News stories from Wednesday February 1, 1978

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

President Carter appealed directly to the American people to back the proposed Panama Canal treaties, which he described as being in the "highest national interest." In a televised fireside address, he offered an item-by-item rebuttal of the main objections raised against the pacts. [New York Times] A shortage of electric power in some regions may occur within days or weeks, depending on the weather, as a result of the nine-week coal strike. Coal reserves are running short, particularly in industrial Ohio. [New York Times] President Carter's budget drew fire from both ends of the political spectrum in Congress and some of its economic assumptions were questioned by the Congressional Budget Office. Even before Senate hearings opened, Republicans said Mr. Carter was underestimating costs that would raise the deficit dangerously. Liberal Democrats accused him of breaking campaign pledges by not directing sufficient funds to meet people's needs. [New York Times] New efforts to fight inflation were urged by Paul Volcker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He suggested that Americans were being lulled into complacency about the rise in living costs. [New York Times] Stock prices advanced on a broad front, with gaining issues leading losers on the Big Board by a 2 to 1 ratio. The Dow Jones industrial average showed a modest decline at midday, but finished at 774.34, rising 4.42 points. [New York Times] The economic boom had no re-entry problem in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake. The region was transformed first by the Manned Spacecraft Center. Now, 20 years after America's entry into space with the launching of Explorer 1, the manned spaceflight program has gone into partial eclipse. But the community has continued to grow and prosper as part of an oil and natural gas-producing region. [New York Times] The government is suing the Teamsters union. The Department of Labor filed the civil suit in an effort to force Frank Fitzsimmons, president of the union, and 18 others to repay losses resulting from millions of dollars in allegedly imprudent loans made by the teamsters' principal pension fund since 1975. The suit was filed under provisions of a new pension law that took effect in January 1975. Loan transactions listed in the suit totaled more than $130 million. Labor Secretary Ray Marshall said that he was unsure how much money the government would eventually seek to recover because some loans had been made on real estate of unknown value and many of the loans would not come due for years. [New York Times] Middle East peace efforts adjourned in Cairo, focusing attention on President Anwar Sadat's scheduled talks with President Carter at Camp David, Md., this weekend. The American intermediary in the Mideast, Assistant Secretary of State Alfred Atherton, ended two weeks of efforts to gain an Israeli-Egyptian accord to a declaration of principles to clear the path for talks on an overall peace settlement. But his attempts were snagged by continuing differences between the two countries over the issue of self-determination for Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile, Israeli and Egyptian military experts ended a second round of talks aimed at working out a technical accord for the return of occupied Sinai to Egyptian control. [New York Times] Israel denied it had promised President Carter that it would halt the founding of new Jewish settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River. The denial was made by Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan in Parliament. He said he had pledged only that new settlements would be "in the framework of military camps" while peace talks were continuing with the Arabs. Mr. Dayan added he had made the statement with the full knowledge of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. [New York Times] An 8 percent cut in arms sales to non-allied nations for the current fiscal year was announced by the Carter administration, but officials acknowledged that total military sales would exceed last year's total by nearly $2 billion. In a statement, President Carter said that arms sales accords for the 1978 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, would be reduced by $740 million from last year's $9.3 billion. [New York Times] An accord in Rhodesia seemed likely as Prime Minister Ian Smith and three black leaders resumed talks for an agreement to transfer power from the country's 263,000 whites to its 6.7 million blacks. But a potentially crucial flaw is that the negotiations would produce only an "internal" settlement with locally based black leaders, but not with two powerful nationalists who claim the allegiance of Communist-backed guerrillas still challenging the government in a savage war. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 774.34 (+4.42, +0.57%)
S&P Composite: 89.93 (+0.68, +0.76%)
Arms Index: 0.65

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	943	14.17
Declines	430	4.22
Unchanged	469	3.85
Total Volume		22.24

* in millions of shares

Arms Index is the ratio of volume per declining issue to volume per advancing issue; a figure below 1.0 is bullish.

Market Index Trends
Date	DJIA	S&P	Volume*
January 31, 1978	769.92	89.25	19.87
January 30, 1978	772.44	89.34	17.40
January 27, 1978	764.12	88.58	17.60
January 26, 1978	763.34	88.58	19.60
January 25, 1978	772.44	89.39	18.69
January 24, 1978	771.57	89.25	18.69
January 23, 1978	770.70	89.24	19.38
January 20, 1978	776.94	89.89	7.58
January 19, 1978	778.67	90.09	21.50
January 18, 1978	786.30	90.56	21.39