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Debt Crisis and Trade: World Goals in Conflict

The question of which country sells chickens to the Middle East hardly seems cosmic enough to be worthy of discussion at an economic summit.Yet the sudden push of Brazilian chickens into the bazaars of Iraq and Egypt--capturing a large share of that lucrative market from European and U.S. poultry farmers--provides a vivid example of the economic complexities of the world that will draw the attention of the leaders of the industrial nations in Williamsburg.

Christopher Columbus was said to have discovered the New World on Oct. 12, but Dade residents will discover that banks and some government offices will be closed Oct. 10 in observance of the holiday. City of Miami, Metro-Dade and federal offices, including the post office, will be closed Monday. However, Florida state offices will be open. There will be regular garbage pick-up in the city and unincorporated areas of the county.

From his first day as a $40-a-week messenger at Western Savings Bank in 1958, John Przybylski aspired to be its president.He lacked a college degree and, as a Fishtown resident of Polish Catholic descent, he also lacked the friendships and social connections that sometimes smooth the way for advancement in Philadelphia banking.But he almost made it. In 24 years at Western, "Rip" Przybylski won 18 promotions.

The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. testified before a congressional subcommittee Tuesday that United American Bank of Knoxville was "bordering on being out of control" before it became the third-largest bank failure in recent history last month.

ON THE TRAIL of the perfect guidebook: The goal is as illusive as the perfect in-flight meal. For that matter, the travel guide ranks about as high in literature as that microwaved hunk of beef served at 35,000 feet does in the world of fine dining.Nevertheless, airline passengers sometimes have to eat, and travelers usually are better off not stumbling about a foreign place unawares, so we make do with what we get.

London is the musical capital of the world, and it is not chauvinism that makes me assert so, for I am surprised to find myself writing it. Most British musicians, I suspect, would have to confess to a similar secret surprise. Nobody knows quite how it happened. Was there a great intellectual storm that one dark night struck the land without music, convulsing it to its musical core, from which everyone awoke to discover concert halls and orchestras disposed in fairy rings?

A food bank here has become a key ingredient for jobless steel workers whose meals are paid for by rock concerts, cookbook sales, cash gifts and union donations."Something had to be done to help people," said Jack Conway, coordinator of the Presentation Food Bank in Midland, to whom a mystery woman known as Mrs. Calabash has donated $20,000. "Over the years, steel workers have always been like that. They stick together.

Associated Press NEW YORK -- The world's less developed nations have fallen so deeply in debt, some people wonder when -- and whether -- the biggest borrowers will pay up.There even is talk now of the Latin American debtor nations forming a ''debtors cartel." The suggestion is that such nations, seeing no way to make good on a combined $300 billion in foreign debt, might collectively repudiate it.

hree banks and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) sued Friday to force financier C.H. Butcher Jr. into involuntary bankruptcy, saying he owes them nearly $13.4 million.The petition for involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court by the FDIC and Central Trade Bank of Memphis, American National Bank and Trust Co.

The fiesta is over.Latin America, which enjoyed record economic expansion in the past decade -- thanks in part to heavy borrowing from eager Western banks -- showed in 1982 the first economic contraction in more than half a century.From Argentina to Mexico, the picture is virtually the same: Latin American countries are economically strangled by huge foreign debts, depressed world prices for their exports.

When Jake Butcher's United American Bank failed three weeks ago today, the collapse sent tremors through the banking empire of his younger brother, C.H. Butcher Jr.The younger Butcher -- who owns 23 banks in Tennessee and Kentucky, most named City & County banks -- has financial interests that reach as far as Florida. He nearly bought Palm Beach-based Home Federal Savings and Loan Association.

Japanese banks feel they are being asked to provide too much of the $4.4 billion in bail-out loans requested by Brazil, and want U.S. and European lenders to assume more of the burden, a Bank of Tokyo executive said.The Japanese executive, who asked not to be quoted by name, said in an interview Tuesday in Sao Paulo that Japanese banks intend to help Brazil with its $90-billion foreign debt, largest in the Third World.

This is, after all, the year before 1984, and we know about clones, genetic identification, in vitro fertilization and a sperm bank holding donations from Nobel prize winner William B. Shockley, who believes the world would be a better place by far if filled with little neo-Shockleys. The dancer Isadora Duncan once proposed as much to George Bernard Shaw, only to hear, "But what, my dear, if the poor child should have your brain and my body?"

The deeply rooted ethnic conflict that has led to rioting and bloodshed in Sri Lanka is a harsh reminder that a mixture of poverty with competing national ambitions can be explosive. A disheartening aspect of the fatalities reports so far in the island republic off the coast of southern India seriously understate the loss of life, probably to be counted in the thousands rather than the hundred or so listed in official counts.

For serious scholars, and all the more so for those who get their kicks taking potshots at big shots, the public service of John J. McCloy presents a generous target: assistant secretary of war in World War II; a prime mover of postwar Atlantic Alliance affairs; president of the World Bank; high commissioner in charge of West Germany's political and economic rehabilitation; adjutant or adviser to every president from Roosevelt to Reagan.

Johan Kriek was never one for subtlety.The transplanted South African was at the posh La Costa resort in Southern California some months back when he let the world know that he had finally joined tennis' elite. No, his ranking hadn't shot up, but apparently his bank account had. Kriek had received a guarantee, or appearance fee, to play in another tournament, and he was crowing over this breakthrough.

Five Tennessee banks that had been part of the once high-flying financial empire of brothers C. H. and Jake Butcher were closed yesterday and sold to other Tennessee banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced.The flagship of Jake Butcher's banking system, United American Bank of Knoxville, failed last February. Regulators said United American's failure was the result of unsafe lending practices by the bank and FDIC Chairman William Isaac.

Five Tennessee banks were declared insolvent and closed Friday -- the most to collapse on one day since the Great Depression -- and federal regulators in Washington auctioned them off to the highest bidders.The bank failures were all tied to the crumbling Tennessee financial empire of brothers C.H. and Jake Butcher.

In Israel, Bank Hapoalim is a big name, the second-largest of a handful of banks, with offices all over the country.But in Philadelphia, Bank Hapoalim is just one of dozens of financial institutions nestled among the offices in Center City.It has just one retail office and, as the customary absence of lines of depositors attests, it makes no concerted effort to compete with the city's large retail banks and their dozens of branch offices.

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