Word: taber
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Long before he began work on this week's cover story on G. William Miller, George Taber, our Washington economic correspondent, had collected some intriguing gossip and opinion about the unbankerly new Federal Reserve Board chief. Most of it squared with the impression that Taber had got during his first meeting with Miller, just after he took office in March. "It was disarming," he recalls. "He was running around the solemn corridors of the Fed with his coat off, tossing out ideas on fighting inflation and otherwise behaving unlike the typical wary central banker...
That impression was reinforced during Taber's reporting for this week's story, which was written by George Church and edited by Marshall Loeb. The interview with Miller lasted four hours. "We'd planned on two," says Taber, "but we drifted onto everything from his wife's photography to his Coast Guard days in Shanghai. He was totally relaxed, and I understood better why Fed staffers are talking about a breath of fresh air." Like Miller, Taber picked up his economics on the fly. In college (Georgetown, '64) he majored in international relations, but delved...
...Taber has also developed a wariness of that governmental staple-statistics. "Numbers are the bricks and mortar of economics," he concedes, "but they can always be jiggered to support a case. The only statistic I still trust is my Social Security number." To those who question his fondness for his subject, Taber offers an observation from Economist Robert Heilbroner: "A man who thinks that economics is only a matter for professors forgets that this is the science that has sent men to the barricades...
Miller does have a club: if Congress and the White House will not cooperate, the Federal Reserve will have to crack down so hard on money supply, and push interest rates so high, that there really will be a recession. Characteristically, he put it to Taber in tones of promise rather than threat: "The Fed fits into this model in a rather selfish way. Any economic strategy that works toward lessening inflation will inevitably lessen the pressure on the central bank," and allow it to put out enough money to promote his cherished 4% growth rate...
Miller favors slightly tighter money and a bit less economic growth to wrestle down inflation. But he told TIME Washington Correspondent George Taber: "If curbing inflation is left to monetary policy alone, then we have very serious dilemmas. My priority has been to call attention to a coordinated effort by Congress, the Administration and the Federal Reserve." That is why he was the first major policymaker to urge a delay in Jimmy Carter's proposed $25 billion tax cut, a position vindicated when the President agreed to make the cut smaller and later...