-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Looking the Dollar in the Face Central Bank Wars ECB Raises Interest Rates to Defend Euro. FRANKFURT - The European Central Bank raised interest rates in the 11-nation currency bloc Thursday, weeks earlier than many had expected, to try to stem the euro's slide against the dollar. The central bank justified its quarter-percentage-point increase, which lifted the euro zone's benchmark lending rate to 3.25 percent, in part with concerns that the slumping euro causes inflation in Europe by raising the price of imports. The central bank's president, Wim Duisenberg, also said the credit tightening was meant to shore up trust in a currency that had lost 17 percent of its value against the dollar in its 13-month existence. ''We hope to underscore by our actions and by appropriate policy'' that the central bank wants ''to preserve public confidence in the currency to the maximum extent possible,'' Mr. Duisenberg said. The weak euro has become ''a cause for concern,'' he added. The euro rose to 99.06 U.S. cents in 4 P.M. New York trading from 97.67 cents late Wednesday. Major euro-zone stock markets posted strong gains, with the CAC-40 index in Paris rising 3.4 percent to a record 6,149.67 and the DAX index in Frankfurt gaining 2.5 percent to 7,354.26, also a record. The ECB also raised its other two main lending rates by a quarter of a percentage point, bringing its deposit rate to 2.25 percent and the marginal lending rate to 4.25 percent. The central bank also cited other factors, such as brisk activity in the global economy and across Europe. ''Growth in the euro area is now robust,'' Mr. Duisenberg said. He denied that the Frankfurt-based central bank had coordinated its announcement with the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, which announced an identical quarter-percentage-point rate increase Wednesday. Overall inflation across Europe has proven more worrisome than previously suspected, even without the euro's potentially inflationary slump, Mr. Duisenberg said. Led by a big rise in crude oil in the past year, price pressure has been ''larger and more protracted than foreseen earlier,'' he said. Surging money-supply expansion and brisk private-sector lending also herald the risk of future inflation, he said. The announcement had a hurried character because it lacked the weeks of advance signals that the ECB carefully furnished for its previous interest-rate changes, economists said. Before the euro's decline last week, many economists figured on a rate increase in March or April. In a tumble that caught many off guard, the common currency plummeted through parity with the dollar last week and struck a new low Monday of 96.65 U.S. cents. ''We do not think it will do much,'' said Elga Bartsch, an economist in London at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The session of the 17-member central bank council Thursday was almost certainly fractious. The euro's slide left the council without any easy options and thrust it into one of the most difficult dilemmas in its short history. Had the central bank failed to act, it would have reinforced the view that Europe's political elite secretly favor a weak euro. The impression of indifference has helped drive the euro lower, raising fears in recent months of an erosion of public confidence, economists said. But some economists have warned that an early rate hike could throw sand into the gears of Europe's recovery. ''You cannot rescue the euro with an interest-rate hike,'' said Ruergen Roethig, an analyst at the B. Metzler Sohn & Co. bank in Frankfurt. International Herald Tribune, February 4, 2000 US Politics Bush is Not a Cunning Linguist Is the Bush-Clinton era coming to an end? WITH nine months of public speaking left before the presidential election, the oratory of George W Bush is coming under increasing scrutiny as he continues to test the limits of the English language. Like President George Bush, his father, the front runner in the Republican presidential nomination race has already won a reputation for verbal contortion, linguistic gymnastics and the accidental coining of words. The governor of Texas can lay claim to having invented "tacular", "mential" and "bariffs" and has begun to explore new forms of eloquence. He told children at a New Hampshire school who were celebrating "Perseverance Month" that he was happy to be joining them for "Preservation Month". Proving it was not just a slip of the tongue, he added: "I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve." Having described himself in a Texas re-election campaign as "the education governor" he recently told an audience: "Rarely is the question asked - is our children learning?" Mr Bush, who was heavily defeated in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, has demonstrated evidence that his malapropisms are hereditary. President Bush was renowned for putting syntax, vocabulary and meaning, not to mention style, through a cerebral shredder before issuing his own memorable remarks. "I mean, I think there will be a lot of aftermaths in what happened, but we are going to go forward," he said after his candidate for a cabinet post was rejected by the Senate in 1989. His ability to trivialise the tragic was demonstrated when, on being shown around Auschwitz, the then President said: "Boy, they were big on crematoriums weren't they?" He also showed the way for his son by combining two words in one. On live national television he once refused to answer what he called a "hyporhetorical question" and later refused to "hypothecate", presumably a combination of hypothesise and speculate, on another reporter's inquiry. His 53-year-old eldest son forges neologisms wherever he goes. He told an audience that they lived in a "world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential loss". Last month, he risked the wrath of the animal rights lobby when he spoke of a desire to "rip down terriers and bariffs". Governor Bush has worked hard to eradicate his father's habit of rambling at the podium during press conferences by using cue cards to answer even the most "hyporhetorical" of questions. But he has not eradicated the vagueness of expression that led President Bush to refer in less than inspiring tones to the "vision thing". Both men are masters of not quite expressing thoughts. Mr Bush Jnr told an interviewer: "When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." Father and son have recognised their shortcomings. "Some of the best of us mispronounce words," George W told a classroom recently, echoing his father's famous observation that "fluency in English is something that I'm often not accused of". But the difference between the two men is that President Bush was never thought of as an unintelligent man, merely one who could not express his thoughts in a way that made much sense to the rest of the English-speaking world. His son is facing increasing questions about whether he has the basic qualities necessary in a President, including intellect. He has publicly called the East Timorese "East Timorians", the Kosovars "Kosovians", the Slovenians "Slovakians" and the Greeks "Grecians". In the light of growing doubts about his oratorical reliability, not to mention brainpower, Republicans may not have been completely reassured to see yesterday that he had called for support in South Carolina from the master of the malapropism, Dan Quayle, a former vice-president. It was Mr Quayle who gave America perhaps the greatest of its recent political speeches when he said: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." The London Telegraph, February 4, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soap-boxing! 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