In the late sixties the initial effect of overaccumulation was a period of feverish growth, with rapidly rising wages and prices and an enthusiasm for get-rich-quick schemes.

According to one expert, religion was in the "ascension rather than the declension"; another sees a "rising vitality in religious life" from 1700 onward; a third finds religion in many parts of the colonies in a state of "feverish growth."

With the end of the Civil War, the country experienced feverish, unregulated growth, especially in the railroad industry, with the government giving massive land grants and subsidies to railroad companies.

And to add this much body weight, it would have required nourishment, fuel to feed the feverish growth.

Li Deshui, the commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, said Tuesday at a news conference in Beijing that policy makers would be cautious in controlling those areas of the economy that produced some of the most feverish growth a year ago.

After nearly a decade of feverish growth, the military research complex is entering a phase of contraction that could slow the pursuit of new weapons but open new opportunities for developing civilian technologies.

Lower Manhattan grew madly, and Trinity survived only by virtue of its powerful financial position as a rich parish and the owner of much of the land where the city's feverish growth was taking place.

The feverish growth, Mr. Larson said, comes in reaction to strong global competition and is made possible by healthy corporate profits and cash flows.

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, still believes that his medicine - higher interest rates - will reduce the economy's feverish growth.

Mr. Omidyar eventually took eBay public, which meant investment bankers and feverish growth.