October 20, 1995

Federal prosecutors asserted yesterday that at least two senior executives at Daiwa Bank Ltd. conspired with their New York bond trader to conceal $1.1 billion in losses from bank regulators for two months this past summer. The allegations, disclosed in court documents unsealed yesterday, were the first indication that the trading scandal at Daiwa went beyond the trader, Toshihide Iguchi, a 44-year-old senior vice president at the bank's New York office.

President Clinton said it was possible that he and the Republicans could balance the Federal budget in seven years, but only if they made lesser cuts in programs for health, education and the environment. Article, page A28.

Fewer jobs have been created in New Jersey this year than last an estimated 50,000 this year, compared with 65,000 in 1994 -- but the overall employment picture in the state is encouraging, two Rutgers University professors told a group of policymakers yesterday. Downsizing in the banking and communications industries continues to be worrisome, said Prof. Joseph Seneca, the university's vice president for academic affairs, but there is continuing growth in small businesses and the lower-paying service industries.

Yesterday should have been a red-letter day for Salomon Brothers, the troubled brokerage firm: Its earnings in the third quarter were remarkably strong for the first time in almost two years. But the decision by Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the Omaha reinsurer run by Warren E. Buffett and Salomon's largest and most influential shareholder, to cash out a part of its holdings was rain on the firm's parade.

The Medicare bill passed today by the House of Representatives would propel elderly people into a new world, full of promise and some peril, where competitive forces are buffeting doctors, hospitals and the rest of the health care industry. For better or worse, Medicare is catching up with the private health care market. Even if President Clinton vetoes it, as he has threatened, the bill signals the direction in which health policy and the nation's health care system are already evolving.