Word: fed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...northern mists and bureaucratic permafrost. What's he doing in Havana? And why does he walk the streets sunk in gloom, a parody Russian, wearing that heavy overcoat? One question at a time: Havana because he's looking into the death of a colleague (the Cubans, fed up with Russians, want him to identify the body and scram--but no, Renko investigates); the sweltering coat because it is a last gift from his wife, dead of medical bungling in Moscow. The story is all amiable, well-told bosh, ending with an attempted military coup engineered (it's hard to explain...
...Greenspan is watching. Just as nearly everyone expected, the Fed passed on an interest-rate hike Tuesday; however, it did shift its "policy bias" from neutral to slightly worried. "While the FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] did not take action today," the Fed said afterward, "the committee was concerned about the potential for a buildup of inflationary imbalances that could undermine the favorable performance of the economy." Though they couldn't have been surprised, stock marketeers did gulp a little, sending the Dow down 50 points or so after the afternoon announcement. By the end of trading...
Moved PermanentlyMoved PermanentlyFortune Investor DataThe overall outcome? Don't sweat it, folks. "Once they digest this news, the markets will go right back up," says TIME senior economics reporter Bernard Baumohl. "What they'll realize is that only once in recent memory did the Fed actually raise rates following a bias shift in that direction." Of course, this walk-on-water economy of ours hasn't given Greenspan cause to raise rates in quite a while either; the fear is that that could change. Baumohl says Greenspan, as always, will wait and see. "Those price numbers were just the whiff...
Alan Greenspan is hard enough to understand after he speaks; no wonder that on a Monday sandwiched between an inflation scare and a Fed meeting, the markets were a little queasy. The Dow began slipping steadily at the opening bell, before coming back to a 60-point loss by the close, a middling sell-off predicated on something like general unease. "It's really just uncertainty," says TIME senior economics correspondent Bernard Baumohl. "People are thinking about inflation again, and bond yields are very high -? which makes them suddenly look like a reasonable alternative to stocks if the Fed does...
Moved PermanentlyMoved PermanentlyFortune Investor DataFew expect Greenspan to do anything drastic like actually raise rates; the current guessing game is about which way he'll lean in his inaction. A so-called tightening bias would mean Father Fed has his finger on the rate-hike trigger -? which of course, to the markets' pricked-up ears, will be a strong signal that the Fed is taking inflation seriously again. That itself may be enough to push up rates on the Street, and indeed, such a virtual rate hike may be just what Greenspan has in mind to cool off the economy...