News stories from Wednesday December 8, 1976

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

President-elect Carter will consider a proposal to aid the housing industry and thus the economy by putting an extra $2 billion to $5 billion into mortgage subsidies when he meets the economic experts on his transition staff in Washington tomorrow. This is to be the first of seven such meetings with his experts on areas other than defense and foreign policy. [New York Times] Attorney General Edward Levi, according to senior intelligence officials, has withheld approval of all requests for wiretaps in counterintelligence cases in the last year, citing insufficient "probable cause." The officials suggest that the Department of Justice rethink its criteria. [New York Times] The State Department contradicted the public South Korean allegation that the senior Korean Central Intelligence Agency officer who defected in Washington two weeks ago was being held against his will. A department spokesman said that Kim Sang Keun had chosen freely to remain in the United States and that the Korean government had been fully informed. [New York Times] A final American analysis in advance of the meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries went from the State Department to all American embassies. It calculated that a 5 percent price increase would strip nearly $4 billion a year from the seven major industrial powers and more than $1 billion would be the cost to the developing countries. [New York Times] Stock prices rose, with Dow Jones industrials lagging behind some other indicators, climbing up 2.57 points to close at 963.26. A $91.9 million bond issue by New York state sold well at an interest cost of 6.31 percent. All but about $6 million was out of the underwriters' hands at the end of the day. [New York Times] The Glomar Explorer effort to raise a sunken Soviet submarine failed, according to two former members of the Central Intelligence Agency project, when an error in judgment resulted in damage to prongs on a huge claw lowered from the salvage ship. It could not fully support the submarine's weight and broke off, they said. [New York Times] A more effective United Nations was urged by Kurt Waldheim in a speech in the General Assembly accepting a second five-year term as Secretary General. He asked for concentration on essentials that could be achieved and pledged a lean administration that would carry out overdue changes. In an interview, he said he planned an energetic effort to reconvene the Middle East conference at Geneva, seeing the best chance yet for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement. [New York Times] European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization raised financial objections to the $2.41 billion airborne early-warning system proposed by the United States. But Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, said at a news conference at the Brussels meeting that he sensed all agreed that the system was a necessity for the alliance. [New York Times] Mexican peons demanding land in northern Sinaloa state have set up squatters' camps and have paralyzed farming in about 100,000 acres of private property. [New York Times] South Africa's Justice Minister said Tuesday's restaurant explosion in Johannesburg could signal the start of urban guerrilla action by anti-government militants. The minister, James Kruger, said he was confident that the police could cope with it but urged businessmen to take special precautions. The attacker was identified as an unemployed black mine worker. [New York Times] Washington is weighing two diametrically opposed solutions to the problem of Britain's sterling balances for which a major international effort would be necessary. One would stabilize them through various forms of guarantees and standby credits from other countries; the other would call for foreign governments to get rid of their present sterling balances in London and not let them revive. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 963.26 (+2.57, +0.27%)
S&P Composite: 104.08 (+0.59, +0.57%)
Arms Index: 0.74

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	968	14.84
Declines	505	5.74
Unchanged	444	3.98
Total Volume		24.56

* 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*
December 7, 1976	960.69	103.49	26.14
December 6, 1976	961.77	103.56	24.83
December 3, 1976	950.55	102.76	22.64
December 2, 1976	946.64	102.12	23.30
December 1, 1976	949.38	102.49	21.96
November 30, 1976	947.22	102.10	17.03
November 29, 1976	950.05	102.44	18.75
November 26, 1976	956.62	103.15	15.00
November 24, 1976	950.96	102.41	20.42
November 23, 1976	949.30	101.96	19.09