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Deposit: $230 Billion in Two Months

In 1974, following the sharp run-up in oil prices, the world held its breath wondering whether the international financial system could handle the transfer of about $60 billion from oil-consuming to oil-producing nations.During the last two months, nearly four times that amount has shifted within the U.S. economy with hardly a ripple, as investors rushed to tranfer funds to the new money market deposit accounts at banks and savings and loan associations.

The playing field in world trade is not level; it is blatantly tilted against the United States.And unless that field can be made level, we will rapidly slip from the major leagues to the minors--with small chance of a comeback. In 1982, the U.S. deficit in foreign trade was $43 billion; for 1984, Martin Feldstein, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, predicts that this deficit could reach $100 billion.

The bank is called U.I.B. -- Un Insured Banking -- and businesses have names like I.C. Less Housing. They're part of United Bank Ruptcy, a Monopoly-like board game with a real-life Tennessee twist.University of Tennessee students Bill Sibley and Paul Burke created the game "just to have a little fun with a bad situation," Burke said. Since February, six Tennessee banks have failed.

Peru has received commitments from 275 commercial banks for a $830-million package as part of the country's restructuring efforts on its $12-billion in foreign debt, Citibank announced Wednesday.The agreement, which includes $450 million in new loans this year, will be signed in New York today by Peruvian officials and representatives of international commercial banks.

Israel dismissed the Palestinian director of public health services in the occupied territories for "irresponsible behavior" during a poisoning scare on the West Bank, authorities said Friday.Dr. Hussein Obeid was dismissed because he wrote a letter to Arab hospitals in the Jenin area of the West Bank in which he said hydrogen sulfide caused the poisonings in Araba, Israeli civil administration officials.

Funeral services will be held here today Lloyd A. Phelan, formerly of Winthrop, a retired chief federal bank examiner of New England. He would have been 90 years old on April 19. He died Wednesday after a long illness. In 1912, Mr. Phelan was a member of the first class to be graduated from Wentworth Institute in Boston. He studied accounting and became a bank examiner in 1937 for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Mr. Phelan retired in 1961.

The world's economic picture remains murky because of the severe debt crises among poorer countries and threats of restrictive trade actions by industrialized nations enjoying economic recovery, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday.

Mel Lattany of the United States set a world best time for 300 meters, and triple world-record-holder Sebastian Coe lost in the 800 meters at an international track and field meet Sunday.Mary Decker smashed the U.S. 800-meter record, and Steve Ovett -- the 1,500-meter world record-holder -- proved his fitness for next month's world championships in Helsinki by winning a 1,000-meter race.

Associated Press PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- This teeming center of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, where thousands live in closet-sized shacks or on the sidewalks, is also one of the West's safest major cities.Visitors are usually impressed by Port-au-Prince's low crime rate, touted by U.S. agencies trying to lure foreign investors and glowingly attributed by local officials to the Haitian upbringing.

Harvard University is about to honor John McCloy, an 88-year-old New York lawyer and former government official whose influence was once so great that when the late Richard Rovere coined the term "the Establishment" he made McCloy its chairman. It is no surprise that Harvard, which is to the Establishment what China is to pandas, is about to name a program after him. It is merely a disgrace.Rovere knew his man.

John J. Buckley, a retired vice president of the Provident National Bank, died Friday in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 75 and had lived in Florida for two years.A former resident of Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, Buckley attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and was a veteran of World War II. At Provident, he was in charge of new business and estate planning. He retired in 1972.

Yudie Bank is a famous movie star. Maybe not Walter Matthau-famous, maybe not Sophia Loren-famous, but what do they know from famous?"I believe in miracles," she said the other day, a sparkle in her pale blue eyes, a smile nipping at the edges of her mouth. "In this day and age, I believe in miracles. It's happening to me, oh yes. They send me a car to take me places and bring me back.

The bread-and-butter business of world trade is in danger of being crushed by an avalanche of bread and butter, according to Joel McClelland, the European representative of a Philadelphia international research center.As bumper harvests of grain and stockpiles of dairy products accumulated on both sides of the Atlantic, the West's chief trade organization "came perilously close to falling apart" last November.

The Soviet Union's senseless destruction of a civilian South Korean airliner with the loss of 269 lives will have foreign-policy ramifications for years to come, many of which have yet to surface.But one thing is crystal clear: That indefensible act will make it even more difficult to get appropriations through Congress for the International Monetary Fund and for some of the multilateral development banks that--in the view of many congressional right-wingers.

The wall of secrecy that surrounded negotiations between First Maryland Bancorp and Allied Irish Banks Ltd. was so solid that major competitor banks in Maryland were caught completely off guard by Monday's announcement of a deal between the two companies.So sudden was the announcement that First Maryland's competitors have no game plan for competing with a foreign banking concern with more than $8 billion in assets and a subsidiary in their own front yard.

The world's leading industrial nations agreed yesterday to a major strengthening of the International Monetary Fund's resources to fend off potential default by Third World countries on their international debts.At the same time, in a significant policy reversal, the western nations that make up the Group of 10 agreed to stress "renewed and sustained" economic growth to counter a global recession.

Yoram Harpaz, a 30-year-old Jerusalem high school teacher, is about to become a pawn in the game of Middle East power politics.This month Harpaz and his wife will move out of their small, dark, rented apartment in Jerusalem to larger, more modern and less expensive quarters they have purchased in this suburban community six miles east of the heart of Jerusalem.

Bankrupt financier C.H. Butcher Jr. owns a "beneficial interest" in the debt-ridden Sunsphere, the golden glass tower that was the theme structure of the 1982 World's Fair, a newspaper reported yesterday.In a copyright story, The Knoxville News-Sentinel said it obtained a document Butcher signed on June 2, 1982, pledging to be responsible for any claims, liabilities, demands and obligations.

In the end they passed it. In a grab-bag spending bill, which included money for housing for the elderly, the poor and the homeless in America, Congress appropriated $8.4 billion for the International Monetary Fund to resume lending to cash-strapped Third World nations. The international banking community breathed a sigh of relief. What would have happened if Congress hadn't acted? Nothing much.The IMF would have tapped the private capital markets when needed.

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