16-2WW. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis maintains an outstanding Web site at www.stls.frb/org.ltis a fertile source for financial and economic time series data. Go to the St.

Louis Fed site and click on "Economic Research." Once you get there, click on "EconomicData-

FRED II." The latter acronyrnn stands for "Federal Reserve Economic Data." Once you have pulled up FRED II, under "Categories" click on the category labeled "BusinesslFiscal."

This will enable you to find the S&P 500 Composite Total Return (calculated by assuming monthly reinvestment of dividends). Inspect the direction of the index from August 2000 through December 2002. Over the 2001 to 2002 time period, do you think nonfinancial corporate businesses raised more cash by issuing new corporate bonds or by issuing new corporate equities? Hint: You can verify your answer by going to any Federal Reserve Web site and searching for the statistical release Z.I, "Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States."