NEW YORK -- Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan will have an enormously difficult time slowing the wealth-production machine of the stock market.

Any doubts about that vanished this week. The Nasdaq's run to kiss 5000 while the Dow Jones industrials suffered convulsions laid bare the forces that will make it so troublesome and risky to cool red- hot tech stocks.

Greenspan has made it clear in recent speeches that the Fed will keep raising interest rates to slow the creation of wealth from rising prices for assets, be they houses or stocks. Those rising prices have become one of Greenspan's dreaded imbalances, encouraging people to buy more than the economy can produce, fueling inflation. Because techs drive the Nasdaq and are practically the only stocks going up, they are his target.