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700 | <s>[INST] EUROPE/MIDEAST Spain Set to Tackle Budget Deficit Spain hopes to [/INST] take advantage of a rapidly expanding economy to reduce its budget deficit even more than it had planned. </s> |
701 | <s>[INST] Finance Minister Rodrigo Rato says the economy [/INST] could expand faster than the 3.4% growth rate forecast for this year. </s> |
702 | <s>[INST] With that head start, Madrid will introduce strict spending controls in a bid to [/INST] slash the budget deficit to 2.4% or less of the nation's economic output this year from an estimated 2.8% in 1997 and 4.4% in 1996. </s> |
703 | <s>[INST] But to meet its deficit goal, described by the finance minister as Spain's top policy priority as it [/INST] gears up for Europe's planned unified currency, the government will have to back down somewhat on its electoral promise to cut taxes sharply -- a decision that's certain to cause consternation in the business community. </s> |
704 | <s>[INST] Europeans Cool to U.S.-Iraq Standoff European stock, bond and currency markets [/INST] have looked at the possibility of another war in the Persian Gulf and decided that no reaction is the best reaction. </s> |
705 | <s>[INST] Last week, regional markets sniffed at the [/INST] Iraq-U.S. showdown, with stocks and bonds barely reacting to the goings on. </s> |
706 | <s>[INST] On Friday, shares in London, Paris [/INST] and Frankfurt all climbed, but less than a percentage point. </s> |
707 | <s>[INST] Compared with the last time the U.S. threatened such [/INST] an attack on Iraq -- in response to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- everything is different. </s> |
708 | <s>[INST] In the buildup to battle [/INST] in 1991, brent oil prices peaked above $41. </s> |
709 | <s>[INST] Rank's Earnings Lift Investors British leisure and entertainment company Rank [/INST] Group PLC posted underlying earnings of #303 million ($496.1 million) for 1997, up from #297 million a year earlier. </s> |
710 | <s>[INST] But Rank has been beset by reports of boardroom battles, concerns about what is perceived [/INST] as the slow integration of its Hard Rock division and a stock that has lost significant ground in the past year -- even with a share buyback program. </s> |
711 | <s>[INST] The management troubles, some say, stem from the unwillingness of Rank's old-style [/INST] management to adapt its beliefs and methods to those of its recently appointed chief executive, who is attempting to revive the group's performance. </s> |
712 | <s>[INST] Dresdner Bank Details Asia Exposure Germany's Dresdner Bank AG has set aside 600 [/INST] million marks ($330.4 million) of risk provisions for claims on borrowers in Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand, where it has exposure totaling 4.1 billion marks. </s> |
713 | <s>[INST] Although it has a 1.2 billion mark exposure [/INST] in Malaysia, it sees no need for additional risk provisioning for that market. </s> |
714 | <s>[INST] Despite all this, the big German [/INST] bank's earnings jumped 20% to 3.3 billion marks last year. </s> |
715 | <s>[INST] BRIEFLY: -- Russian natural-gas giant RAO Gazprom is cutting back on its [/INST] massive plan to develop gas fields in far northern Siberia, a plan analysts have long attacked as a Soviet-era white elephant. </s> |
716 | <s>[INST] ASIA/PACIFIC Malaysia's Pitch for Yankee Dollars Malaysia is [/INST] the place for investors to go if they want to get more for their dollars. </s> |
717 | <s>[INST] At least that's the sales pitch that [/INST] Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is giving foreign investors these days. </s> |
718 | <s>[INST] The government notes that since July, the ringgit has [/INST] fallen about 35% against the dollar -- giving foreign direct investors more for the buck. </s> |
719 | <s>[INST] But the premier dismisses suggestions that foreign [/INST] investors have lost confidence in Malaysia because of the country's economic turmoil. </s> |
720 | <s>[INST] "Long-term investors have continued to [/INST] have faith in the country," he says. </s> |
721 | <s>[INST] "They have not pulled out and if they [/INST] have to reduce somewhat their production, it is because the world market has shrunk". </s> |
722 | <s>[INST] Perdue Plans to Build Plant in China Perdue Farms Inc. [/INST] for years has been exporting chicken parts to China -- including chicken feet, considered a delicacy there. </s> |
723 | <s>[INST] Now it's building its first [/INST] overseas production facility in that vast nation. </s> |
724 | <s>[INST] The Maryland poultry giant says it entered into a joint venture deal [/INST] with Dah Chong Hong, a large export customer of Perdue, and a group of Chinese partners to establish a poultry-processing complex outside Shanghai. </s> |
725 | <s>[INST] After the processing plant is complete, sales efforts [/INST] will focus on getting the birds into supermarkets and restaurants in the Shanghai area. </s> |
726 | <s>[INST] China to Increase International Flights [/INST] China is expanding its reach through aviation. </s> |
727 | <s>[INST] It says it will increase the number [/INST] of international air routes to 124 from the current 106 by July. </s> |
728 | <s>[INST] At that point it will have flights to 62 [/INST] cities in 32 countries, and 26 air routes connecting the Chinese mainland with Hong Kong and Macau. </s> |
729 | <s>[INST] Meanwhile, the number of passengers traveling on China's international [/INST] flights climbed 14.7% to 5.05 million in 1997 from a year earlier, the government said. </s> |
730 | <s>[INST] Travelers to Hong Kong and Macau on [/INST] Chinese airlines reached 3.45 million, up from 3.34 million in 1996. </s> |
731 | <s>[INST] Professor Goes Toe to Toe With IMF Over Indonesian Crisis --- Fan of a `Currency Board' Woos Suharto, [/INST] but Fund Manages to Block Plan --- Side Job With Trading Firm Author: By Bob Davis and Jay Solomon Publication info: Wall Street Journal , Eastern edition [New York, N.Y] 23 Feb 1998: A1. </s> |
732 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: A couple of months ago, Mr. Hanke was [/INST] an obscure Johns Hopkins University professor who flooded indifferent reporters with notes and news releases on his work. </s> |
733 | <s>[INST] Then, suddenly, he became a top economic adviser and [/INST] sometime spokesman for President Suharto, who is intrigued by Mr. Hanke's ideas for monetary reform. </s> |
734 | <s>[INST] As the world's fourth-most-populous country struggles with a battered currency, a [/INST] wrecked economy and civil unrest, the U.S. economist is squired around Jakarta by an entourage of the nation's elite. </s> |
735 | <s>[INST] A former cabinet minister calls [/INST] him Mr. Suharto's dukun -- a Javanese medicine man. </s> |
736 | <s>[INST] For several weeks, Mr. Hanke bested the elite economists of the [/INST] International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury, who consider him a crank and fervently oppose his prescriptions for Indonesia. </s> |
737 | <s>[INST] They were caught by surprise [/INST] when he turned up at Mr. Suharto's side. </s> |
738 | <s>[INST] 2 audience with the president, a top [/INST] Treasury official found out only when a reporter mentioned it two days later. </s> |
739 | <s>[INST] IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus threatened to [/INST] suspend the $43 billion IMF-led bailout if Indonesia pursued Mr. Hanke's plan. </s> |
740 | <s>[INST] President Clinton telephoned Mr. Suharto on Friday, [/INST] for the second time in a week, to lobby against Mr. Hanke's advice. </s> |
741 | <s>[INST] Leaders of Germany and Japan weighed in, as [/INST] did finance ministers from leading industrial nations at a weekend meeting in London. </s> |
742 | <s>[INST] Full text: JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Steve H. Hanke, [/INST] economic missionary, may be losing his grip on his most prominent convert ever, President Suharto. </s> |
743 | <s>[INST] If so, that comes only after [/INST] extraordinary pressure from leaders of the world's richest countries. </s> |
744 | <s>[INST] A couple of months ago, Mr. Hanke was an [/INST] obscure Johns Hopkins University professor who flooded indifferent reporters with notes and news releases on his work. </s> |
745 | <s>[INST] Then, suddenly, he became a top economic adviser and [/INST] sometime spokesman for President Suharto, who is intrigued by Mr. Hanke's ideas for monetary reform. </s> |
746 | <s>[INST] As the world's fourth-most-populous country struggles with a battered currency, a [/INST] wrecked economy and civil unrest, the U.S. economist is squired around Jakarta by an entourage of the nation's elite. </s> |
747 | <s>[INST] A former cabinet minister calls [/INST] him Mr. Suharto's dukun -- a Javanese medicine man. </s> |
748 | <s>[INST] For several weeks, Mr. Hanke bested the elite economists of the [/INST] International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury, who consider him a crank and fervently oppose his prescriptions for Indonesia. </s> |
749 | <s>[INST] They were caught by surprise [/INST] when he turned up at Mr. Suharto's side. </s> |
750 | <s>[INST] 2 audience with the president, a top [/INST] Treasury official found out only when a reporter mentioned it two days later. </s> |
751 | <s>[INST] IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus threatened to [/INST] suspend the $43 billion IMF-led bailout if Indonesia pursued Mr. Hanke's plan. </s> |
752 | <s>[INST] President Clinton telephoned Mr. Suharto on Friday, [/INST] for the second time in a week, to lobby against Mr. Hanke's advice. </s> |
753 | <s>[INST] Leaders of Germany and Japan weighed in, as [/INST] did finance ministers from leading industrial nations at a weekend meeting in London. </s> |
754 | <s>[INST] A top Indonesian monetary official said over [/INST] the weekend that the government has suspended plans to implement Mr. Hanke's ideas. </s> |
755 | <s>[INST] Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said that would be "a [/INST] constructive step" and announced that he is dispatching an envoy to Jakarta to clarify the situation. </s> |
756 | <s>[INST] Even so, Mr. Suharto hasn't pushed aside the American economist, who [/INST] on Friday night was on a television station controlled by one of the president's sons to promote his plan. </s> |
757 | <s>[INST] Some analysts in Jakarta believe that Mr. [/INST] Suharto will never formally renounce Mr. Hanke for fear of losing face. </s> |
758 | <s>[INST] They suggest that the American will [/INST] simply disappear from Jakarta as suddenly as he appeared. </s> |
759 | <s>[INST] His hotel says he is booked to [/INST] stay in town at least through the end of the week. </s> |
760 | <s>[INST] A self-described "farm boy from Iowa," he earned his doctorate at the University of Colorado, taught [/INST] for a time at the University of California at Berkeley and worked as a natural-resources economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers early in the Reagan administration. </s> |
761 | <s>[INST] "He was only there one [/INST] year," says former council member William Niskanen. </s> |
762 | <s>[INST] For the past several years, the [/INST] 55-year-old professor has written a column for Forbes magazine. </s> |
763 | <s>[INST] In the early 1990s, Mr. Hanke became intrigued by "currency boards," under which [/INST] a country fixes its currency to a strong foreign currency, eliminating its central bank's ability to change the money supply or adjust interest rates. </s> |
764 | <s>[INST] Such boards have worked well [/INST] elsewhere to restore market confidence and combat inflation. </s> |
765 | <s>[INST] Nobel Prize-winning economist Merton Miller praises [/INST] Mr. Hanke as "the leading expert" on currency boards. </s> |
766 | <s>[INST] He is also their single most dogged advocate and [/INST] says he played a role in establishing currency boards in Argentina, Bulgaria, Estonia and Lithuania. </s> |
767 | <s>[INST] "He was invited by [Finance Minister Domingo] Cavallo to advertise [/INST] the success of the Argentinian currency board," says economist Guillermo Calvo, a Latin American specialist and former IMF staffer. </s> |
768 | <s>[INST] But he was only called in at the [/INST] end, and he didn't play any instrumental role in setting up the planning in Argentina". </s> |
769 | <s>[INST] He is also vice chairman of a [/INST] U.S. subsidiary of Friedberg Mercantile Group, a Toronto money manager and currency trader. </s> |
770 | <s>[INST] Friedberg says it made major profits trading Asian currencies in the [/INST] 1997 fourth quarter, some of which came from selling Indonesia's rupiah short -- that is, betting it would decline. </s> |
771 | <s>[INST] "The Asian crisis theme remains, in our opinion, [/INST] a profitable source of trading opportunities," the company said in its fourth-quarter report. </s> |
772 | <s>[INST] Albert Friedberg, its director and general partner, says [/INST] Mr. Hanke doesn't pick investments but operates as a kind of salesman for the firm. </s> |
773 | <s>[INST] "He'll go to Argentina and see Cavallo, and [/INST] when he's there, he'll help try to get clients for us," Mr. Friedberg says. </s> |
774 | <s>[INST] "The pension funds listen to [/INST] him more because he's an adviser to Cavallo". </s> |
775 | <s>[INST] Friedberg's Internet site promoting its Argentina mutual fund pictures Mr. Hanke and [/INST] identifies him as president of the company that manages the fund and an "active consultant" to Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem. </s> |
776 | <s>[INST] When Mr. Hanke's clients place an order [/INST] with Friedberg Mercantile, Mr. Friedberg says, Mr. Hanke gets a commission. </s> |
777 | <s>[INST] Mr. Friedberg says Mr. Hanke has called him once [/INST] so far from Jakarta to discuss "technical issues" and complained that his phone might be bugged. </s> |
778 | <s>[INST] "We have zero position [/INST] in the rupiah now," Mr. Friedberg says. </s> |
779 | <s>[INST] Then every hedge fund in [/INST] America will want to buy the rupiah. </s> |
780 | <s>[INST] Do I expect him to call me when [/INST] he leaves Suharto's office and say, `It will be signed in three hours'? </s> |
781 | <s>[INST] Mr. Hanke didn't submit to an interview [/INST] or answer questions faxed to him in Jakarta for this article. </s> |
782 | <s>[INST] His wife, who accompanied him to Indonesia, [/INST] said he didn't want to answer The Wall Street Journal's questions. </s> |
783 | <s>[INST] In an earlier interview with the Journal, [/INST] Mr. Hanke said he refuses payment for his government advisory work. </s> |
784 | <s>[INST] "It would not look good as [/INST] an adviser if I'm also getting paid," he said. </s> |
785 | <s>[INST] A onetime collaborator and fellow currency-board advocate, Kurt [/INST] Schuler, a Virginia economic consultant, says Mr. Hanke discloses his business interests to clients. </s> |
786 | <s>[INST] "He doesn't use the multiple roles in [/INST] a way that would generate a conflict of interest," Mr. Schuler says. </s> |
787 | <s>[INST] A country that adopts a [/INST] currency board puts its monetary policy on autopilot. </s> |
788 | <s>[INST] It is as if Alan Greenspan were [/INST] replaced by a personal computer -- and not a fancy one. </s> |
789 | <s>[INST] When dollars flow in, the board issues more [/INST] domestic currency and interest rates fall; when dollars flow out, interest rates rise. </s> |
790 | <s>[INST] The government sits back and watches, [/INST] even if interest rates skyrocket and a recession ensues. </s> |
791 | <s>[INST] When they work, currency boards have several [/INST] advantages: They arrest any tendencies in an economy toward inflation or budget deficits. </s> |
792 | <s>[INST] They assure citizens and foreign investors that the [/INST] domestic currency can always be exchanged for dollars (or some other strong currency). </s> |
793 | <s>[INST] And, by creating confidence, [/INST] they promote trade, investment and economic growth. </s> |
794 | <s>[INST] But even some fans of currency boards -- first used by [/INST] the British empire to make colonial administration more efficient -- question whether they are the right solution for Indonesia. </s> |
795 | <s>[INST] It isn't coming out of an era [/INST] of hyperinflation, as Argentina was when it successfully adopted a currency board. </s> |
796 | <s>[INST] And unlike Hong Kong, another successful case, [/INST] Indonesia doesn't have the robust banking system that such a board requires. </s> |
797 | <s>[INST] A government that adopts a currency board also has to [/INST] maintain huge foreign-currency reserves, and it has to be willing to bear whatever economic pain interest rates inflict. </s> |
798 | <s>[INST] If the government buckles -- and currency traders are [/INST] likely to test its will -- it may be left with a situation worse than before. </s> |
799 | <s>[INST] Mr. Hanke is "oversimplifying the requirements and downplaying the risks" of adopting a [/INST] currency board, contends economist John Greenwood, who was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his work in creating Hong Kong's successful currency board. </s> |
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