Word: modestly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...gloom-and-doom scenario, the Federal Reserve Board will not be satisfied with such modest rate hikes. In order to nip in the bud any renewal of inflation, the Fed will begin an aggressive tightening of credit and deliberately push interest rates much higher still. That will cause a chain reaction. It will knock stock and bond prices much lower, make consumer buying and business investment more difficult to finance, and maybe put a stop to what is about to become the longest economic expansion in U.S. history...
...bias" toward making money and credit tighter? Yes, allows the board, but the Fed may already have accomplished as much tightening as necessary--or maybe more--by subtle measures. True, it may kick up the "Fed funds" (very short-term) interest rate it controls by a modest quarter percentage point at its rate-setting meeting at the end of June--"just to prove it can do it, for practice," in Farrell's words. But such a move has been so widely expected, and discounted, that board members think it won't ruffle the markets much...
...reflect the extent to which the length and strength of the expansion--if it lasts through next February, it will be the longest in U.S. history--have rewritten the rule book for forecasting. For at least two years, economists following conventional models have predicted a slowing of growth and modest rises in unemployment and inflation; the exact opposite has happened. So forecasters must search for new models, and it's anyone's guess who will find the most accurate one. But unless something happens that is much worse than any board member foresees, the outlook for the economy recalls...
...then it's back to Maryland, where Lecter rents a lavish house not terribly far from the modest duplex of FBI special agent Starling, his antagonist/confidant during the period seven years earlier, covered in Silence. Verger's people know that Lecter, for complex reasons buried in his own psychoses, wants either to kill Starling or to protect her or, possibly, madman that he is, to protect her by killing her, and they hit upon a way to use her as bait to draw him to his presumed doom...
...morning after the Dow and NASDAQ each threw triple-digit shindigs over May?s sleeping-dog inflation number, the Fed chairman told Congress ?- and, of course, the intently listening markets ?- to keep the music down just a little bit. "When we can be preemptive, we should be, because modest preemptive actions can obviate the need of more drastic actions at a later date that could destabilize the economy," he told the Joint Economic Committee. Folks, that?s as clear as the man gets without actually saying it: The Fed will raise interest rates one quarter point at its meeting...