Understanding How Low the Federal Reserve Can Go and a Quick Guide to Your Salary and Tax Cuts.

Why You Care loves two types of journalism stories: The type that reports the news and flags how it impacts you down the road, and/or pieces that clearly lay out in an easy accessible way why you care about them. Today you need to take 3 minutes and read two pieces. One by the Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath on the Federal Reserve and interest rates and the other by CNN/Money.com's Jeanne Sahadi on what type of tax cut (or not) you would get under an Obama administration versus a McCain administration.

Here's why you care: The Journal's Hilsenrath points out there are really two main questions going forward regardless of the Fed's actions today with interest rates - 1) Does a cut mean another lending bubble?, and 2) How low can the Fed really go? Hilsenrath points out that the real action is the second question. Read his report and understand where the Federal Reserve may end up and why. You need to know because the market down the road is going to care a lot.

Meanwhile, Sahadi's article is particularly utilitarian. Everyone wants to look up their salary and figure out what type of tax cut or tax hike they'd get under the next administration. She not only does the math to make it easy, you'll be able to recite the candidates' positions with the type of clarity that would put a professional pundit to shame.

Reading these two articles will leave you better equipped to understand the business pages in the coming days and months.