News stories from Wednesday June 5, 1974

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

A Senate-House conference unanimously approved a bill that would drastically alter the way Congress processes the federal budget and allocates funds. The bill is expected to be ratified by both houses within the next two weeks and sent to the President, who is expected to sign it. The measure, designed to reassert congressional power over the purse, would limit presidential power of impoundment, create congressional machinery to oversee spending and would establish a new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. [New York Times] A day after the California primary, the impact of the Watergate scandals was apparent throughout the returns, but most obviously in the overwhelming approval given a radical campaign reform measure, which was approved by a 7-to-3 margin despite vigorous opposition. [New York Times] The White House has reportedly broken an agreement worked out with a federal judge by refusing to allow John Ehrlichman and his lawyers direct access to Mr. Ehrlichman's personal notes of presidential meetings. Highly reliable sources said Mr. Ehrlichman and his lawyers had been told that before they could see the notes they would be screened to delete material unrelated to the "plumbers" case. [New York Times] The House Judiciary Committee heard evidence reportedly suggesting that President Nixon had conditioned a 1971 decision to raise federal milk price supports upon a reaffirmation by dairy industry leaders of a pledge to raise $2 million for the President's re-election campaign. [New York Times] The House voted overwhelmingly to insist on strong anti-busing provisions when Senate-House conferees reconcile the two versions of the Federal Aid to Education Act. The vote was 270 to 103. [New York Times] The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was reported to have ordered his staff to investigate the circumstances surrounding the indictment of Representative Angelo Roncallo of Long Island and "certain activities" of the United States Attorney's office that brought the indictment, which resulted in acquittal. These were understood to include the contention that the prosecutor in the case had been drugged. [New York Times] President Nixon, who is scheduled to meet with Soviet leaders in Moscow later this month, declared that his policy of detente precluded interference by the United States in the domestic affairs of other nations, an apparent allusion to demands that the United States press Moscow to ease emigration restrictions on Jews. In a commencement address at the Naval Academy, Mr. Nixon said that the first responsibility of American foreign policy must be to prevent nuclear war.Secretary of State Kissinger reportedly told three Senators that he had received recent assurances from Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko that Moscow's emigration restrictions would be further eased. Senate aides said Mr. Kissinger had passed on the assurances during a discussion of congressional efforts to link Soviet emigration policies to approval of nondiscriminatory tariff treatment for the Soviet Union. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger has warned that overseas troop reductions being considered by the Senate would have a destabilizing effect on European allies and would seriously undermine Soviet-American negotiations on mutual troop reductions. The warning was contained in a letter released by Senator John Stennis, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, as part of a White House effort to defeat moves to require troop cuts. [New York Times] The Soviet Defense Minister has accused the United States of pursuing the arms race and has assured a Moscow election rally that the Soviet Union is "doing everything necessary" to modernize its defense system. The remarks by Marshal Andrei Grechko, who warned that "the danger of war remains a stern reality of our time," were quoted at length in Pravda. [New York Times] The chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, told the movement's representatives at a Cairo meeting that he was willing to attend the Geneva peace conference if he received a mandate from them to go. [New York Times] A group of European companies was awarded a $226 million contract to build a reusable space laboratory to be carried aboard the $5 billion space shuttle now being developed by the United States. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 830.18 (+1.49, +0.18%)
S&P Composite: 90.31 (+0.17, +0.19%)
Arms Index: 1.15

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	810	6.57
Declines	548	5.13
Unchanged	404	1.98
Total Volume		13.68

* 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*
June 4, 1974	828.69	90.14	16.04
June 3, 1974	821.26	89.10	12.49
May 31, 1974	802.17	87.28	10.81
May 30, 1974	803.58	87.43	13.58
May 29, 1974	795.37	86.89	12.30
May 28, 1974	814.30	88.37	10.58
May 24, 1974	816.65	88.58	13.74
May 23, 1974	805.23	87.29	14.77
May 22, 1974	802.57	87.09	15.45
May 21, 1974	809.53	87.91	12.19