Word: feds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Baseball isn't really for strong, quick fellows who can bat .296; it is for skinny nonathletes who can memorize earned-run averages. Football is for Republicans. But what character flaw is fed by watching tennis six hours a day for two weeks when the French Open, Wimbledon or the U.S. Open is on the tube...
...elder, and bank president Robert Altman, who also resigned, came after intense prodding by the Federal Reserve Board. The regulators have been seeking to restore public confidence in First American (assets: $11 billion), which has been plagued by troubled real estate loans in the Washington area. Last spring the Fed tapped former Republican Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland to head a committee of directors to oversee First American. While Clifford, 84, and law partner Altman, 44, retained their titles, investigators told TIME that the Mathias group gradually took over their duties. "It started to get nasty," said a federal investigator...
...less than half the speed of the average postwar recovery. New signs of weakness emerged last week when the Federal Reserve Board's "beige book," a document summarizing economic conditions around the country, reported that the recovery "has lost some momentum" since last spring. To supply more fuel, the Fed last week dropped the influential Federal Funds rate from 5 3/4% to 5 1/2%, its lowest level in more than a decade...
...small but anxious group of economists, however, believes the latest Fed tactic is too little, too late. They say the economy is now structurally damaged and incapable of bouncing back anytime soon. Hanging ominously over every sector -- individuals, business and government -- is a crippling pile of debt that amounts to $10 trillion, double the size of the entire U.S. economy. Consumers, far and away the most powerful stimuli in the economy, seem determined to slash spending and pay off loans. The government said last week that consumer installment debt fell 3% in June, the sixth drop in seven months...
Lacking any other solutions, most economists look to the Fed and its newly reappointed chairman, Alan Greenspan, for the next move. "I consider the tight monetary policy pursued so far by the Fed as blatantly irresponsible," says Philip Braverman, chief economist of DKB Securities. "Inflation is not the enemy any longer. The real enemy is recession." So far this year, wholesale prices have fallen at a 1.7% annual rate, a trend that will give critics of the Fed more leverage in arguing for interest rates even lower than Greenspan has already pushed them. And as the 1992 elections approach...