News stories from Friday March 21, 1975

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

Heavy fighting flared near Saigon today and the Saigon command reported the loss of a key base camp 40 miles west of the city and said that a 100-truck convoy carrying ammunition to beleaguered Tay Ninh City had been ambushed. There were reports that the North Vietnamese had moved tanks, demolition units and antiaircraft weapons within 30 to 40 miles of Saigon. "They've got everything they need to strike," a Western military analyst said. [New York Times] By the thousands, the people are abandoning Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam. The road south from the city is a scene of suffering. The armed forces are also moving out and no one seems to have the slightest doubt that Hue is being left to the Communists. The refugees were moving toward the coastal city of Da Nang. Trucks, buses, army vehicles, cattle herds, bicycles and people on foot jammed Route 1, a narrow, badly asphalted road. [New York Times] High administration officials say they have inadequate information about what is happening in Indochina and little control over events in Saigon. These officials are experiencing some of the feelings of frustration and visions of doom that American officials had at the time of the Tet offensive by the Communists in 1968. They also speak of a feeling of defeatism in Congress. [New York Times] With congressional leaders preoccupied with Easter recess plans, parliamentary rules and considerable opposition to administration requests, it seemed it was hardly possible that Congress would act on emergency military aid for South Vietnam and Cambodia before mid-April. [New York Times] The Senate passed a $29.2 billion tax reduction bill after adding some more amendments including one that would remove all limitations on the deductions that working parents may take for child-care expenses. The measure now goes to a joint Senate-House conference committee which will work out a compromise with the House bill passed last month. The Senate also voted $150 million in tax relief for the Chrysler Corporation but rejected appeals for smaller bailouts of Lockheed Aircraft and Pan American World Airways. [New York Times] Experts assigned by the Federal District Court in Boston to prepare a plan for next fall's citywide school desegregation presented a draft that they said would desegregate more classrooms with less busing than the interim plan that caused controversy and sporadic violence. The draft also proposes an unprecedented "pairing" of Boston's colleges and universities with individual high schools and city school districts. [New York Times] New York City officials appealed to the federal government at a meeting here for the infusion of what one of them called "a massive amount of cash" into the city's treasury. "We're not talking budget gap or stuff like that," he said. "We're talking cash flow. We need cash and we need it in 30 days." Several proposals to help the city were discussed, including the possible purchase of city securities by the United States Treasury or the Federal Reserve system or low-cost or no-cost Federal Reserve loans to the city with the city's securities as collateral. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 763.06 (-0.94, -0.12%)
S&P Composite: 83.39 (-0.22, -0.26%)
Arms Index: 0.78

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	540	6.20
Declines	819	7.33
Unchanged	420	2.41
Total Volume		15.94

* 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*
March 20, 1975	764.00	83.61	20.96
March 19, 1975	769.48	84.34	19.03
March 18, 1975	779.41	85.13	29.16
March 17, 1975	786.53	86.01	26.78
March 14, 1975	773.47	84.76	24.84
March 13, 1975	762.98	83.74	18.62
March 12, 1975	763.69	83.59	21.56
March 11, 1975	770.89	84.36	31.28
March 10, 1975	776.13	84.95	25.89
March 7, 1975	770.10	84.30	25.93