Nation: Right Move at the Eleventh Hour

TIME Board of Economists generally backs the Fed's decision

Belated and drastic, but unavoidable. That is the majority opinion of TIME'S Board of Economists about the Federal Reserve Board's severe credit-tightening moves. Only one of the ten board members flatly opposed the new policy. The rest generally thought the Fed's actions would help bring down inflation at last, though slowly, at the price of a recession that most still believe will be less severe than the 1973-75 slump, but deeper than was thought a few months ago. Several cautioned, however, that continued turbulence in financial markets and the economy make the outcome unusually difficult to predict. Their individual views, running from the most to least enthusiastic:

BERYL SPRINKEL: "I'm delighted," says Sprinkel, executive vice president of Chicago's Harris Bank. "The Fed's actions greatly increase the odds of getting inflation under control in the longer run." Sprinkel has long argued that the old policy of trying to control the money supply by fine-tuning key interest rates often forced the board to pump more funds into the economy than it wanted to, thus aggravating inflation. "Now that they are focusing on central control of [banking] reserves," he says, "and assuming they follow through, I think it assures that we are going to have more stable money growth." Sprinkel adds that the new policy will reduce the inflationary expectations of consumers, businessmen and domestic and foreign financiers. "If you can get expectations down sooner," says he, "the cost of the renewed recession will be less severe than if those expectations had not been dented."

DAVID GROVE: "I applaud," says Grove, a private consultant and senior economic adviser to Marine Midland Bank. "A slow and gradual approach to curbing inflation would not be very effective. I prefer a quick and dirty approach, and the Fed's actions are very much along that line. They will give the domestic public and foreigners the sense that we really are going to come to grips with inflation." Grove concedes that a dramatic and determined" credit squeeze would depress business activity and push up the unemployment rate. He also thinks the stock market had good reason to flop: "Some of the doubting Thomases who believed we would have at most a mild recession now realize we are going to have a real recession that could significantly reduce profits." Nonetheless, Grove, like Sprinkel, believes that the recession will be less severe than it would have been had inflation been allowed to rage on unchecked.