April 3, 1994

Larry Kudlow seemed a master of the universe. Being a top Wall Street economist was not the half of it. Mr. Kudlow had been a prominent member of President Reagan's economic team. He helped conceive and fight for the tax-cut proposal that helped Christine Todd Whitman become Governor of New Jersey. One of the nation's most articulate and charismatic commentators on financial issues, he has become the economic guru of Jack Kemp and of the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, as well as a regular on television interview programs and a speaker commanding hefty fees. He even starred in Cadillac ads. To hear some leading Republicans, the 46-year-old Mr. Kudlow has nowhere to go but up. They consider him a hot political property, a potential challenger for the Senate seat of Daniel Patrick Moynihan in New York or, should a right-leaning Republican like Mr. Kemp win the White House in 1996, a shoo-in for a Cabinet position. John Sweeney, executive director of the New York State Republican Committee, last week called him "one of the brightest stars."

Thousands of Muslims and Croats will be evacuated from the northwestern Bosnian town of Prijedor to save them from nationalist Serbs bent on wiping them out, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced today. The decision runs contrary to a long-standing policy of both the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to avoid mass evacuations of minority groups because, in effect, that would be helping the Serbs drive out other ethnic groups and populate the area with their own.

THE most dangerous speculators are the ones who don't think they are speculating at all. For they assume that market disruptions will not affect them, and thus show a disregard for the warning signs that markets are turning against them. That is why the collapse last week of Askin Capital Management may have been the most significant event of the week. Askin was running more than $600 million in an allegedly "market neutral" account that was supposed to produce guaranteed profits without interest rate risk. Something went wrong, and the entire amount may have been wiped out as interest rates rose in recent weeks.

IN practically every democracy you can think of, established political parties are in deep trouble, their legitimacy suspect and their leaders susceptible to attack by populists who preach simple, emotional answers to the complicated questions of the post-cold-war age. With so much cynicism about conventional politics and politicians around, and with the traditional left largely discredited after the collapse of Communism in 1989, it is hardly surprising that outsiders -- many of them self-made businessmen with enough money of their own to run campaigns that defy the long-dominant party machines -- have popped up in the United States, Poland, Peru, Japan and now Italy with the message that they have the magic cure for unemployment, inefficiency, waste and high taxes.

"I THINK I'm being punished by God," said Dr. Joyce Wallace. She was smiling, but she might have been serious. "Years ago, when I lived on Hudson, I fought against a pissoir being built in the park across the street. I thought it would attract more junkies. Which proves we are all capable of practicing Nimby." Dr. Wallace's attempt to turn her town house into a home for former prostitutes seems to have been stalled by her Greenwich Village neighbors' ferocious campaign to discredit her and the project. She, in turn, dismisses their anxiety as garden variety not-in-my-backyard selfishness.