Click on the link here for Audio Player – CBS World News Roundup – May 9, 1997 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection
News for this My 9th in 1997 was pretty much status quo for the 90s. The Economy and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. The endless seesaw of inflation and recession. The notion that when Greenspan sneezed, Wall Street got pneumonia.
On this particular day, Alan Greenspan was warning the country couldn’t afford “certain insidious inflationary pressures” and signaled a further hike in interest rates. This on the heels of a previous rate hike in March.
The news was greeted with cheerful insanity on Wall Street as the Dow rocketed on the Greenspan disclosure. The consensus of opinion was, Alan Greenspan was no longer the Big Bad Wolf. Let the games begin.
Meanwhile, The White House and Congress were still wrangling over the Balanced Budget deal, even though they claimed to have reached an agreement a week earlier. Senator Bob Dole was spending some time in the hotseat over his reported $300,000 loan to Newt Gingrich and claims the Ethics Committee would seek stiffer terms in Dole’s punishment. Dole shrugged and denied it was a “sweetheart loan” between the Senator and the Speaker of the House.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber workers were back on the job after voting to end an 18- day Steel Workers Strike over pay and security.
The Oklahoma City Bombing trial was plodding along. Prosecution was “adding bricks to their wall of evidence” against Timothy McVeigh over his role in the bombing. The jury got to hear new details from a witness who placed Timothy McVeigh in the Ryder Truck used in the bombing, and the contents of yet another anti-government letter written by McVeigh.
And OJ Simpson was playing in a Celebrity Golf Tournement in Miami and it stirred a flood of protests. Simpson shrugged.
It was just a shrugging sort of day.
All that, and so much more for this 9th Day of May in 1997 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
