News stories from Monday March 15, 1976

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

The Congressional Budget Office warned that, if the budget policies advocated by the Ford administration were followed, the economic recovery might slow next year to the point where there would be no further decline in unemployment. If that happened, It would leave unemployment at a level of 7 percent or more and, in addition, the inflation rate would hardly be changed, the budget office estimated. [New York Times] Domestic bribes and kickbacks among American companies, although long recognized as a serious problem, are coming under new scrutiny as a result of disclosures of similar payoffs overseas. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating domestic payoffs in several industries, including breweries and construction companies. Payoffs are also reported as common in the apparel, printing, freight hauling, advertising, retailing and credit industries and they are far more widespread than had been acknowledged. [New York Times] Blue Cross and other health plans in several states, including New York, will offer millions of subscribers in selected groups the opportunity to obtain at the plans' expense a second professional opinion before undergoing non-emergency surgery. All charges related to the second opinion -- the doctor's fee and the cost of X-rays and laboratory tests that may be needed -- will be paid for by the insurance plan. [New York Times] Five Republicans in the New Jersey Assembly, who had earlier voted for a $1 billion state income tax, claimed they had been lied to and moved to have the bill recalled. The Republicans said that they had been promised by Democratic leaders that the bill contained a provision limiting increases in state and local spending to 5% a year. They later contended that the bill did not limit spending. [New York Times] Felix Rohatyn, the chief of Governor Carey's new economic recovery program, said that he was convinced that blighted areas of New York City would have to be torn down wholesale and treated as virgin industrial development land, as has been done in the suburbs and in the South. He said this was only one of a number of unusual ideas that, in the city's desperate situation, he and his aides would study. [New York Times] Israeli military authorities imposed a total curfew in Ramallah on the West Bank of the Jordan River after another day of violent street demonstrations and protests against the continued Israeli occupation of the area. The total and indefinite curfew was an extreme measure that the West Bank military government normally reserves only for the most explosive situations. [New York Times] The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that Israel has 10 to 20 nuclear weapons "available for use," according to an agency official quoted by a science writer in Washington. The estimate is well over previous American judgments of Israel's nuclear strength, both in quantity and in state of readiness. [New York Times] A tax fraud case against Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish movie director, has caused a wave of self-examination in Sweden, a debate over police powers and bitter accusations that the bureaucracy is hounding the nation's foremost artist. Mr. Bergman's career is in disarray. His current projects, including two new films and an opera production, have been canceled. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 974.50 (-13.14, -1.33%)
S&P Composite: 99.80 (-1.06, -1.05%)
Arms Index: 1.33

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	331	2.95
Declines	1,218	14.49
Unchanged	349	2.13
Total Volume		19.57

* 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 12, 1976	987.64	100.86	26.02
March 11, 1976	1003.31	101.89	27.30
March 10, 1976	995.28	100.94	25.90
March 9, 1976	993.70	100.58	31.77
March 8, 1976	988.74	100.19	25.06
March 5, 1976	972.92	99.11	23.03
March 4, 1976	970.64	98.92	24.41
March 3, 1976	978.83	99.98	25.45
March 2, 1976	985.12	100.56	25.59
March 1, 1976	975.36	100.02	22.07