The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that amidst turmoil in global financial markets on Monday, driven by concerns of an impending economic downturn, investors started speculating that the U.S. Federal Reserve might intervene by implementing an emergency interest-rate cut to mitigate the impact. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe reports that the Fed only considers emergency cuts in extreme situations. The most recent one happened on March 15, 2020, when central bankers slashed borrowing costs to near-zero as the onset of the coronavirus pandemic sent panic coursing across global markets. Monday's sell-off was less drastic than that moment. Investors are dumping stocks because they have become nervous the economy might fall into a recession after a few weak economic data releases in the United States, including Friday's jobs report that showed unemployment rising. Joblessness rarely rises sharply outside of an economic downturn. The data fuelled concerns that Fed officials have fallen behind on adjusting their policy stance. The risk is that Fed policy-makers might have choked off demand too much for too long, causing a slowdown in the labour market that will begin to snowball into wider economic pain.