Trust

Los Angeles. THE DEBATE over a proposed law is usually simple. One side wants to ban smoking in restaurants. The other side doesn't. One side wants a higher sales tax. The other side doesn't. One side thinks a bill is good. The other side thinks it's bad.Sometimes, however, the debate gets more complicated. The bill itself -- what it says, what it would mean -- becomes the issue. Its language is vague, or complicated, or both. In such cases, the debate changes from a discussion of issues to a competition for trust.

Shiying Guo didn't speak a word of English when she arrived in America nearly 13 years ago, her life's possessions stuffed into two suitcases. Guo, 44, who was an internist in Beijing, lives in a three-bedroom house in Towson with her young daughter and is studying full time for a master's degree in business. "The scandals don't stop me from trusting business," she said, seated in her dining room. "American business ... has a long, outstanding history; it has earned the trust." In the United States "you have good here.

A photo caption accompanying an article about Brown Advisory & Trust Co. in yesterday's Business section misidentified Truman T. Semans, vice chairman of Brown Advisory & Trust.The Sun regrets the errors.The Brown Advisory & Trust Co. got a vote of confidence from its parent companies in the form of an $11 million infusion of capital, the company announced yesterday.The investment from Alex. Brown Inc. and the Philadelphia-based Glenmede Trust Co. brings to $12 million the capital at Brown Advisory, a 2-year-old joint venture.

Some parents own vacation homes where they share good times and happy memories with children and grandchildren. Keeping a vacation home in the family after the first generation often requires careful thought and planning. Family members have to get along. They have to cooperate in scheduling visits, collecting money to pay bills and making additions and upgrades to the property. Parents should consider whether keeping their vacation home in the family will encourage friendly relationships or cause dissension.

DETROIT -- Negotiators for the United Automobile Workers and General Motors have agreed on the framework for a health care trust, GM's key demand in talks on a new contract, people with direct knowledge of the private discussions said yesterday. But the two sides face a long weekend of bargaining on other matters, such as pay and job guarantees, before negotiations are completed, they added. GM and the UAW have tentatively sorted out the details for a voluntary employee benefit association.

HELSINKI, Finland -- It was hard to believe, watching the two presidents boast about their new cooperation at the United Nations and at their three summit meetings, that it was less than two years ago that the Soviet Union still had an aura of evil for the presidential candidate George Bush.While their differences became clearer after seven hours of talks at the Presidential Palace, Bush did not seem disappointed. Rather, he seemed swept away by the symbolism of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's smile.

It may seem like an issue that was long ago decided in favor of competition and against monopoly pricing. But London Fog wants government approval to set retail prices of its raincoats and deny its wares to retailers who try to sell them at a discount. The apparel concern, whose only U.S. manufacturing plant is in Baltimore, says this is necessary to protect the premium-quality image of London Fog outerwear.London Fog's competitors, including foreign coatmakers, are free to set retail prices for their products in this country.

I OWE my son an apology. My wife and I were out of town last weekend and I let him use my car for work and school activities. His sister bought a used car last year with her part-time earnings but, of course, her schedule is never in sync with her brother's. I wasn't half as busy as a teen-ager back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.Anyway, getting back behind the wheel of my car Monday morning the first thing I did was take a look at the short-trip odometer.I wasn't checking to see how far my son had traveled.

HOUSTON -- President Bush, in his quest for the issue that can win for him over Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, has seized on "trust." He wants the voters to choose on the basis of which of them can be most trusted with the country's future in a still-perilous world.In this regard, he hopes that Clinton's extremely limited foreign-policy experience as governor of Arkansas, compared with his own track record in foreign affairs culminating in his past four years in the Oval Office, will carry the day. But Bush has a "trust" problem of his own with voters, illustrated by the public and press suspicions of political motivations in the report that as the Republican National Convention opened here he was planning to lead a military confrontation with Iraq.

TOKYO -- When the $240,000 retirement payout arrived, these were the places to invest it: a savings account at 2.2 percent interest and a stock market priced at more than triple the world norm.That was June 1988, a year and a half before the burst of Japan's "bubble economy."Four years later -- and 32 months into postwar Japan's worst bear market -- a retiree who put 60 percent into savings and 40 percent into stocks has seen his $240,000 lump sum -- earned in 33 years of six-day weeks -- shrink to just over $192,000.