News stories from Friday August 5, 1977

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

An early conclusion of a new Panama Canal treaty seemed closer as word spread in Washington about a speech made in Colombia by Panama's chief of government. Gen, Omar Torrijos asked leaders of five neighboring countries to support a new treaty under which the United States would turn over control of the canal and the Canal Zone to Panama by 2000, but would maintain an indefinite role in the canal's defense. [New York Times] The House passed, 244 to 177, a largely intact Carter energy program, whose principal objective was to reduce the nation's reliance on natural gas and imported oil. The vote was closer than many supporters had predicted. Just before the vote, the House narrowly turned back, 219 to 203, a Republican attempt to revise the bill and delay its passage. [New York Times] Bert Lance was questioned by the Comptroller of the Currency about a secret Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company internal memorandum that seemed to tie Mr. Lance's $2.6 million personal loan from the bank to the opening of a correspondent banking arrangement between Manufacturers Hanover and Mr. Lance's National Bank of Georgia. [New York Times] The national unemployment rate dipped in July, returning to the May level, but employment did not increase for the first time in nine months. The jobless rate declined to 6.9 percent from 7.1 percent in June. June's increase was evidently a statistical aberration, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics told Congress. [New York Times] President Carter ordered a federal study of steel-price increases and told the Pentagon and the government's chief purchasing agency to buy the lowest-priced steel available. He asked the Council on Wage and Price Stability to begin a study of steel prices, costs and the steel industry's economic situation, saying that recent steel price increases would by September make the average price of steel 12.5 percent higher than a year before. [New York Times] Stock prices rose in response to favorable economic reports, but what had appeared to be the makings of a rally failed to develop. The Dow Jones industrial average, which advanced three points early in the session, finished with a token gain of only 0.52 point at 888.69. The average had a net decline of 1.38 points for the week. [New York Times] Rockwell International's chairman denied that he had advance knowledge of President Carter's decision to kill the B-1 bomber program when he sold more than $1 million of personal stock in his company. Willard Rockwell said the sale was "purely a decision as a prudent investor." [New York Times] The New York City police were ordered by Mayor Beame to keep couples from parking in isolated areas of the city and to record the license plate numbers of cars parked in those areas "as long as the .44 caliber killer case remains open." This weekend 300 detectives will be working on round-the-clock shifts and officers in all precincts will view a video tape giving a description of the killer. [New York Times] A congressional report on the Helsinki accords strongly criticized the Soviet Union and other East European countries. The report by the Commission on Security and Cooperation said that human rights was the most critical issue between the East and West and that the Soviet Union had "shown systematic disregard for civil and political rights" since the commission began its work monitoring East-West relations 10 months ago. The report was issued as 35 members of the Conference on European Security and Cooperation reached an agreement on an agenda for their meeting in Belgrade in the fall. [New York Times] The Vatican declared that men with vasectomies can enter valid marriages. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a decree restating the church's view on the vasectomy issue. The church had previously annulled any marriage entered by a man who had been surgically sterilized or was otherwise incapable of becoming a father. [New York Times] Despite the collapse of the possibility of a preliminary meeting of Arab and Israeli foreign ministers, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance brought his Middle East Mission to Jordan, still holding out the hope that a Geneva peace conference could eventually be convened. His mission seems not to have made much progress, at least from the Arabs' point of view. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 888.69 (+0.52, +0.06%)
S&P Composite: 98.76 (+0.02, +0.02%)
Arms Index: 1.00

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	777	9.07
Declines	636	7.44
Unchanged	451	3.43
Total Volume		19.94

* 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*
August 4, 1977	888.17	98.74	18.87
August 3, 1977	886.00	98.37	21.17
August 2, 1977	887.39	98.50	17.91
August 1, 1977	891.81	99.12	17.92
July 29, 1977	890.07	98.85	20.35
July 28, 1977	889.99	98.79	26.34
July 27, 1977	888.43	98.64	26.44
July 26, 1977	908.18	100.27	21.39
July 25, 1977	914.24	100.85	20.43
July 22, 1977	923.42	101.59	23.11