Growth Cut

WITH the U.S. economy shifting into lower gear, all eyes in Washington and on Wall Street are riveted on the Fed.

The prevailing view in both the financial and policymaking worlds is that Alan Greenspan has nearly unilateral power to pump enough antibiotics into the economy to prevent the global financial virus from reaching these shores. The two Fed rate cuts in the early fall did, after all, lift the Dow Jones by more than 1,100 points from its summer low.