For all his vaunted talents, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has never had much of a reputation as an economic forecaster. In fact, he shies away from making the precise-to-the-decimal-point predictions that many other economists thrive on. Instead, he owes his success as a monetary policymaker to his ability to sniff out threats to the economy and manipulate interest rates to dampen the dangers he perceives.
Now, those instincts are being put to the test. Many Fed watchers-and some policymakers inside the central bank itself are beginning to wonder whether Greenspan has lost his touch. Despite rising risks to the economy from a swooning stock market and soaring oil prices that could hamper growth, the Greenspan-led Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) opted to leave interest rates unchanged on Sept. 24. But in a rare dissent, two of the Fed’s 12 policymakers broke ranks and voted for a cut in rotes—Dallas Fed President Robert D. McTeer Jr. and central
A. instincts most often misguide the monetary policies.
B. Greenspan has lost his control of the central bank.
C. consensus is often the case among Fed's policymakers.
D. Greenspan wouldn't tolerate such a dissent.
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When the Federal Communications Commission proposed giving low-power radio stations licenses on the FM dial, they knew they’d get flak from big broadcasting. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), after all, ’spends millions of dollars every year lobbying to keep everybody else off the radio spectrum—even locally managed, noncommercial stations that broadcast only within a four-mile radius. Sure enough, when the FCC proposed its new regulations, the NAB began screaming about all the terrible things those tiny radio transmitters could do to the big ones, whose signals are 500 times as strong and whose reach is nearly 20 times as far.
It was a pretty thin argument. So thin, in fact, that for a while if appeared the proposed regulations might survive the lobbying onslaught. And then the FCC and its allies ran into a most unlikely opponent, one with the moral authority to do real damage to their cause: National Public Radio. On
A. increase competition on the airwaves
B. counter the effects of prior legislation
C. increase local programming in urban areas
D. encourage community involvement in radio broadcasting
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