Economy

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan expressed confidence yesterday that the U.S. economy would recover from its slump, but he warned that it still faced "considerable uncertainties," including the fallout from corporate accounting scandals. He applauded efforts to change the corporate accounting system, particularly proposals to stiffen punishment for executives convicted of financial fraud. The House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday, 391-28, that would increase jail terms for financial fraud, one day after the Senate passed a broad accounting reform bill that included similar measures.

Like an aging jogger on a sunny autumn morning, the nation's economy appears finally to be hitting its stride - although its stride clearly ain't what it used to be. Yesterday, more signs surfaced that, after a slow start, the pace of growth has increased in the last four months. For the third time in less than a week, the government announced encouraging news - this time, improvements in both new-home sales and the broader Index of Leading Economic Indicators. Sales of new homes, spurred by the lowest mortgage rates in 25 years, shot up 20.8 percent in September to the highest level in nearly seven years, with gains occurring in every region except the Northeast.

The National Construction Industry Council recently released a study made by Data Resources Inc. It concludes that the impact of the current tax-reform proposals on firms and employees in the construction industry would be devastating. As a blue-collar construction worker for the past 28 years, I am strongly opposed to these radical proposed reforms. According to the above study, commercial office building starts would drop by 12 percent the first year and 16 percent in the second year.

President Clinton's top priority should be creating new jobs and stimulating the economy, according to local business executives surveyed by Meridian Bank. About half of the executives said Clinton should tackle job creation first, while a quarter said he should tackle the deficit. About 16 percent wanted Clinton to work on reducing federal regulation. Other problem areas the executives wanted Clinton to address were: foreign trade, health care, commercial real estate and drugs.

Although the Philadelphia region has not sunk into a recession, its economy is plodding along just short of one. Clearly, the 1980s boom has turned to gloom. And many of the region's economic advances have turned around. The number of jobs - the best measure of a region's health - is shrinking. Last year alone, one-third of the jobs created in the city of Philadelphia since the last recession, in the early 1980s, disappeared, according to one measure. Consumers are retrenching.

An economic downturn can be a humbling experience. Then again, our society could use a good dose of humility. Modest expectations have their good side. Recent spins in the economic wheel of fortune have taught some interesting lessons on what truly brings about a sense of well-being. It concerns a lot more than gross domestic product. Or, put another way, booms are not all good, and busts are not all bad. Early evidence for this argument rose out of the rubble left by the dot-com collapse.

Factors affecting the changing economy of Northeast Philadelphia will be among topics explored on Councilman Brian J. O'Neill's Cable Town Meeting call-in show at 7 p.m. Wednesday on Comcast Cablevision's Channel 66. The opening of Franklin Mills mall is one such factor. The mall has changed the way some people shop and others work. The effect of the mall is among the key questions that the program's producers expect to be asked of O'Neill and his guest, David F. Liddle, president of the Northeast Chamber of Commerce.

WE'RE BRINGING back our Burning Question feature - and it'll be running every Monday. Here's how it works: Respond to the question of the week by sending your reply of NO MORE THAN 150 WORDS to any of the three addresses listed on the left side of this page. Do it quickly, please, because we'll be printing your responses on the following Monday. Here's this week's question: A new study says that the minimum for a family of four in Philadelphia to live on adequately is $50,000 a year.

Followers of the presidential campaign are familiar with the claims by Bill Clinton and Al Gore that we suffer from "the worst economy in 50 years," that during the Reagan and Bush administrations "American wages fell from first to 12th in the world. " Amazingly, these charges have largely gone unchallenged. The assertion that we are in the worst economic decline since the Depression produces the puzzled question: By what measure? The unemployment rate was significantly higher during parts of the 1970s and 1980s than it is now. We have had periods of much higher inflation.

If "people vote their pocketbooks," as political folk wisdom holds, then George Bush should win the presidency in a cakewalk. By most conventional measures - plentiful jobs, steady growth, a low inflation rate - Bush's Republicans can claim to have delivered prosperity in the Reagan-Bush era. And claim it they do. "The focus of our campaign is, we've done a good job," said Mark Goodin, a Bush campaign spokesman. "We delivered on a record we can be proud of. " In 1988, the politics of prosperity are not that simple, of course.