H Robert Heller

David W. Mullins Jr., a Treasury official with an academic leaning, will soon become President Bush's first appointee to the Federal Reserve Board, according to Administration sources. The 43-year-old Mullins has been close to Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady in recent years.

Federal Reserve Gov. H. Robert Heller, complaining that Fed board members are underpaid, announced Wednesday that he will resign July 31. Heller, 49, who came to Washington only three years ago from Bank of America, said that he will return to San Francisco to become an executive vice president at Visa International, the credit card company. Heller, in an unusual display of candor, said that he would have stayed in the job if top government officials had received the 50% pay raise that Congress refused to approve for itself and other top federal employees.

The dollar slipped fractionally lower against most major currencies in quiet trading Monday while gold prices were mixed. Republic National Bank of New York quoted a bid of $440 for an ounce of gold as of 4 p.m. EST, down 50 cents from Friday's late price. Analysts said currency trading was dominated by technical factors, although the dollar did strengthen briefly on reported comments by Federal Reserve Board Governor H. Robert Heller and Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III.

The Federal Reserve Board announced Thursday that it has approved new securities underwriting powers for First Interstate Bancorp of Los Angeles, the nation's ninth-largest banking organization. The Fed voted 4-1 on Wednesday to permit the bank holding company, through its First Interstate Capital Markets subsidiary, to underwrite municipal revenue bonds, some industrial development bonds, mortgage-backed securities and commercial paper, a Fed statement said Thursday.

The February brouhaha over the pay bill is now history. The current bloodletting in the House may have run its course with Jim Wright and Tony Coelho. The good work done by the Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries has gone for naught, mainly because its recommendation was so misunderstood by the public--and Congress wouldn't face up to the issue. We now see many examples in the Bush Administration where qualified candidates will not take or can not keep appointments and where existing officials are leaving prematurely to escape onerous employment conditions.

A sophisticated investment banker paused in the middle of lunch last week and asked, "Was there a stock market crash last October?" He was only half joking. Of course there was a crash--with U.S. stocks losing hundreds of billions of dollars in value and leading a drastic slide in stock markets around the world. The crash sparked concern that we were seeing a rerun of 1929 and that a 1930s-style Depression would follow.

Who owns America? More and more foreign investors, that's who. There is growing concern among U.S. policy-makers that rising foreign ownership of American economic assets could well undermine our ability to compete in the world economy. The trend toward foreign ownership extends to many sectors, including our agricultural and industrial base. But potentially the most troubling acquisition has occurred in the financial arena. Foreigners are buying up our banks.

The raging value of the dollar turned mixed Tuesday as dealers took profits from its recent strength and speculated on what the United States and its trading partners might do next to stabilize foreign exchange rates. Traders reported increased dollar selling by the Federal Reserve and central banks of Britain and Japan, but they said the market once again ignored the interventions. "The market is sort of catching its breath here . . . but there's still very strong sentiment behind the dollar, even though we're seeing a pause right now," said William P. Sterling, an international economist with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets.

The stock market gave ground for the third straight session Wednesday in a late flurry of futures-related program selling, triggered by a weaker dollar and rising interest rates. But once again takeover and transportation issues soared on a wave of buying interest. The Dow Jones index of 30 industrials dropped 7.97 to 2,464.91, bringing its loss since the start of the week to 21.47 points. Declining issues outnumbered advances by about 4 to 3 in nationwide trading of New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks.

Federal Reserve policy makers received a comforting report Wednesday indicating that economic growth continues to taper off in response to the central bank's earlier tightening of credit aimed at slowing inflation. The Fed report, prepared by the 12 district banks in the central bank system, concluded that most regions of the country are experiencing an "ebbing rate of expansion" and noted that "with some exceptions wage and price pressures are not accelerating." The Fed, which is scheduled to meet early in July to plan its next monetary policy moves, recently signaled a slight easing of its credit stance when it took steps to bring a 16-month-long increase in short-term interest rates to a halt.