News stories from Monday January 20, 1975

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

Premier Chou En-lai of China believes that a world war is inevitable between the two "superpowers" -- the United States and the Soviet Union -- because of their "fierce contention." Nevertheless, he predicted that there would be "complete modernization" of a stable, orderly China by the end of the century. He made the statements in a speech to the National People's Congress, China's legislative body, at its meeting in Peking last week. The speech was made public yesterday. In general, the effect of the speech was a remarkable reassertion of the leadership of Premier Chou, who will be 77 years old this year. [New York Times] A key part of President Ford's economic and energy proposals that would increase fuel prices through higher fees on imported crude oil brought the first specific challenge from Congress to his program. Senators Edward Kennedy and Henry Jackson said they would introduce a Senate resolution to delay the higher fees for 90 days. The delay, they said, would give Congress a chance "to develop fair and equitable alternatives" to the President's plan, which, they said, would lead to "massive hikes in prices of gasoline, home heating oil and electricity." [New York Times] The Federal Reserve Board took its second major antirecession action in less than three weeks by making money for bank loans more easily available. The board's action will release $1.1 billion in required bank reserves and several times that amount in terms of the volume of new loans that banks will be permitted to make. [New York Times] The General Motors Corporation became the last of the Big Three auto makers to announce substantial rebates to car buyers in an attempt to stimulate sales and lift the industry out of one of the worst slumps since World War II. The company said that rebates ranging from $200 to $500 would be granted to buyers of compact and subcompact cars between Jan. 13 and Feb. 28. [New York Times] The Senate Democratic Caucus voted 45 to 7 to establish a bipartisan select committee -- similar to the one that investigated the Watergate cover-up -- to investigate all aspects of foreign and domestic operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and other government intelligence units. The overwhelming majority in favor of the new committee was viewed as a major setback for Senator John Stennis, chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, whose traditional dominance of military matters in the Senate had gone unchallenged until the caucus vote. "What happened today was a kind of revolution," Senator Frank Church, Idaho Democrat, said. [New York Times] A memorial service will be held in Kansas City, Mo., for Thomas Hart Benton, one of the leading American painters, who died there Sunday of heart disease. He was 85 years old. [New York Times] Israel has asked the United States for more than $2 billion in economic and military assistance for the next fiscal year, over three times the amount she currently receives from Washington, American and Israeli officials said. About $1.5 billion of the request is for military aid. [New York Times] Three Arab terrorists who held 10 people hostage in a washroom at Orly airport in Paris for 17 hours since Sunday released them, flew off to the Middle East, where six nations reportedly refused them sanctuary, and finally surrendered to authorities in Baghdad, Iraq. A spokesman for Air France, whose plane the terrorists had taken on their flight, said the crew was safe. [New York Times] Administration officials said that enough progress had been made in the East-West conference on European security to allow the United States to begin planning for a final meeting next summer of heads of state and government of the 35 participating countries. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 647.45 (+2.82, +0.44%)
S&P Composite: 71.08 (+0.12, +0.17%)
Arms Index: 0.91

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	616	5.47
Declines	703	5.69
Unchanged	442	2.29
Total Volume		13.45

* 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 17, 1975	644.63	70.96	14.25
January 16, 1975	655.74	72.05	17.11
January 15, 1975	653.39	72.14	16.58
January 14, 1975	648.70	71.68	16.61
January 13, 1975	654.18	72.31	19.78
January 10, 1975	658.79	72.61	25.89
January 9, 1975	645.26	71.17	16.34
January 8, 1975	635.40	70.04	15.60
January 7, 1975	641.19	71.02	14.33
January 6, 1975	637.20	71.07	17.55