ECONOMIC POLICY

GREENSPAN SAYS FED’S SUCCESS MAY COME WITH RISKS

The Federal Reserve’s success in taming the economy’s ups and downs may have also raised the risks of reckless investor behavior, Chairman Alan Greenspan said. “In perhaps what must be the greatest irony of economic policy-making, success at stabilization carries its own risks,” Mr. Greenspan said in a speech via satellite to a conference of the National Association for Business Economics in Chicago yesterday.

In his speech, Mr. Greenspan tackled a controversy that has dogged the last half of his 18-year tenure: whether the Fed’s low interest rates have periodically fueled speculative bubbles in stocks, bonds, and now housing, whose eventual bursting will prove painful and damaging.

Mr. Greenspan and his colleagues have long defended the Fed’s focus on inflation and growth to the exclusion of other goals, like taming speculative bubbles. They can point to the fact that America has had just two mild recessions in the last two decades, and inflation remains low.

– Dow Jones Newswires

REAL ESTATE

NUMBER OF $1M HOMES EXCEEDS 1 MILLION

For the first time, there are more than 1 million owner-occupied homes in America worth $1 million or more, according to a Census Bureau survey published late last month.

Once a symbol of unusual wealth, million-dollar dwellings now seem like a dime a dozen in some places. San Francisco alone has more than 20,000 of them. There are another 46,000, or so, in Orange County, Calif. But the king of outrageous housing prices continues to be Manhattan, where even someone with a million dollars in their pocket can’t buy luxury. The average price for an apartment in all but Harlem and the borough’s northern tip climbed above $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2005, the chief economist for the real estate brokerage owner Terra Holdings, Gregory Heym, said.

– Associated Press

FIRM CHANGES ITS NAME TO CENTURY 21 KEVIN B. BROWN

Century 21 William B. May is changing its name to Century 21 Kevin B. Brown & Associates.

Kevin B. Brown has been chairman of the company since it was created in June 2004, when Century 21 merged with William B. May’s Midtown office.

Mr. Brown said in a statement yesterday, “We have changed the company’s name with a vision towards growing our own brand into a wider geographic area, without licensing restrictions.”

– Special to the Sun

WALL STREET

NYSE’S THAIN SAYS HE DOES NOT SEEK PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTORS

The New York Stock Exchange’s chief executive said he isn’t seeking private-equity investors, as he was asked about reports that said two big private-equity firms had been interested in buying a stake. “We are not entertaining any type of private equity proposals,” the chief executive of the NYSE, John Thain, said during a luncheon speaking engagement at the Japan Society yesterday. News reports have said that private-equity firms Bain Capital and Blackstone Group approached the NYSE about a proposal to buy a stake in the exchange. The approach occurred in June and was rejected by Mr. Thain, the New York Post reported. Representatives for Bain and Blackstone declined to comment.

– Dow Jones Newswires

IN BRIEF

WellPoint agreed to buy WellChoice for about $6.5 billion to expand into New York … NBC’s TV audience shrank in the first week of the season after new programs such as Martha Stewart’s reality show failed to stem viewer defections. The network’s younger audience slipped 17% to 4.41 million … Pfizer said American regulators approved its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor to reduce risk of stroke and heart attack in patients with Type 2 diabetes … The Supreme Court will use a lawsuit against Merrill Lynch to clarify the scope of a 1998 law requiring securities class-action suits to be filed under federal rather than state law … Byron Wien, Morgan Stanley’s longtime stock investment strategist, is leaving for a similar position at hedge fund Pequot Capital Management … Northwest Airlines is suing a unit of American Express to force it to turn over $63.4 million that Northwest customers charged on American Express credit cards to buy airline tickets … Google is charging advertisers more for the ability to maintain their ads in prominent positions.

– Bloomberg News and Dow Jones Newswires