It has been a common line on Wall Street and in Washington: Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, should have gotten out while on top last year, when the economy was still booming and his legacy as the embodiment of prosperity was secure.
Good thing he didn't.
Peering into the economic and financial chasms that are byproducts of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it is clear that markets are in for a rough ride and that policy-makers will need skill and luck to avert a global recession.
It is also clear that many of those policy makers lack authority or credibility.
In Japan, the government has proved utterly ineffectual in coping with what amounts to a decade-long recession, and the performance of the quasi-independent Bank of Japan has been, if anything, worse.
Consumed with establishing its inflation-fighting credibility as Europe prepares to start its common currency, the new European Central Bank appears blind to the growing economic risks among its member countries, and has stubbornly resisted aggressive monetary easing this year.
And in the US, the Bush administration's team is green.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, a former chief executive of Alcoa, has never established himself with the financial markets. His blunt, unscripted style has won him plaudits in some quarters, but it has also gotten him into consistent trouble. Early in his tenure, he unsettled markets by deviating from well-established language used by the government to keep the dollar strong. He focused on issues, like workplace safety within the Trea-sury Department, that seemed far removed from the pressing matters of the day. This month, he offered economic forecasts lower than the administration's official projections.
As for President Bush, he has never seemed comfortable with or particularly engaged in the mechanics or theory of finance and economics. Anyway, Bush has other things on his mind. That leaves Greenspan.
The Fed chairman's reputation has taken a bit of a beating this year as the economy has decelerated and the stock market gains of recent years have turned to losses. He has been blamed for raising interest rates too much last year, and for not cutting them fast enough this year. He has been criticized for subscribing to and promoting the new-economy paradigm in the face of evidence that the boom of the late 1990s was nothing more than a bubble. But he still has a breadth of experience and a reserve of credibility that no one else in the world can match when it comes to an economic crisis.
"I don't think he on his own can save us from recession if one is coming," said Janet L. Yellen, a former Fed governor who also was chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton White House. "But I think it is very reassuring to have someone at the helm as experienced and respected as he is."
Greenspan has not been seen publicly since the terrorist attacks. After being hustled home from Switzerland on an Air Force jet, he holed up in his Fed office. He has no doubt spent the time delving into the condition of the markets, taking soundings from business executives and consulting with his counterparts from around the world. It is the kind of challenge that Greenspan has spent a career preparing for.
"We're very fortunate that he decided not to quit while he was ahead," Yellen said. "This is probably more important to him than whether he went out at the peak."
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
CAUSE AND EFFECT: China’s policies prompted the US to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing should consider if this outcome is in its best interests, Lai said China has been escalating its military and political pressure on Taiwan for many years, but should reflect on this strategy and think about what is really in its best interest, President William Lai (賴清德) said. Lai made the remark in a YouTube interview with Mindi World News that was broadcast on Saturday, ahead of the first anniversary of his presidential inauguration tomorrow. The US has clearly stated that China is its biggest challenge and threat, with US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly saying that the US should increase its forces in the Indo-Pacific region
ALL TOGETHER: Only by including Taiwan can the WHA fully exemplify its commitment to ‘One World for Health,’ the representative offices of eight nations in Taiwan said The representative offices in Taiwan of eight nations yesterday issued a joint statement reiterating their support for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the WHO and for Taipei’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The joint statement came as Taiwan has not received an invitation to this year’s WHA, which started yesterday and runs until Tuesday next week. This year’s meeting of the decisionmaking body of the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, would be the ninth consecutive year Taiwan has been excluded. The eight offices, which reaffirmed their support for Taiwan, are the British Office Taipei, the Australian Office Taipei, the
RSS