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Developing Nations Urge Revamp of World Trade

Developing countries meeting here yesterday avoided calls for direct confrontation with the industrialized nations and issued a relatively traditional platform for restructuring world trade, international financial institutions and foreign debt, Washington Post correspondent Jackson Diehl reported.In a statement concluding a two-week conference of the United Nations-based Group of 77, the group said the beginnings of recovery in some developed nations had not improved conditions.

Ines Hodjera, 53, the founder of Metropolitan Washington Tours, a tourist guide service, died of cancer June 2 at Sibley Memorial Hospital.Mrs. Hodjera, who lived in Bethesda, was born in Ecuador. She came to the United States in 1950 amd attended Columbia University. She moved to Washington in 1965. She founded Metropolitan Washington Tours in the late 1970's and retired about two years ago.In the late 1960's, she was a member of the Welcome to Washington.

If the Pentagon has its way, this sleepy community on the banks of the Arkansas River will soon be known as the nerve-gas capital of the nation, if not the world. Such a title might alarm many cities in the Northeast or other more liberal pockets of the country. But not Pine Bluff. The view here seems to be that anyone opposed to nerve-gas production is uninformed, naive or a Russian agent. Next month, Congress will probably vote on whether to approve.

A two-day conference on "Latin American Trade and Economic Growth" opens here today with the expected participation of more than 30 U.S. and Latin American economists, bankers and government officials. Some of them are promising to come armed with provocative ideas."I will try to demonstrate how, contrary to what most people believe, International Monetary Fund policies in Latin America are hurting the U.S. economy.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was guilty of "extreme regulatory neglect" in the failure of United American Bank, the $838 million Knoxville institution that was closed by authorities last February, congressional investigators have concluded.The FDIC knew for six years that the bank "engaged in an unbroken pattern of unsafe, unsound and conceivably unlawful banking practices," but did not take sufficiently strong steps to stop them.

EL AVIV-- Bank shares were down 17 per cent when the Israeli stock market resumed full trading Monday for the first time in two weeks.The drop meant that the shares had lost 40 per cent of their real value since the market was hit by panic selling and closed on Oct. 9 to avert a collapse amid a national economic crisis. The decline in the shares' value was announced on the exchange floor at the outset of trading after major banks spent all night compiling sell orders.

Israel's economy, a combination of massive inflation and relative prosperity, often seems to defy conventional wisdom. Yet it has been one of the nation's most serious chronic ailments since Israel became a state in 1948. Here, in question-and-answer form, are some of the reasons: Question - Why does a nation of inventive minds, usually brilliant on the battlefield, have so much difficulty with its economy?Answer - Primarily because of that battlefield.

At the Australian embassy yesterday afternoon, the staff got the good news from Australian TV that was monitored on an open line in the top-secret "Command" section of the building."We did it! We did it!" shouted one woman jumping up and down as she heard of Australia II's splashing defeat of Liberty in the most suspense-filled America's Cup race yet.

Brazilian Central Bank President Carlos Langoni has resigned, urging easier terms from the International Monetary Fund and implying a moratorium may be the solution for Brazil's sharpening debt crisis."Mexico had a moratorium and also got an agreement with the IMF -- a moratorium does not exclude an IMF agreement," Langoni said Friday in his first remarks to the press after resigning the Central Bank post late Thursday night.

John P. LaWare, the chairman of Shawmut Corp., was posing for a photographer in his office Thursday, hours after the bank reported that problems with two big loans cut deeply into its profits in the second quarter, ruining an eight-year record of rising earnings. At the photographer's request, LaWare put his jacket on and sat on the windowsill next to a bust of the bank's symbol, an Indian with an erect feather in his hair. The camera clicked.

Accused mass-killer George Banks broke into tears and left the courtroom yesterday during a description by a witness of the body of one of his 13 alleged victims.Banks, 40, a former prison guard, slumped over his chair as Harry Hyman, Luzerne County assistant deputy coroner, described a head wound suffered by 6- year-old Montanzima Banks, one of five of Banks' children killed in the shooting spree Sept. 25.

Banks from coast to coast raised their prime lending rate Monday _ the first rise in the key business borrowing rate in 18 months _ and the move sent stock prices down and the dollar to new heights on world currency exchanges.The half-point rise in the prime or base lending charge from 10.5 percent was widely held to be overdue. Economists and bank analysts said other short-term interest rates had risen 1 1/2 points since May.

IT IS FAR more important to pass the IMF bill, in its revised and embroidered form, than to quibble about the quality of the embroidery. The bill would authorize the Treasury Department to lend another $8.4 billion o the International Monetary Fund. It needs the money to steady the world's system of trade and finance, now threatened by high interest rates and the great accumulation in the Third World. Passage of the bill is urgently necessary, and the new restrictions.

"Any banker that thinks he will get repaid is living in a fool's paradise."A senior New York financier closely involved in the Third World debt crisis.Although U.S. bankers with outstanding loans to developing nations are concerned about repayment, some financial experts believe that the critical issue facing the banks is whether borrowing nations can continue to pay the interest on their debts.

The net woven mainly by the U.S. government and American banks to keep Brazil from collapsing under the weight of its mammoth foreign debt is unraveling.Despite a multibillion-dollar bailout in February and March, many bankers here say Brazil cannot make it without more help, particularly from U.S. banks - its biggest lenders. Some bankers are predicting that the country might not be able to hold out until the end of the month.

When Uncle Sam sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. When the US economy recovers, so does the rest of the world. That has always been the model of world economic interdependence - the United States as the big engine that can. And when it didn't make it up the next hill, Western Europe, Asia and the developing nations slipped back too. After all, the American economy represents $1 out of every $3 output produced by the industrialized world.

About 500 people left stranded last year when a Lindenwold, N.J., travel agency went bankrupt will be reimbursed for payments that they made for charter tours, according a settlement of a class-action lawsuit.The settlement ordered that the customers of FM Custom Travel be repaid by Atco National Bank of Atco, N.J. Under a security-trust agreement approved by the Civil Aeronautics Board, the bank has kept the money that the customers paid to the travel agency for charter trips.

o the voters back home, it smells like a political rotten egg -- an $8.4 billion federal bailout for greedy banks and spendthrift countries drowning in debt, another case of congressional largesse abroad when social needs at home are so great.Nevertheless, the House, on a close vote Wednesday night, approved the increase in U.S. foreign lending through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because of a growing belief that what's good for Citicorp and Brazil ultimately is good.

IT IS FAR more important to pass the IMF bill, in its revised and embroidered form, than to quibble about the quality of the embroidery. The bill would authorize the Treasury Department to lend another $8.4 billion to the International Monetary Fund. It needs the money to steady the world's system of trade and finance, now threatened by high interest rates and the great accumulation of debt in the Third World. Passage of the bill is urgently necessary.

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