From the technology desk, I m Laura Sydell for Marketplace. The stock market began the day down in the dumps, if the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the measure, things began to improve just as the Federal Reserve Chairman was getting to the end of his testimony before the House Budget Committee. The Dow ended up 16 points or less than two tenths percent, which many analysts attributing this bounce to Alan Greenspan's sanguine take on inflation. Marketplace's John Dimsdale was on Fed Watch today. The specific blip that we saw in the producer price index and the cpi don't appear anywhere else on our radar screens, which suggests unless something is happening which we haven't yet captured, pricing restraint is really quite broad and deep.
Critics say higher interest rates lasted too long and slowed growth too much.
But Greenspan said the aggressive tightening helped avoid a more severe downturn. The chairman also repeated his new preference for tax cuts to avoid an excessive buildup of government surpluses. In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace. The database company Oracle is foreseeing lower profits due to a slowing economy ahead, and its stock fell 21 percent. After six weeks of steady bargaining, Hollywood writers and studios have stopped their their dialogue over new contracts.