Market Economy

President Mikhail Gorbachev's top advisory council today approved a program of radical reforms in an effort to salvage an economy beset by massive shortages, strikes and ethnic conflicts, the Soviet Foreign Ministry said. "The presidential council, which met today, adopted a program to lead the country toward a market economy," spokesman Gennady Gerasimov said. Moscow Radio said the program, considered at a joint session of the presidential council and the federation council, spells out a series of options to gradually reshape the centralized Soviet system into a "regulated market economy.

China has called on a Nobel Prize-winning economist from the University of Pennsylvania for advice on its economic reforms. Lawrence R. Klein, an authority on the analysis of economic data who won the 1980 Nobel Memorial Prize for economics, was guest of honor Monday at a ceremony by China's State Planning Commission, the government arm that oversees economic planning. China is forging ahead with reforms, dismantling Marxist state planning in favor of a market economy. Klein said he had helped the commission's State Information Center (SIC)

ARE RUSSIANS DELUDING THEMSELVES? Our surveys show that nowadays the majority of (the Russian) people expect the transition to a market economy to result in improvement of their economic well-being. But this attitude proceeds mostly from the rejection of the stagnant past and from the present crisis situation of our economy. It is based on emotion rather than logic. It is based on the comparison of living standards in Westrn countries with a development market economy and of Eastern countries with a planned economy.

MOSCOW YELTSIN LIFTS LIMITS ON BUYING, SELLING LAND President Boris Yeltsin destroyed one of the remaining cornerstones of communist rule yesterday by lifting virtually all restrictions on buying and selling land. The action gives a huge boost to Russia's transformation to a market economy and likely will lead to the breakup of thousands of inefficient collective farms. Yeltsin's earlier efforts to privatize land had been hampered by restrictions imposed by the hard-line parliament that he disbanded last month.

The leaky vessel that is the Soviet economy now has officially been launched into the open waters of reform. Where it will wind up is anybody's guess. After months of dithering, the Soviet legislature on Friday approved President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's plan for the creation of a market economy in the U.S.S.R. By the standards of even a year ago, it is a radical document, calling for privatization of many enterprises, partial dismantling of the huge centralized Soviet economic ministries and the eventual easing of state controls on prices.

This is about Whitman Chocolate Company's closing and the slated closure of the Philadelphia Naval Yard. I must commend my senator, Harris Wofford, for requesting that U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno immediately investigate anti- trust possibilities in the proposed sale and closure of Whitman. However, I would like to add some perspective to both the Naval Yard, Whitman Chocolate and all the battles that erupt when major companies/ facilities close, throwing out workers, disrupting communities and eroding the tax base.

As widespread panic buying continued here and in other regions, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on national television last night to calm the Soviet public and urge them to support his program to move to a market economy. "In our country, a mood of anxiety and alarm has arisen in connection with . . . the government's report on the transition to a regulated market economy," Gorbachev said in a 50-minute address. "Don't panic, comrades. Let's take a sober look and make the necessary decisions.

A top Kremlin official said yesterday that the Soviet government would hold its first-ever nationwide referendum before introducing radical economic reforms and that the government should resign if the public rejects the changes. Deputy Premier Yuri D. Maslyukov, a member of the ruling Politburo, said the government must have the support of the public to carry out the reforms, which are expected to at least double prices and to put millions of people out of work. "It (the referendum)

The Soviet legislature, heeding an impassioned appeal from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev that the country needed a strong hand to pull it out of its economic crisis, yesterday gave him broad new powers to set up a market economy. At the same time, the legislature - reflecting a general paralysis of power among top Soviet leaders - was unable to decide how quickly and completely it wanted to establish a market system. The legislature, or Supreme Soviet, essentially left the matter up to Gorbachev, telling him to report back with a detailed plan of action by Oct. 15. Yesterday's events reflected two basic truths in the Soviet Union: Gorbachev continues to gather more and more power into his own hands, and he and other top leaders are increasingly torn over how to dismantle the old communist system and create a new, more-capitalist one in its place.

Russia's economy is on the verge of collapse. Nobody wants its currency, especially Russians. Goods, services and raw materials are obtainable even by government agencies and large businesses only by barter. Rumors that President Boris Yeltsin would resign were so rampant that The Nose That Glows went on TV yesterday to deny them. Still, as he shuffled his Cabinet yet again - but not the blame away from himself - real fear arose that Russia's semi-post-Communist political order may implode.

It turns out that there is at least one question on which Mitt Romney is not a flip-flopper: He has a utopian view of what an unfettered, lightly taxed market economy can achieve. He would never put it this way, of course, but his approach looks forward by looking backward to the late 19th century, when government let market forces rip and a conservative Supreme Court swept aside almost every effort to write rules for the economic game. This magical capitalism is the centerpiece of Romney's campaign, and it may prove to be his undoing.

BIALKA TATRZANSKA, Poland - Just a few years ago, winter was a dead season for the Kotelnica Mountain, quiet under a quilt of snow. Today, Kotelnica vibrates with activity from ski fans who flock to the new resort, one of Poland's trendiest. The transformation happened in just a decade and reflects the inventiveness and enterprise seen in Poland since a market economy arrived with democracy in 1990. People in this 17th-century village at the foot of the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland were making a modest living on farming and sheep breeding, with additional funds coming from relatives who had gone, in a long-standing tradition, to the United States for work.

You might think two of last week's biggest stories - financial reform and controversy over the diabetes drug Avandia - had nothing to do with each other. If so, you'd be wrong. Both are about a fundamental problem in any market economy: Bad incentives for businesses, stoked by the demands of Wall Street, can imperil us all. During the housing bubble, mortgage brokers had bad incentives to write risky loans to unqualified buyers, because they could sell the mortgages and dodge the risks themselves.

Václav Havel, former Czech president, playwright, and most revered of Eastern European dissidents during the Cold War, came to Philadelphia last week for the U.S. premiere of his new play, Leaving , at the Wilma Theater. Havel's seminal 1978 essay, The Power of the Powerless , inspired nonviolent resistance to communism in the 1980s; in his writings from prison, he captured the essence of democracy better than most writers in the "Free World. " When he was last in Philadelphia on July 4, 1994, to receive the Liberty Medal, democracy seemed in the ascendancy worldwide; an air of triumphalism pervaded Washington.

In the old days - from the Venetian Republic to, oh, the Bear Stearns rescue - if you wanted to get rich, you did it the Warren Buffett way: You learned to read balance sheets. Today you learn to read political tea leaves. You don't anticipate Intel's third-quarter earnings; instead, you guess what side of the bed Henry Paulson will wake up on tomorrow. Today's extreme stock market volatility is not just a symptom of fear - fear cannot account for days of wild market swings upward - but a reaction to meta-economic events: political decisions that have vast economic effects.

Carin Dillingham handed over her watch to the pawnbrokers at Society Hill Loan as if she were giving up one of her bones. The 30-year-old bookkeeper stood pregnant, broke and sad under rows of pawned guitars hanging like curing hams from the ceiling of the ragged South Street shop. She got a $20 loan for her $200 Bulova, a gift from the Harley-Davidson Co., where she used to work. "It feels so weird," said Dillingham, accompanied by her fiance, Pat Lapetina, 35, an unemployed ironworker doing painting jobs on the side.

With so much social and political ferment loose in the art world in recent decades, political art and art politics have acquired a new focus - and for Artists Equity members a subjective one, judging from their recent panel discussion at the American College in Bryn Mawr. The Nov. 19 event, titled "The Artist and Society - Why Haven't Artists Demanded More?" was part of a two-year series of Philadelphia/Tri State Artists Equity Association public forums aimed at exploring advocacy and career issues for artists.

Russia's economy is on the verge of collapse. Nobody wants its currency, especially Russians. Goods, services and raw materials are obtainable even by government agencies and large businesses only by barter. Rumors that President Boris Yeltsin would resign were so rampant that The Nose That Glows went on TV yesterday to deny them. Still, as he shuffled his Cabinet yet again - but not the blame away from himself - real fear arose that Russia's semi-post-Communist political order may implode.

The last thing Assistant Township Manager Matthew Lahaza expected to find in Bulgaria was California-grown tomatoes. "I was stunned," Lahaza said. "Bulgarian tomatoes far surpass any tomato I've had here, but they can't grow them in the kind of quantity needed for marketing. " "Agriculture is one of their biggest resources, but they are behind the times," he said. "They have no money for fertilizer - no money to buy new farm equipment. " What the Bulgarians do have is advice.

Turning his focus to China's move toward a free-market economy, President Clinton today praised business leaders and entrepreneurs as pioneers leading the way to a new way of life here. "I've had the chance to see examples of the kind of ingenuity and energy of those who live and work here, from the magnificent examples of architecture and culture to the people," Clinton told an audience of Chinese and U.S. business leaders. "You are in the vanguard of an historic process," he said.