Western leaders agree that halting the Soviet Union’s economic collapse is critical. But many doubt that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has the will or political clout to turn academic talk into concrete action. Yavlinsky has tried before. Only last fall the 39-year-old former amateur boxer suffered a knockdown when Gorbachev rejected a program he helped write for creating a Soviet market economy in 500 days. That was followed by many more steps to the right-including the bloody January crackdown in Lithuania. But lately Gorbachev has signaled a new willingness to compromise with reformers. In April he signed an agreement to share power with the leaders of nine republics. Last week Parliament approved a law giving most citizens the right to travel freely.
Yavlinsky maintains that the groundwork is now laid for more radical reforms. Hence his rush, with Harvard experts, to ready the Grand Bargain blueprint for a July 15 economic summit of the world’s seven most powerful democracies. The measures under discussion in Cambridge last week included deep public-spending cuts and elimination of the country’s growing budget deficit. State property would be transferred into private hands, and competition introduced. In return for direct oversight by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other lenders, the West would ante up grants on the order of $20 billion a year.
Gorbachev still sounds wary of the Yavlinsky plan. Some of the measures under discussion, he said last week,’ are red of interference in our internal affairs." He knows Soviet right-wingers would rise up if he embraced the kind of fundamental changes being urged at Harvard. Yet he would clearly like to come up with a dramatic initiative to bargain for aid at the summit. He told a press conference: “I am already thinking over what I will say.”
Bush believes that to invite Gorbachev to London would intensify the pressure for U.S. aid, and he doesn’t want to do it unless Moscow makes major concessions. The president said he would withhold a decision until he sees a special emissary from Gorbachev this week. But even if Gorbachev were to say the right things, the administration would be wary of a Great Bargain. “We’re not going to put a big pot of gold down on this venture upfront,” says one senior U.S. official. “If the Soviets move to a free-market system, the West will engage - but it will be over time, step by step.” That’s a big “if.” Even Yavlinsky admits that the changes he proposes would be so painful that the leader who imposes them “will have to resign.” Gorbachev isn’t likely to welcome that advice.
title: “Have We Got A Deal For You” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Leola Dean”
Tone and nuance are critical in any public negotiation, especially one in which the adversaries have such a violent past to overcome. But nobody was expecting much conciliatory rhetoric in Madrid. Tradition rules that out. In the Middle East, negotiations begin with a show of force. And each party, in its way, was true to that tradition. The Palestinians have little choice but to try to turn weakness into strength–through Western-style spin control. The others struck classic confrontational poses. Said a former Israeli official, “You go into negotiations being just as demanding as your opponents, because in this part of the world that’s the language.”
That language needs decoding. A brief primer on the rules of the Arab souk:
This often comes early in a negotiating session. Jordanian Foreign Minister Kamel Abu Jaber, whose king claims descent from Muhammad, declared that “God only knows the price we continue to pay for the sins of others” and cited specific verses from the Koran three times, including his conclusion (Abu Jaber is a Christian).
n the Middle East, time heals few wounds. “What happened in the past is as though it happened right now,” said Edward T. Hall, a U.S. anthropologist who has written extensively on how people in different cultures interact. Shamir dwelt on the historical persecution of Jews, adding that Israel’s claim to the land it now holds is “immemorial.” Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa gave his own gloss, claiming that “the Arabs throughout their long history have always advocated peace, justice and tolerance.”
By the perverse logic of the souk, the most violent rhetoric was to be expected from those closest to reaching a settlement. Neither side can afford to seem very much interested in an agreement. Shamir pointedly left Madrid to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath at home, even though the Arabs had worked through the Muslim Sabbath. Al-Sharaa told Dan Rather: “If peace is not honorable, to hell with the peace.” As the old Mediterranean maxim teaches: “He who denigrates is he who buys.”
When negotiations sink to Levantine variations of “so’s your mother,” adversaries look around to see who is available to separate them. At the peace conference this is called an invitation by both parties for the cosponsors to participate in the talks. The mediator, too, is expected to make a show of force, but the gulf war already has provided that. This is deeply rooted in Arab culture. Traditionally, those who passively watched a fistfight could be held responsible if one of the participants got hurt.
If the talks eventually start to move, it may be obvious first in small things: handshakes, cups of tea, talk seemingly irrelevant to the deal at hand. These preliminaries were not to be seen in Madrid, and they are critical. No Arab can make a compromise without establishing some such personal contact. Centuries ago the Arabs learned to study an adversary’s pupils for involuntary responses indicating interest, says Hall. In Madrid the antagonists averted their eyes. That’s not possible over tea.
The Palestinians are attempting to break tradition. The others are hewing to old rules. But regardless of the tactics, there may be more room for hope than outsiders would guess. The participants “will threaten, they will protest, they will act like they’re going to leave,” predicted one Arab observer in Madrid. “Then they will give the bare minimum. The other side does the same-and you have a minimum.” And that’s where deals start.
title: “Have We Got A Deal For You” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Guadalupe Glass”
NORMA BUCK, WEST JORDAN, UTAH
The company that approached you, Alternative Funding International (AFI), invests in “seller carry back notes,” many of which are second mortgages on homes. The person who sells the house takes back a second mortgage (the note) from the buyer, because the buyer can’t afford the entire down payment. That note is then sold to a private investor like you. AFI says that first mortgages are available, too.
These can be profitable investments. But I have a stack of reservations about this deal. (1) AFI’s vocabulary. Its brochure speaks of “care free” income. One partner, Wayne Palmer, calls the investment “safe,” with “less risk than CDs.” No way. I worry about people who gloss over risk. (2) The promised yield. It’s too high for a safe investment. (3) Diversification. There isn’t any. You would be buying a single note. If that person defaults, your investment is in trouble. You’d also be putting too large a chunk of your money at risk. Your IRAs represent about 80 percent of your retirement savings. (4) Security. You don’t own the mortgage directly. You own a promissory note issued by AFI and backed by that particular loan. So for prompt payment, you’re depending on AFI’s finances, not on the underlying real estate. If AFI defaulted, you have the right to take over the note, Palmer says. But it might not be easy. I’d ask a lawyer to check that you actually have an enforceable lien on the property and what would happen if AFI ever filed for bankruptcy. (5) Collections. In foreclosure, the house could be sold for only enough to pay off the first mortgage, which would squeeze you out. (6) Risk. William Mencarow Jr., editor of The Paper Source in Winchester, Va., which reports on mortgage investing, says that he would put only the very safest first mortgages into an IRA"safe" being defined as an owner-occupied single-family home with a mortgage no greater than 70 percent of the property’s value. “If someone came to me with this proposal,” he says, “I would not recommend it.”
Q: I’m married, 32 and would like to get up to $100,000 in life insurance. But I had a mastectomy for Stage II breast cancer and finished chemotherapy in January. All my tests came out OK. What are my options?
NAME WITHHELD
You currently have a $33,000 policy through your employer. You can increase it, if you become insurable– so apply for it in a year or two. If you leave the job, you can convert your employee coverage into individual term insurance without having to pass a health exam. (You’ll pay the premiums, of course.)
Your only other option is something called “guaranteed issue” insurance. Anyone can get these policies. But they’re expensive and you have to live more than two to four years to collect in full.
When you do apply for insurance, by the way, your health record will go to the Medical Information Bureau in West-wood, Mass. Most life insurers check that record before issuing policies. Some people worry that, if one insurer says no, another will give them an even harder time. But your file will show only which insurers, if any, requested information in the past six months. It doesn’t say whether they turned you down.
Q:. Due to a computer error, a tax lien has been levied on me in California, where I have never lived, worked, earned any money or, get this, owned any property to put a lien on. This blotch on my otherwise impeccable credit record caused Fidelity Brokerage Services to refuse to renew my Visa debit card. Letters to the state, explaining its mistake, get no response. Now what?
BERTRAM RHODES, BARBOURSVILLE, VA.
California levied a tax on Rhodes’s 1991 pension income because his former employer, the Northrop Corp., mistakenly reported that he had earned money within the state. He wrote four letters explaining the error but California paid no attention. A spokesperson for the state’s Franchise Tax Board concedes that Rhodes wrote to the right address and can’t explain why he was ignored. Procedurally, California should have asked Northrop to confirm or deny his claim. When it finally did two weeks ago, Northrop said that Rhodes was right.
Under federal law, unpaid liens should be wiped off your record after seven years. But many state laws allow them to be reported longer, says Norman Magnuson of the Associated Credit Bureaus. By law, credit bureaus have to re-verify any data you say is wrong; in this case, alas, the lien showed up. By right, the law should require an entity that originates bad-credit data to re-verify, too.
Send your question to Jane Bryant Quinn. NEWSWEEK FOCUS: ON YOUR MONEY, 251 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. Letters can be answered only in the column.
