With the ceasefire in Bosnia slated to end within days and the deadline for handing in weapons quickly approaching, NATO forces were weighing the next turn of events and options for the region, this particular day in 1994.

But that was one element in the makeup of the day. The rest of it was a little like this:

Alan Greenspan got it wrong again as economic news took a surprising upturn with release of the first flat inflation reading since 1989. The Trade deficit was another matter, but it was looking like the economy was finally stabilizing.

In other news - the Clinton Administration pledged to spend more on Housing, Mental Health and Tax programs aimed at aiding the homeless in the U.S. since figures showed the number was hovering around 7 million, considerably more than was announced by either the Reagan or Bush Administrations previously. Surprise? The Clinton Administration also proposed a $130.00 entry fee for political Asylum seekers looking to emigrate to the U.S.

In Winter Olympics news - Skier Tommy Moe won a silver medal this day, icing on the cake for his 24th birthday. The Harding/Kerrigan kerfuffle had a media frenzy over their first practice session which yielded no fireworks and a collective yawn.

Shannon Faulkner, whose on-going legal battle to get into the all-male Citadel Military Academy, wound up back in court this day saying it wasn't enough she was enrolled in classes, she also meant the physical part too.

The ACLU got involved in the recent curfew controversy in Dade County Florida, saying it violated civil rights and was something of a pain in the ass for parents too, making sure the 11:00 pm curfew for kids was enforced. The NAACP and B'nai B'rith got together in New York to discuss recent racial tensions between the Black and Jewish communities. And the Whitewater Investigation was continuing with allegations documents were shredded pertaining to the case.

And the Kremlin was voting today and whether or not to grant amnesty to individuals involved in the coup attempts in Russia in 1991 and 1993.

A busy and wildly fluctuating day, this February 17th in 1994 as reported on the CBS World News Roundup.

(Alan Greenspan - entering into that strangest of trysts, Politics and Economics)

With the latest "mea culpa tour" of Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, I found myself listening to a program, originally broadcast by ABC Radio National in Australia on August 17, 2005, where the discussion centered on a previous economic crisis; the 2001 economic meltdown between Peter Hartcher of The Sydney Morning Herald, Paul Kasriel formerly of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Late Night Live host Phillip Adams. Certain eerie parallels come to mind.

Peter Hartcher (Sydney Morning Herald): “He (Greenspan) was gearing up to do something about it (the bubble). He could see that it was way out of line, he could see that it was about to . .that it was carrying up the economy up to great heights, it was going to burst and the economy would be dashed to the ground, we’d be in recession, everyone would lose their money. He saw it unfolding exactly as it was going to, and we know that because we have the minutes of the Feds secret meetings, they published in full five years later. And he even went so far as to begin to warn about it, and you’ll remember he gave a famous speech where he said the markets were entering a period of ‘irrational exuberance’. But then something funny happened. After he gave that speech markets around the world took a tumble. But then Greenspan stopped on that agenda. He stopped warning about the bubble, he stopped shaping up to do something about it, and he switched and went over to the other side and became a cheerleader. Now, really the question you’re asking is why did he do that? What changed? And the short answer is, he played the politics, not the economics.”

Needless to say, hindsight is always 20/20, but this was clearly a matter of not learning from mistakes, or caring not to pay attention to them.

In either case, the Big One showed up on our doorstep three years later and the media went into overtime with hand-wringing. Nobody, it seemed learned anything.