Word: greenspans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...didn't warn you. For months, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has hinted that he would lift interest rates to head off inflation. Yields on Treasury bonds have been rising in anticipation that he'll pull the trigger on March 25 when the Fed Board meets. Higher rates are bad for the stock market but even worse for consumers. Even a quarter-point hike will hurt. Some 60 million households have "revolving" credit-card debt averaging more than $6,000, at an interest rate of about 17%. An uptick would add nearly a billion dollars in interest expenses. And those...
...years past, when the rest of the world talked about the U.S. economy, the focus was usually on Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. This year, thanks largely to Greenspan's prudence, the conversation is almost certain to change. As the U.S. rate of inflation idles under 3%, the debate in Washington is shifting back to the fiscal side of the ledger. Enter Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, first among equals on President Clinton's economic team and one of the few faces in the Administration that Wall Street considers...
...safeguard the environment. Along the way, Rubin will have to fend off the Republican opposition's shibboleth: a proposed constitutional amendment to mandate a permanently balanced budget. The idea, which enjoys support among a smattering of Democrats, is opposed not only by Rubin and the President but also by Greenspan. They point to the rigidity of the notion in the event of an economic downturn, and argue that it is inappropriate in the Constitution. "As strongly as I favor fiscal responsibility," says Rubin, "I oppose a balanced-budget amendment, because of the real risks it poses...
...everyone applauds the Fed's inaction. Stephen Roach, chief global economist for Morgan Stanley, thinks higher rates are sorely needed to slow the economy and keep the bulls in their place. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said last December that the stock market was showing what he called irrational exuberance. Roach wants Greenspan to strengthen that warning when the Fed Chairman goes before Congress this week...
...what else could go wrong? The biggest risk remains the threat that the Fed may yet decide to drive up interest rates to end the frothy speculation that Greenspan worries about. That would draw money out of stocks and into the bond market. "The availability of money and credit is what makes [the stock market] go," says Bill LeFevre, a senior stock-market analyst for the firm Ehrenkrantz King Nussbaum. "If you turn off the availability of money and credit, the whole thing falls of its own weight." But LeFevre and most other experts doubt that the Fed will take...