Guillaume Seignac The Wave painting

underscore the central bank's iron determination to keep the economy from sliding into recession, the Fed's Board of Governors also cut the more symbolic discount rate on Fed loans to banks by a quarter percentage point to 5.75 percent. It said it was prepared to cut that rate further to 5.5 percent if regional Fed banks requested it. Financial markets surged within seconds of the Fed news, and U.S. President-elect George W. Bush -- who has expressed mounting concern over the economy's prospects as he prepares to take over the presidency Jan. 20 -- welcomed the move as a much-needed dose of economic Viagra. However, the move did not dent Bush's eagerness to see his $1.3 trillion tax cut package pushed through Congress. It was the first rate cut between regular FOMC meetings since the autumn of 1998, when a global economic crisis threatened to seize up world financial markets.