Banner Graphic, Volume 21, Number 203, Greencastle, Putnam County, 1 May 1991 — Page 2

A2

THE BANNERGRAPHIC May 1,1991

Workers march on May Day; Gorbachev alone on stand

MOSCOW (AP) Thousands of workers marched through Red Square today in a May Day rally that neither matched the fanfare of years past nor repeated the angry demonstration that drove Mikhail S. Gorbachev from the reviewing stand in 1990. “Comrade Gorbachev! ... You ought to be ashamed to have the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!” shouted one marcher, Viktor Ampilov, who led several hundred workers carrying portraits of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. NONE OF THE MARCHERS carried placards praising Gorbachev, but only a few condemned him. Turnout for the worker’s rally organized for the first time by trade unions rather than the party or the government was the lowest in decades. Thousands of KGB and Interior Ministry troops along with plainclothes security police sealed off downtown Moscow, preventing many anti-govern-ment protesters from reaching Red Square. “The working people today demand that the breakup of the state be stopped, the economy be brought to order and people be given an opportunity to work and earn a decent salary,” said an official speaker at the rally, Vladimir Shcherbakov of the Federation of Trade Unions. “IT’S TIME THAT ALL WHO are vested with power must be held responsible for it,” he said.

Banner Graphic (USPS 142-020) Consolidation of Tha Dally Bannar Eatabllshad 1850 Tha Herald Tha Daily Oraphlc Eatabllshad 1883 Talsphona 853-5151 PuMishad dally ax cap t Sunday and Holidays by B wnorOraphic, Inc. at 100 North Jackson St., Clrsancaatls, IN 48138. Socond-dass postage paid at arooncastlo, IN. POSTMASTER: Sand addroea changee to Tha BannsrOraphic, P.O. Box BOS, Orooncastle, IN 45138 Subecription Ratoa Par Weak, by carrier *1.40 Par Weak, by motor route ‘1.45 Mail Subscription Rates R.R. In Rest of of Putnam County Indiana U.S.A. 3 Months *21.00 *23.00 *28.00 S Months *40.00 *48.00 *BO.OO 1 Year *78.00 *BB.OO *OB.OO Mall subscriptions payable in advanoe...not accepted In town and where motor route service Is available. Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to the use for republication of all the local news printed In this newspaper.

Great horseracing GETAWAY WEEKEND At Churchill Downs and Executive Inn. May 10 thru June 30. Fxfierience a perfect mini-vacation combining restful relaxation and an exciting day at the races. Includes: ■ Two (2) tickets for box seats at Churchill Downs ■ Dinner for 2in our beautiful Empire Dining Room ■ Deluxe guest room accommodations for two ■ Your favorite breakfast in our Tudor Dining Room ■ 3p m. check-out Total Package Price: One Night $l2O Two Nights slss* 'Second night includes room accommodations only. (b&ciitive- Stun \ MOTOR HOTEL Watterson Expressway at the Fairgrounds Just 5 minutes from Churchill Downs Louisville, KY 1-800/626-2706

I PUBLIC NOTICE PRICES REDUCED 10% To give you even greater values at Nora Jane’s Shoes, we have reduced the prices of EVERY PAIR OF SHOES for men and women by 10%. SHOP NORA JANE’S/BOOTERY FOR THESE OUTSTANDING BRANDS. " ‘ Mm BUSH connies • °°* v * t C nic omS 1 QUALITY SERVICE iTCZitek, FRIENDLY C / ATMOSPHERE ___ []//t J /\f\/() I jZ-^BOOTERY

MOSCOW (AP) Leningrad voters will decide whether the Soviet Union’s second-largest city should again be called St. Petersburg, its pre-Communist name, a news agency reports. Efforts to restore the city’s historic name received a boost from exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who sent a message from his home in Cavendish, Vl, the independent Interfax news agency said Tuesday. THE JUNE 12 REFERENDUM will be held the same time as balloting for the presidency of the Rus-

Moscow trade union leader Mikhail Shmakov, another official speaker, said marchers came “to demonstrate the force and organization of the union movement, to defend ourselves and our families from unbridled price rises and thoughtless managerial decisions.” The crowd of about 50,000 on Red Square remained silent when Shmakov introduced Gorbachev and Parliament Speaker Anatoly Lukyanov, who alone among the Soviet leadership took their places atop he tomb of Vladimir Lenin. Neither Gorbachev nor Lukyanov spoke.

Effect of interest rate cut is debated

WASHINGTON (AP) While the Federal Reserve resolved one economic mystery with its unusually forceful cut in interest rates, the bigger question remains: will it be enough to lift the U.S. economy out of recession? The Bush administration, buoyed that the Fed had finally taken its hints for another round of interest rate cuts, insisted that it saw no reason to change its forecast of an economic revival within the next two months. HOWEVER, SOME private economists said that even with the Fed’s decision Tuesday to slash two key interest rates, they were revising their forecasts to push the recovery off until later in the year. “We are convinced that the economy is still sliding,” said Lawrence Meyer, who heads a St. Louis economic consulting firm. “The Fed’s action will help, but the momentum at this point is down.” While Meyer said he believed

SPECIAL Insured Certificate of Deposit 8% 5 year *5,000 minimum deposit Bob Hardwick One Ashley Square «*.? 653-2717 . 1-800-424-8183 Jpjfj Federally insured up to *IOO,OOO. CDs available from institutions nationwide. Issuer information availabe on request. May be subject to interest penalty for early withdrawal. Effective 4-30-91. Subject to availability. Simple interest. S 3 Edward * D. Jones & Co. Uwrtw H9m VO* Sloe* Ucryng* Inc tocwflUM MWMior Protection Corporate*

Leningrad may change name to St. Pete

ALAN GREENSPAN Pushed for rate cuts

the economy would return to growth by the July-September quarter, other economists did not see a rebound until the fourth quarter of this year or perhaps early 1992. “THE NOTION OF a mid-year upturn more and more looks like a pipe dream,” said Allen Sinai, chief economist of the Boston Co. “The economy remains mired in a recession.” The Fed’s decision to engage in a double-barreled round of crediteasing did resolve one dispute among economists. Some believed that because of a deep split among its policy makers, the central bank would not ease any further. One faction, led by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, had been pushing for further rate cuts in the belief there was no sign that the economy’s slide had hit bottom. HOWEVER, another group argued that any further cuts ran the

Worst financial quarter in history looming for Big 3

DETROIT (AP) The Big Three automakers wrapped up what is expected to be their worst quarter in history, with losses of more than $2 billion. But analysts say the worst is about over. GENERAL MOTORS Corp. and Ford Motor Co. on Tuesday reported a combined first-quarter loss of $2 billion. Chrysler Corp. was expected to release its earnings figures for the first three months of 1991 today. Analysts expected Chrysler’s red

Sycamore 9.90 Sale 9.90 Assorted Knit Tops Sycamore

sian republic. SOME LENINGRAD residents dislike the Germanic “St. Petersburg” and prefer the Russianized “Petrograd,” which was used for a decade from the start of World War I, when Russia fought Germany. The name was changed to Leningrad after the Communist revolutionary died in 1924. Solzhenitsyn, a fierce Russian nationalist, urged the name be changed to “Petrograd,” or the literal Russian version of St. Petersburg, “ S vyatopetrograd. ”

LAST YEAR, AS IN previous parades, most of the Politburo watched from the red stone tomb of Lenin, who founded the party and the state. Unofficial demonstrators were allowed into the square for the first time last year, and they shouted slogans condemning the Communist Party, driving Gorbachev and other leaders from the mausoleum. Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin was invited to stand alongside Gorbachev this year, but he was in Siberia trying to end a coal strike. He addressed a May Day rally attended by 10,000 people in Novokuznetsk, urging miners to promote radical

Ilifil v* wmf |j|

NICHOLAS BRADY Won one of two battles

risk of making inflation worse once the economy begins growing again. The half-point cut to 5.5 percent in the discount rate, the interest the Fed charges member banks for loans, put the rate at its lowest level since the 5.25 percent in 1977. The Fed also pushed the federal funds rate, the interest banks charge each other, down to 5.75 percent, the eighth cut in this key rate since last October. Economists said part of the problem is that banks are facing such pressure on their profit margins because of bad loans that they are delaying passing the benefits of Fed’s actions on to consumers and businesses. THUS, CHEAPER credit, the government’s one lever to get the country out of the recession, is being diluted. Economists said consumers and businesses eventually will see some modest reductions in rates from the Fed’s latest easing. They said that

ink to push the cumulative Big Three loss to more than 52.5 billion, the worst in automotive history. The previous record loss was 52.1 billion, recorded during the last quarter of 1990. The recession and an accompanying drop in demand were blamed for the downturn. “BARRING A calamity, the first quarter should be the worst,” said auto analyst Joseph Phillippi of Shearson Lehman Brothers in New York. “The second quarter isn’t going to be pretty, but it’s going to

economic reforms. SOME MARCHERS TODAY carried signs protesting a 5 percent sales tax imposed by Gorbachev. “Enough Political Games,” said one banner. Tens of thousands of workers have staged strikes in the past month, demanding that wages keep up with inflation and that Gorbachev resign for failing to lift the country out of economic crisis. In Red Square today, neither the speakers nor the slogans mentioned communism or socialism. Gorbachev was introduced as president of the country, rather than general secretary of the Communist Party. THE CUSTOMARY HUGE portraits of Lenin, Karl Marx and Frederic Engels were absent from the GUM department store opposite the mausoleum, replaced by rainbow-colored billboards extolling “Peace and Happiness,” “May” and “Success in Labor.” The crowd was limited to the number of people who could fit into Red Square at one time. Most people were subdued and filed out quietly after exactly one hour. In past years, officially organized crowds have marched for hours, carrying bright balloons, paper mache flowers and placards bearing slogans approved by the party. Some hard-liners carried anti-reform and antiSemitic placards.

banks’ benchmark prime lending rate, which is used to set many business and consumer loans, could fall by a quarter percentage point from the current 9 percent over the next few weeks. Analysts said that while variable rate mortgages will come down, fixed mortgages may not change very much because they are tied more to changes in financial markets than to the Fed’s actions on short-term rates. ONE AREA THAT should get a boost is the nation’s manufacturing sector, economists said. The Fed’s rate cuts sent the dollar lower on foreign exchange markets. A weaker dollar means American goods are priced more competitively on overseas markets. President Bush and Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady lobbied the top finance officials of six key U.S. allies earlier this week to agree to a coordinated round of interest rate cuts to boost foreign demand and ward off a global recession. However, Japan and Germany balked at the suggestion, fearing it would make inflation worse in their countries. With the Fed going it alone with another round o( interest rate cuts, analysts said the administration still wound up with at least a partial victory. “THE TIMING of this rate cut was connected in a major way to the administration’s defeat with the Group of Seven countries,” said David Jones, an economist at Aubrey G. Lanston & Co. “If the administration couldn’t get the world to push interest rates down to get America out of its recession, they could at least lean harder on the Fed to push U.S. rates down.”

be better.” Ford, the nation’s No. 2 automaker, reported $884.4 million in losses for the first quarter, the worst in the company’s history. During the same quarter last year, Ford made $506.2 million. GM said it lost sl.l billion during the period, its second-worst quarter in history behind the $1.6 billion it lost during the fourth quarter of last year. During the first three months of 1990, GM earned $7lO million. GM’S FIRST-quarter loss

Indicators up 0.5% in March WASHINGTON (AP) The government’s chief economic forecasting gauge rose 0.5 percent in March, its second consecutive monthly advance, the Commerce Department said. The increase in the March Index of Leading Economic Indicators followed a revised 1.2 percent gain in February, stronger than the 1.1 percent estimate announced earlier. THE FEBRUARY advance had ended a string of six losses stretching back to July, when the index was flat. That’s when the current recession started, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized arbiter of when recessions begin and end. The Bush administration and some private analysts contend the recession will end during the current quarter. Others predict it will last until the second half of the year. in any case, few economists expect a smooth transition. “WE’RE GOING TO be plagued with mixed signals for the next several months,” suggested Laurence H. Meyer, head of a St. Louis firm. For instance, the biggest source of strength in the March indicators came from an index measuring consumer confidence in the month following the Gulf War. But surveys released on Tuesday showed consumer confidence fell back in April.

worked out to $1.94 per share of common stock. Ford’s loss was equivalent to SI.BB a share. “I think that the worst is over and we’ve bottomed out in an earnings sense,” said auto analyst John Kiman of Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York. But auto analyst Douglas Laughlin of Bear, Steams & Co. in New York said he didn’t expect any U.S. automaker to make money until the end of the year.

THANK YOU to the many people who helped make the Bth Annual Spring Clean Up a Big Success GREENCA^jE ClVtd LEAGUE!