Between Tuesday, when financial markets began turning against Bear Stearns Cos., and Sunday night, when the bank disappeared into the arms of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Washington policy makers, federal regulators and Wall Street bankers struggled to keep the trouble from tanking financial markets and exacerbating the country's deep economic uncertainty. Cutting interest rates -- which the Fed is expected to do again today, by between a half percentage point and a full point -- hasn't yet done much to loosen capital markets gummed up by piles of bad debt.

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