News stories from Monday December 2, 1974

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

At his televised news conference, President Ford made pubic the details of a tentative agreement that he and Leonid Brezhnev had reached in Vladivostok. He said the accord put a "firm ceiling" on the arms race and created a "solid basis" for future arms reductions. "It's a good agreement and I think the American people will buy it," Mr. Ford said. [New York Times] President Ford said in his news conference that the nation now faced the triple challenges of inflation, recession and an energy crisis. It was the first time that he had not given inflation top priority when discussing the nation's economic problems. He called on Congress to act on his recommendations for $4.6 billion in budget cuts, urged that Congress not add more spending, and said he anticipated rising unemployment and asked Congress to pass emergency employment legislation before adjourning this year. [New York Times] House Democrats voted to divest the Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee and its chairman, Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, of the authority to make committee assignments for other Democrats. The assignment authority, held by the committee's Democrats since 1911, was a major source of the vast power exercised by Mr. Mills.Mr. Mills was the object of derision and scorn from his congressional colleagues because of his association with a strip-tease dancer. Many Democrats were openly talking of censure -- even of taking away his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. [New York Times] Federal Judge John Sirica strongly suggested that he intended to let the Watergate cover-up case go to the jury without waiting to get testimony from former President Nixon. In a discussion about court hours, Judge Sirica said he was going to lengthen the court day to 6 P.M., and added that "We're going to try to finish this case by Christmas." [New York Times] Pioneer 11 transmitted the first pictures of Jupiter's south polar region and then continued its journey across the solar system to Saturn. Earlier it had cut its electronic eye on Callisto, second largest of the Jovian moons, and revealed what seems to be a polar cap like that on Mars. Callisto is intermediate in size between the planets Mars and Mercury. The composition of the apparent polar cap is uncertain. [New York Times] Bishop Stephen Spottswood, board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a retired spiritual leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, died of cancer Sunday night at his home in Washington at the age of 77. [New York Times] The first price reduction in sugar in 20 months was announced by three of the country's largest refiners. The wholesale price cut, effective at the start of business today, will shave consumer prices by about 5 cents a pound, but it was not certain how soon this would be reflected in grocery stores. [New York Times] Thomas Murphy, the new chairman of the General Motors Corporation, said that G.M. would support higher federal gasoline taxes if the Ford administration decides they are necessary to reduce the nation's petroleum imports. [New York Times] A new Japanese Premier was picked by a consensus of party leaders in Parliament after a week of intensive political maneuvering and without a vote or any reference to the public. He is Takeo Miki, a senior member of Parliament, who will succeed the incumbent Kakuei Tanaka. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 603.02 (-15.64, -2.53%)
S&P Composite: 68.11 (-1.86, -2.66%)
Arms Index: 2.74

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	256	0.73
Declines	1,183	9.24
Unchanged	338	1.17
Total Volume		11.14

* 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*
November 29, 1974	618.66	69.97	7.40
November 27, 1974	619.29	69.94	14.81
November 26, 1974	617.26	69.47	13.60
November 25, 1974	611.94	68.83	11.30
November 22, 1974	615.30	68.90	13.02
November 21, 1974	608.57	68.18	13.82
November 20, 1974	609.59	67.90	12.43
November 19, 1974	614.05	68.20	15.72
November 18, 1974	624.92	69.27	15.23
November 15, 1974	647.61	71.91	12.48