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Diane Swonk is chief economist and senior managing partner, Mesirow Financial, Chicago

What moved markets last week?

"It's hard to even focus on which was the biggest news but certainly the (consumer price index came) in much hotter than many expected, disappointing many … Whether it is right or wrong, I would argue, the Federal Reserve is in full-scale risk management mode, at this stage of the game. And it will continue to cut rates until we see a stabilization in the financial markets, which is clearly not happening at the moment."

Is the Fed likely to continue to cut interest rates?

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"The Fed is sort of like the proverbial Dutch boy with the finger in the dike. And every time they get one hole plugged another hole springs. And they are scrambling around to plug these holes. As they do that they will continue to cut rates at their March 18 meeting by at least another 50 basis points. And I think we'll end up with another #190; point drop in interest rates by April. That will take the Fed Funds rate down to 2#188; percent, an exceeding low level. The good news is we are seeing some mortgage resets resetting to lower rates."

The Fed minutes from their last meeting came out last week. What did they tell us?

"They made it very clear that they are more concerned about growth than inflation. Inflation is always a worry for the Fed, though, and one of the things I think we have to keep in mind is that as the Fed moves aggressively for stabilization today, if there are any signs of stabilization by the end of year, or early 2009, they are going to have to, as they call it, very tactically recalibrate policy, which means move to tighten."

Will higher interest rates make it tougher on the next president's economic policies?

"I think they are going to move aggressively to hike rates up in 2009. It really makes you wonder why anyone would want to be president in 2009 because they are going to have a much larger deficit -- due to the fiscal stimulus. The tax cuts are going to be expiring, which could trigger to some levels of class war, in terms of who gets cuts and who gets increases going forward. And then you roll on top of that a Federal Reserve which will be increasing rather than decreasing interest rates. It's going to be a tough time as we go into 2009."

What could move markets this week?

"We have a ton of economic data coming out. Durable goods will be closely watched. We'll also have revisions to (gross domestic price numbers) #8230; We know growth is pretty stagnant at the moment. The only question is if growth is slightly negative or slightly positive. We won't know the splitting of the hairs on that, at the earliest, until July when the revisions are done."