"They provide an insight into corporate spending," he said.

This will probably cut into workers' income and spending, slowing growth.

Forgiving debt lets these countries channel resources into social spending.

But few of the President's men and women would be happy to risk another interest rate increase that would cut into private spending sometime in 1995.

But how quickly the surge in interest will translate into actual spending remains highly uncertain.

Even if confidence was high, little evidence suggests that consumers translated an improved mood into increased spending.

Today all sorts of other factors figure into spending and interfere with consumer confidence as a national concept.

How high must premiums climb before we inject sanity into medical spending?

But those expectations have not yet been translated into increased spending.

That perception of reduced opportunity carries over into spending, he says.