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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4176)	4/23/2003 9:54:58 AM
From: 4figureau	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5423

Bush Signals Another Term For Greenspan President's Remark a Surprise By John M. Berry Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 23, 2003; Page E01 President Bush indicated yesterday that he would reappoint Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board when his four-year term expires in June 2004 if Greenspan wants to continue in the job he has held for nearly 16 years. During a meeting with economic reporters at the White House, Bush was asked whether Greenspan, who turned 77 last month and is the oldest Fed chairman in history, has done a good enough job to warrant another term. "Yes," replied the president. "I think Alan Greenspan should get another term." The comment came a few hours before Greenspan underwent surgery at a Washington area hospital for an enlarged but not cancerous prostate gland, a condition that afflicts about 90 percent of men in his age group. The surgery "was routine and successful," a Fed spokeswoman said. He is expected to return to work later this week. The president's comment came as a surprise, and financial analysts wondered whether it was a kind of get-well card or whether it was carefully planned to put to rest questions about Greenspan's reappointment and keep it from becoming an issue during next year's presidential campaign. "Maybe this was a way of wishing him well and helping get him through this surgery, but obviously it settles the issue," said economist Robert V. DiClemente of Salomon Smith Barney in New York. "You could call it an off-the-cuff and on-the-hook kind of comment." Financial markets did not react specifically to the president's comments, analysts said. After years of being praised as a prescient policymaker who had dealt skillfully with repeated financial crises and had played a major role in keeping inflation under control and improving U.S. economic performance, Greenspan began to face significant criticism following the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000 and the recession that ensued in 2001. Some blamed him for not raising interest rates to keep the bubble from developing; others blamed him for later raising rates and causing it to burst. Under his leadership, the Fed responded to the recession with 11 interest rate cuts in a year, the most aggressive response to an economic slump in the Fed's history. Nevertheless, about a year ago, as the recovery from the recession appeared to falter and the country's jobless rate stayed high, numerous Greenspan critics suggested Bush should replace him when his term expired. Extensive lists of possible successors were mentioned in a series of press reports, but with no clear frontrunner. Earlier this year some conservative Republicans also criticized the Fed chairman for questioning the need for Bush's economic stimulus package. Greenspan told Congress it was not clear additional stimulus was needed, and that if taxes were reduced, the lost revenue should be offset with spending cuts or tax increases. However, Greenspan strongly supported Bush's call for elimination of double taxation of corporate dividends because it would bolster the economy's long-term ability to grow. Some news stories quoted unnamed administration sources as saying Greenspan had damaged or ruined his chances for reappointment by his testimony. After the president made his comment, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it represented a strong endorsement of Greenspan's handling of monetary policy. "The president thinks he has done a very able job as a steward of the economy," Fleischer said. But he added that he did not know whether Greenspan would want another term, which would be his fifth. None of Greenspan's colleagues at the Fed have any doubt on that score. He clearly continues to enjoy his work, and if his health remains good, several have said in recent months that they expected him to stay on if asked to do so. Yesterday Robert T. Parry, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, told reporters, "I couldn't speculate on what he would do. I know he loves his job, and I know to me he seems like he has as much energy, drive and interest as he had 10 or 15 years ago." In one sense, the president's comment was similar to one he once urged President Bill Clinton to make. In mid-1999, while Bush was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he and his aides began to criticize Clinton for failing to commit to reappoint Greenspan even though the Fed chairman's then-current term had another year to run. The Bush argument was that such a commitment would keep the Fed chairmanship out of the coming campaign. If Greenspan is reappointed and confirmed by the Senate, the new term would expire in June 2008. However, there would be complications for him to overcome to serve that full term. A chairman must also be a member of the Fed Board, and Greenspan's 14-year board term expires in January 2006. A board member cannot be reappointed after serving a full term, which at that point Greenspan will have done. But a board member can stay beyond the end of his term if no successor has been confirmed. That means Greenspan could continue as chairman, if Bush wished him to do so, if the president simply refrained from appointing someone else. If Greenspan were to remain in office until mid-May 2006, he would become not only the oldest Fed chairman in history but also the longest-serving, eclipsing the 18 years, 9 months and 29 days served by William McChesney Martin Jr. beginning in April 1951. washingtonpost.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4176)	4/23/2003 9:57:41 AM
From: 4figureau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5423

Hot housing market might be cooling By Thomas A. Fogarty, USA TODAY War, weather and a weak economy have taken a toll on the nation's housing market. "The boom is over," says Celia Chen, housing economist at Economy.com. Other analysts stop short of that, ascribing recent slowness in the market to fleeting factors, including a brutal winter for much of the country, and a temporary national paralysis from the war in Iraq. Key national indicators of March sales won't be issued until Friday, but plenty of preliminary evidence suggests the soaring housing market has hit a rough patch. Market tracker DataQuick reported Tuesday that March sales in the San Francisco Bay Area were down 15% from a year ago. A day earlier, DataQuick reported a 7.5% sales decline for March in the hot Southern California market, the first year-over-year decline since August. Local market trackers have reported an 18% decline in Denver sales, and a 5% decline in Richmond, Va., sales for March. Sales in Massachusetts were off 15% for the January-March quarter. Monthly sales in Minneapolis were flat compared with March 2002, and sales in Houston increased just barely. Denver and Minneapolis recorded double-digit increases in homes listed for sale. MGIC, a Milwaukee-based mortgage insurer, reported Tuesday that the nation's housing market cooled in the January-March quarter. Its Market Trend index was down just 1% from the previous quarter, but MGIC analyst Neil Siegel says many markets are softening, and home price growth is slowing as the nation struggles with its "meager recovery." Chen of Economy.com says factors that have driven the housing market ever higher have — or soon will — play themselves out. No longer is stock market money flowing into housing. And mortgage interest rates, which Chen calls the "prime force" driving the market, will increase as the economy improves, she says. "Housing is going to slow for the next year or two," she says. But DataQuick analyst John Karevoll says nothing in the California data suggests a permanent downturn there. Prices continue to rise, and Californians aren't stretching their personal finances as they did before the last housing bust in the early 1990s. As for the March drop in sales volume, Karevoll says, "People were watching more CNN than going to open houses." On Friday, the Commerce Department and the National Association of Realtors are scheduled to report separately on March sales of new and existing homes. Housing economists are looking for a 1.5% decline in the March figure for sales of existing homes, according to a consensus estimate by Thomson IFR. New home sales should increase from February, which registered the slowest sales rate since August 2000. usatoday.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4176)	4/23/2003 10:03:00 AM
From: 4figureau	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5423

This has to change before we reach a bottom IMO: >>Steve Jobs (Apple Computer) 2002 Compensation $78.1 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -34.6% This amount reflects the value of five million restricted shares Jobs got this year in exchange for 27.5 million underwater options. David Cote (Honeywell) 2002 Compensation $68.5* MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -27.3% Roughly 80% of this comp package is a "golden handshake" that Cote collected when he took over from Larry Bossidy in Feb. 2002. John Chambers (Cisco Systems) 2002 Compensation $54.8 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -27.7% Chamber's comp--which consists almost entirely of options--is 66% less than it was the year before. But it's still huge. Pat Russo (Lucent Technologies) 2002 Compensation $38.2* MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -75.4% Russo became CEO in January 2002; a signing bonus and "make whole" payments accounted for more than half her take. Jeff Barbakow (Tenet Healthcare) 2002 Compensation $35.0 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -58.1% Troubled Tenet could face billions in legal liability from hefty Medicaid billings under Barbakow. The feds are investigating. David D'Alessandro (John Hancock Finan. Svcs.) 2002 Compensation $34.3 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -31.7% "The only cash I received attributable to 2002 performance is $2.1 million," he says. Much of his comp came from stock grants. Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems) 2002 Compensation $31.7 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -74.7% Although Sun had a terrible year, co-founder McNealy's total compensation rose 31%. Miles White (Abbott Laboratories) 2002 Compensation $30.4 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -26.7% Says comp committee chair Laurance Fuller: "Mr. White's compensation reflected [strong] 2001 Abbott performance." Hank Greenberg (American Intl. Group) 2002 Compensation $29.2 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -26.9% An AIG spokesman says that $11 million of this amount was paid to the longtime CEO by an affiliated company, not by AIG directly. Alain Belda (Alcoa) 2002 Compensation $24.8 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -34.6% Alcoa's board opposed a recent shareholder proposal to disclose the compensation of the company's highest and lowest earners. Richard Jay Kogan (Schering-Plough) 2002 Compensation $24.4 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -36.4% This package includes some $13 million in severance for Kogan, who retires this month. (The stock fell in 2000 and 2001 too.) Robert Essner (Wyeth) 2002 Compensation $22.2 MILLION Shareholder Return for 2002 -37.9% Essner isn't the only one to whom Wyeth paid a ton. The company gave its recently retired chairman, John Stafford, even more. *Base salary has been annualized. Notes: Total compensation includes base salary, bonus, long-term incentive plan payouts, restricted stock awards, the present value of option grants (using the Black-Scholes model), and other compensation. Does not include value of previously granted options exercised in 2002. Source: Equilar<<