Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Wednesday, December 3, 1997
Greenspan: Asia needs to change to recover
NEW YORK -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted Asia's financial crisis will be resolved and lead to a stronger global economy -- as long as Asian leaders avoid "wishful thinking" and open their markets to the "full force of competition.""While the adjustments may be difficult for a time, these crises will pass," Greenspan said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. "Stronger individual economies and a more robust and efficient international economic and financial system will surely emerge" as Asian policymakers make changes.
The Fed chairman offered no time line for this recovery, according to Bloomberg News.
But he said Asian leaders must abandon a system where governments played too large a role in deciding which industries received loans from highly leveraged banks -- and then didn't take proper actions when the loans soured. "Individual companies should be allowed to default; private investors should take their losses. . . . New growth opportunities must be allowed to emerge."
E*Trade stock falters as its business slows
NEW YORK -- Business at the electronic brokerage firm E*Trade Group Inc. fell slightly in November, a factor that pushed the company's stock down sharply for the second consecutive day.Shares of E*Trade fell $2.25, or nealry 10 percent, to $21.31 today on the Nasdaq stock market. The decline came on top of a 11 percent drop yesterday. E*Trade revealed yesterday that the company's growth in new customer accounts and another key measure -- average number of trades placed by customers -- both fell from October to November.
In other news . . .
CHICAGO -- Sears Tower, one of the world's tallest buildings, has been sold to a Canadian real estate firm for $70 million and assumed debt. TrizecHahn Corp. of Toronto said today it has purchased both the 1,454-foot, 110-story building and an adjacent parking garage for $110 million, the assumption of $4 million in liabilities and a $734 million mortgage. The seller was AEW Capital Management of Boston.