate actually fluctuates a little bit, and because banks and financial institutions are afraid about lending, the fed funds rate has actually been below 1%, averaging only .67 percent over the last two weeks.

A growing number of analysts now predict that the economy is so weak that the Fed will have to reduce its official target to zero if it wants to jump start the stalled economy.

Believe it or not, Japan’s central bank reduced its benchmark interest rate to zero for five years, from 2001 to 2006 in a move to avoid deflating, a decline in consumer prices and to help revive it’s economy.

The losses in real estate due to sub-prime mortgage and foreclosure problems, have many banks unable or unwilling to resume lending. And as the price of oil and other commodities plummet, some are now warning of a deflation threat. This may trigger the fed to lower the fed funds rate even lower - to an unprecedented 9%.

If the Fed funds rate did drop to zero, it would not mean free money for consumers or businesses. The zero rate would only apply to the reserves that banks are required to maintain and that they lend to one another.

But what happens if the rate is reset to 0% and it doesn’t help the economy? Well, Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke gave a famous speech on this very subject when he was a Fed governor back in 2002.

In that speech, Mr. Bernanke described a series of options. The simplest option would be for the Fed to start buying Treasury securities with longer maturities. Buying up those longer-term securities would push up their prices and drive down longer-term interest rates. If that didn’t work, the Fed could start buying up privately-issued debt, like corporate bonds.

It looks like the Fed will end up reducing the fed fund rate to 0% and take it’s chances. However, if Barack Obama were to be elected, it may change the psychology of the financial industry and turn things around. We will just have to wait and see.

According to the Washington Post, new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are both proposing tax plans that would result in cuts for most American families. Obama’s plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 - a difference of nearly $1 million.

Here is your tax savings based on your annual earnings:

*the numbers have been rounded