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To: goldsnow who wrote (17012)	8/30/1998 10:13:00 PM
From: PaulM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116796

Nice find goldsnow. Finance and Politics are definitely intermingled and Germany is taking an uncharacteristically aggressive stance on this issue (given its war time stigma, German usually plays the good, passive guy and lets France carry on the pro Europa policy). Couple that with IMF criticizing Germany for not ponying up more. It was the collapse of Russia that allowed Germany to re-unite and will continue to allow it to play an ever louder role. Many Americans may not realize it, but a radicalized Russia will IMO view the United States, not Germany, as Enemy # 1. What would your inside take be?

To: goldsnow who wrote (17012)	8/31/1998 8:47:00 AM
From: Alex	Respond to of 116796

WASHINGTON'S SILENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES By JOHN CRUDELE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WALL Street has another crisis on its hands, and newspaper headlines are screaming the bad news. But in Washington, officials are saying nothing. They're missing in action. In case you haven't noticed, the Clinton Administration and the Federal Reserve have been curiously quiet about the latest problems on Wall Street. As of the close of trading Friday, there wasn't even an assurance that the financial problems of the world are being addressed. What's up? Well, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is on vacation. His secretary wouldn't say where, but I assume that the absence of encouragement during Thursday's 357-point Dow drop and Friday's 114-point decline means Rubin must be someplace where telephony hasn't yet reached. Alan Greenspan had his chance to reassure Wall Street. But the Federal Reserve chairman used an opportunity Friday at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to instead give a canned talk about the need to fight inflation. Which left it up to lesser light Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, an expert on Russia, who didn't bother to make a public statement on that country's enormous crisis or on our stock market until after the Dow had moved down another 114 points Friday. So why weren't Rubin and Greenspan on the job? And what took Summers so long? It could be that they are comfortable with the stock market moving lower, figuring that a gradual decline is better a sudden one. Or maybe Washington has decided to work behind the scenes to prop up the market. I explained this on Friday. It has been proposed that government agencies - or their surrogates on Wall Street - should become aggressive buyers of stock-index futures contracts whenever Wall Street is in trouble. Such a move would quietly provide support for the overall market. No sooner had that column run then at about 4:30 a.m. Friday, unidentified buyers moved the S&P 500 stock futures index - on which these futures contracts are based - from an enormous 15-point deficit to nearly a 15-point gain. Was it the government? Was it some insomniac hedge funds? Or was the strange trading being done by Wall Street firms at the behest of the government? This, I'm afraid, is one of those mysteries that might never be solved. Whoever it was, the equities markets in New York opened positively on Friday morning but proceeded to fluctuate wildly throughout the day. If the early-morning trading hadn't taken place, the previous day's disaster may have continued unabated. There has been strange trading like this before, and some people - myself included - believe the mysterious hand of the government has on rare occasion intervened in the market. But given what is going on in Washington these days, this might be the most practical way to avert a financial crisis. President Clinton, too, has been strangely silent during the stock market's quake. On Thursday, in the middle of the third-biggest one-day decline ever, he chose to address the issue of safety in the schools. It was his first public outing since the Monica Lewinsky confession. On Friday he briefly mentioned the world's economic problem as part of a civil rights speech. Shouldn't the President come forward with some words of comfort, especially on the eve of his trip to Russia? Well, it really isn't that easy. Because of his never-ending scandals, the president is in no position to bring a credible plan for financial reform with him to Russia. And the International Monetary Fund isn't going to get any more money from Congress to pass around the globe as long as the president - a supporter - is so weak. So when will Clinton be back on his feet? It just isn't in the cards. Clinton is as likely as Russian President Boris Yeltsin to be forced out of office. And his crisis could even come about sooner than Yeltsin's. Here is what I'm hearing. First, the impeachment report Ken Starr is shipping to Congress may come sooner than most people expect. The guessing has been a mid- to late-September timeframe. And a second report may go to the three-judge panel in charge of Starr's investigation. Starr's recent comment that charges of abuse of power are now being added to the list of offenses could greatly undermine the President. The accusations in this area, I'm told, will revolve around using Federal agents and information to keep foes in line and - most importantly - giving top security clearances and jobs in the Pentagon to women who are friends of the president's. Under the circumstances, Wall Street may have to get accustomed to the silence. nypostonline.com