United States Economy

Anticipating further cuts in interest rates, investors sent stock prices soaring Wednesday in what market experts termed a "buying stampede." The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 42.57 points to 2,830.94 on heavy volume. That is the highest level for the Dow since 2,864.60 last Aug. 2--the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. Some 276.9 million shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday compared with 290.57 million shares Tuesday. Gainers overwhelmed losers, 1,195 to 451.

THE TOWERING BILLBOARDS ON INTERSTATE 95 ON THE South Florida coast sell a particular kind of dream to a particular kind of buyer. The dream comes true on lush golf courses and in sun-drenched villas. And the buyers, whose permanently smiling faces beam down from these signs, are old, but happy. The hair may be white, but the skin is tanned and smooth. The eyes sparkle with contentment. "Welcome to the club," says the larger-than-life couple on the sign advertising one retirement community.

Two prominent Senate critics of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative lashed out Tuesday at any move by the Administration to push for early deployment of the program, also known as "Star Wars." Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), speaking at a news conference, said quick implementation of the program would be "absolute folly" and "nonsense," adding that the laser-beam weapons needed for an effective space-based defense are years away from development.

Two years ago, Rexhall Industries Inc. was in overdrive. The Saugus motor-home maker, which opened in 1986, had seen its sales soar to $34 million in 1989--a year when nationwide shipments of recreational vehicles fell 2%. But in 1989 Rexhall's profits more than doubled to $2.27 million from $918,000 the year before.

As the Administration of President-elect Bill Clinton takes shape and prepares to assume power, key economic policy-makers are beginning to come to grips with the fact that they are not the only ones who will be calling the economic policy shots. The U.S.

President Bush plans to ask Congress on Tuesday to repeal the luxury tax on yachts that lawmakers enacted in late 1990 and may seek to end similar levies on private aircraft, automobiles, jewelry and furs, White House officials and lawmakers said Sunday. The White House is expected to portray the move as a bid to help restore jobs.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan indicated Sunday that he remains satisfied that the United States' economy is not growing strongly enough to cause concern about inflation, according to sources at an international monetary conference in Australia. One of the sources, who attended a Greenspan briefing by video link with Washington, said he thought the Fed chairman sounded "rather sanguine" about inflation in his private talk to commercial and central bankers attending the conference.

The numbers may tell the story of Los Angeles' record-high rents, but single mother Joanne Ueda is living it. For three years, she and her 9-year-old daughter lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in West Los Angeles that cost $950 a month. Ueda studied dental hygiene at a local college and worked part time in a dental office, while Maryssa attended a nearby elementary school. But in their last 10 months at the apartment, the rent shot up $150, further straining a tight family budget.

The specter of budget deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars, once a yearly nightmare, has become commonplace and perhaps even manageable. But now a new and equally frightening vision is looming: an ever-growing trade deficit, also in the hundreds of billions a year, that eventually traps the nation's economy in an escape-proof prison of debt, eventually to be measured in trillions of dollars owed to foreigners.

One of the most intriguing questions about this year's nasty campaign finance scandal has been left hanging: Why the sudden surge in foreign interest in buying influence in Washington? Other governments and international corporations have always sought to buy support in the United States, both through legitimate and illegitimate means. But the 1996 election cycle raised their intervention to new highs--or lows--kicking off a massive investigation by Congress and the FBI that is still unfolding.

Bruised by a year of financial catastrophe, some bank shareholders are out for revenge as the corporate annual meeting season approaches -- with Bank of America Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis a prominent target. His critics, who are calling on shareholders to vote him off the company's board at its annual meeting April 29, cite the bank's moves last year to acquire two struggling firms, mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp. and brokerage powerhouse Merrill Lynch & Co.

Mexico said Monday it would increase tariffs on about 90 U.S. products in retaliation for last week's decision to end a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods in the United States. Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said the U.S. decision violated a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was supposed to have opened cross-border trucking by January 2000. "We consider this U.S.

Caravans of cash-rich Chinese in Hummers and Lincoln Navigators have been weaving through American neighborhoods in recent months, looking for foreclosures and other bargain properties to buy. With housing prices crashing in the U.S., home-buying trips to America are becoming one of the more popular tour group packages in China. New U.S.

WHAT created J. Edgar Hoover? He reigned with an iron fist as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, until the day he died in 1972. By then, Hoover had evolved into an untouchable autocrat, a man who kept secret files on millions of Americans over the years and used them to blackmail presidents, senators and movie stars. He ordered burglaries, secret wiretaps or sabotage against anyone he personally considered subversive. His target list included the Rev.

I LOVED NAPSTER. I listened to music more because of it. I bought more music because of it. And I count myself among the many who would have gladly paid $20 a month for the privilege to keep using it. ITunes is great, but Napster combined whimsy, variety and convenience in perfect combination. Tough luck for me. The courts, pushed by the recording industry, decided that what I, and many music consumers, wanted was against the law. Napster was being used to steal and illegally share music.

A drop-off in demand for commercial airliners helped drive down orders for U.S.-made durable goods by 10.2% in January, their biggest decline in 5 1/2 years, according to a government report released Friday. Although the drop was larger than the 1% decline economists had expected, analysts said that excluding transportation orders, the report pointed to strength in factory production ahead.

President Bush on Monday dashed ahead of his own timetable for naming a successor to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, picking former university economist Ben S. Bernanke to head the nation's central bank. The 51-year-old Bernanke, who is chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors and served as a Federal Reserve governor from 2002 until June, immediately promised that "my first priority will be to maintain continuity with the policies ... established during the Greenspan years."

After the New York City Marathon a few Sundays ago, we waited for the crowds to disperse on the West Side and then we cut over to a park near the Hudson River. It was unusually warm and soon the neighborhood kids found one another for touch football and soccer. The adults lolled around the field, watching the kids skid in the mud against a red autumn sunset. Out of nowhere two police officers, a burly man and a smallish woman, appeared on the field.

Amid fears that disputes over the vote count could trigger violence, citizens head to the polls here today in a presidential election marked by a fierce battle between pro-Western and Moscow-oriented candidates. Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, widely viewed as a free-market democratic reformer, is facing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who is popular in Ukraine's largely Russian-speaking east, in an exceptionally harsh campaign.

One of the best arguments for owning foreign as well as domestic stocks and mutual funds is that geographical diversification dampens risk and provides more dependable returns. When overseas markets mirror our own, those benefits are blunted. And part of the reason that the Japanese stock market in particular and Asian markets in general are in favor at the moment is that their economies are diverging from North America's. Another reason, of course, is performance.