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TIME MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 15, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 6 The Three Marketeers Economist heroes? It sounds silly unless you understand how close we came to economic meltdown last year. BY JOSHUA COOPER RAMO The Phone Rings. You Are on Vacation in the Virgin Islands. You have been dreaming about the fishing for the better part of two months, and you are about to head out to chase the Christmastime bonefish running offshore and to spend a day on the water, with the sun leaching six months of Washington baloney from your brain. The phone rings, and because you are Secretary...

Greenspan hit with unusually tough criticism By Kevin G. Hall Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan came under political fire this week as never before in his 18-year career. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Thursday called the central-bank chief "one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington." Reid charged that Greenspan had called for fiscal discipline when Democrats ran Washington but is more tolerant of the debt run up by President Bush, a fellow Republican. The New York Times editorial page jabbed Greenspan yesterday for what it called "his familiar act of...

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (search) said Wednesday the U.S. economy is growing at a "reasonably good pace" but urged Congress to move quickly to fix the country's budget deficits and its Social Security and Medicare problems. "Addressing the government's own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes. However, tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base," Greenspan said in testimony prepared for delivery to the House Budget Committee (search). "The exact magnitude of such risks is very difficult to estimate, but, in...

lan Greenspan is expected to retire next year. The Bush administration, because of its nature, will have a hard time finding a successor.One Fed chairman famously described his job as being to "take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going." Bond and currency markets want monetary policy in the hands of someone who will say no to politicians. When a country's central banker is suspected of having insufficient spine, the result is higher interest rates and a weaker currency.Today it's even more crucial than usual that the Fed chairman have the markets' trust. The United States is...