May 11, 1992

The Economy Some credit market analysts assert that the Federal Reserve may cut short-term interest rates again by early June, even though recent data point to a recovery. Some, however, are skeptical that a cut will stimulate loan demand. [ Page D1. ] Politicians and Government officials have joined the debate over whether the wealthy are indeed getting richer at the expense of the poor. [ D1. ]

Scorned in the streets of many parts of this city, and laughed at by political leaders and comedians alike, the Los Angeles Police Department is a dispirited band in blue. For the last 14 months, they have been called brutes with badges. But after their delayed and hesitant response to this city's worst riots, the 8,000 officers have been labeled cowards and incompetents.

Even though recent economic data point to a recovery, a number of credit market analysts continue to assert that the Federal Reserve Board may cut short-term interest rates again by early June. The prospects for another Fed easing seemed to dim last week after the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 126,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate slipped a notch, to 7.2 percent.

Millions of Americans will spend at least a night inside a national forest campground this year, but only a handful will ever call one home. This week, a half-dozen families, most of them from this logging community, started setting up their shelters in the first campground in a national forest set aside exclusively for the homeless.

After a decade in which health costs rose rapidly and many people could no longer afford care, state and local health officials around the country are returning to the kind of planning denounced by the Reagan Administration as a tool of heavy-handed government regulation. State officials are adopting new laws and regulations to slow the construction of hospitals and nursing homes and the purchase of costly medical equipment. At the same time they are convening groups of doctors, consumers, hospital executives, insurers and employers to negotiate the distribution of health-care resources.

When their playoff series against the Chicago Bulls began, many people expected the Knicks to be blown away. Instead, they are making a stand. The Knicks allowed nothing to stop them yesterday from tying their playoff series with the Chicago Bulls. So what if Patrick Ewing was in foul trouble. Who cared if the Bulls felt they had regained control of the series after winning Game 3.

On Saturday, in its first match against America in the America's Cup finals, the Il Moro di Venezia team seemed to be wearing two left shoes. Today, the crew for the Italian yacht was right in step, and the result was the closest victory in America's Cup history, and one of the most dramatic. Il Moro crossed the finish line three seconds ahead of America , and the call was so close that a team of on-the-water umpires needed to take several minutes to reach a decision on who had won.

An advertising campaign encouraging mothers to get their infants off to a healthy start in life is getting off to a healthier start than most such public service efforts. Beginning today, Johnson & Johnson will sponsor a television commercial selling the concept of prenatal care rather than its baby powders or lotions. The spot, created by the Lintas New York agency, features scenes of pregnant women drinking alcohol, smoking and taking drugs, during which an announcer urgently warns, "Everything you do to your body you do to your baby."

When Bill Clinton wants to galvanize his audience, he thunders from the podium that the top 1 percent of families got 60 percent of the gains from economic growth during the 1980's and owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Governor Clinton, the likely Democratic Presidential nominee, had been searching for months for facts to illustrate his claim that America's middle class benefited little from 12 years of Republican rule. The explosion of riches at the top struck him as a perfect vehicle. Not only did the widening gap between the rich and the rest of Americans conflict with traditional notions of democracy, but it also went right to the pocketbook sources of middle-class discontent.

Gone are the days when Communist propaganda posters showed American financiers with pig snouts and Vladimir I. Lenin railed against the "bloodsucking leeches" of capitalism. Now, with the Marxist Soviet state defunct, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, its last leader, has been traveling the United States preaching that the world is evolving beyond capitalism and Communism. But as he arrives here today, for the New York City portion of a fund-raising tour, Mr. Gorbachev seems intent on seeing all of the most glittering monuments of capitalism.

In one courtroom of the Moscow City Court, the hammer-and-sickle emblems, carved long ago into the wooden chairs of the three judges, have been chiseled off. In a second courtroom, just down the hall, a hammer-and-sickle hangs on the wall above the chief judge's head and two still adorn the chairs. The great transition in Russian life, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communist ideology, is also taking place in the courtroom.

METRO DIGEST NEW YORK CITY A TURNING POINT, PERHAPS, FOR DINKINS For Mayor David N. Dinkins, who spent the week in Queens as part of his efforts to see more of ordinary New Yorkers, the polite ovation he received from the Queens County Democratic Party was not quite nirvana. But if the first week of October 1990 was the Mayor's political Pearl Harbor -- when he was attacked for granting teachers a raise, proposing to hire thousands of police officers and then threatening to lay off thousands of city workers -- these first days of May could be the Midway from which he starts fighting his way back to re-election after months of troubles. B3. MAFIA TRIAL BEGINS IN BROOKLYN With grisly details, a prosecutor has described Thomas Pitera as a drug-dealing Mafia member who murdered seven people, dismembered some of the bodies and buried them in a desolate area of Staten Island. The first victim was a drug trafficker suspected of becoming a police informer, the prosecutor, Elisa Liang, told the jury last week in Federal District Court in Brooklyn in her graphic opening statement in Mr. Pitera's trial on murder, drug, weapons and racketeering charges. Mr. Pitera, in jail since his arrest almost two years ago, could face execution under a new Federal law that calls for the death penalty for intentional murders committed in drug operations. B3. WELFARE, RIOTS AND BLAME In the Bush Administration's version, the Los Angeles riot was the grim harvest of Great Society programs epitomized by the failed welfare state in New York. But revisionists may have forgotten who was in charge when New York's relief rolls exploded 25 years ago: the Governor and the Mayor were Republicans. Between 1965 and 1970, under Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mayor John V. Lindsay, the average number of people receiving public assistance in New York City more than doubled -- from 510,000 to 1.1 million. Metro Matters, B3. SINGER DIES AT THE ALGONQUIN HOTEL Sylvia Syms, one of the most admired pop-jazz singers of her generation, died of a heart attack early yesterday, moments after she had finished a performance in the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. D10. REGION THE EXECUTIVE WHO VANISHED In the late 1950's, about a year after Sidney J. Reso graduated from Louisiana State University and got an engineering job with the Humble Oil and Refining Company, he was assigned to a no-longer-productive oil field in an out-of-the-way town called New Iberia, La. When he got there, though, he found some 7 million untapped gallons. The discovery helped him begin his climb at Humble, a corporate predecessor of the Exxon Corporation. After assignments in England and Australia and four years as a senior vice president of Exxon's domestic subsidiary, he was named president of Exxon's international-operations subsidiary in 1987. And then, on his way to work 12 days ago, he disappeared. B5. NEWSPAPER DISPUTE RETURNS TO COURT After a weekend of scattered violence, several arrests and disrupted deliveries of The New York Times, a complex labor dispute between the drivers' union and a wholesale newspaper distributor and The Times returns to court in Manhattan today for a hearing on a possible contempt citation against the union. Picket lines were noisy, but mostly nonviolent, though officials of The Times said that hundreds of thousands of papers were delayed or not delivered on Long Island and in Westchester County. B5. 'ROUND THE SUBURBAN PICKLE BARREL It would not be hard to imagine the birth of a political party in the checkout line of Hastings Prime Meats in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. The food shop has bustled its way into one of the best public forums in town. "It's a definite nerve center for the town," said Timothy Barnes, a physics teacher who has lived here for 40 years. "If you feel like you want to meet somebody, it's the perfect place to go." In the spread-out suburbs, where the sense of communal bonding can be difficult to achieve, Hastings Prime Meats reminds some of a general store, where anonymous company or a familiar face can always be found. Hastings-on-Hudson Journal, B5. A youth worker in New Jersey is charged with murder in the death of her adopted son. B5. The Traffic Map B4