News stories from Friday December 19, 1980

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

In exchange for freeing the hostages Iran demanded that the United States deposit in the Algerian Central Bank the Iranian funds impounded by President Carter following the seizure of the Americans in Teheran more than 13 months ago. The amount of Iranian funds in the United States at the time the hostages were taken has been estimated at $8 billion to $14 billion.Prospects for the hostages' release soon were not improved in Washington by Iran's latest terms for freeing them. A State Department spokesman said the document setting forth the conditions "presents issues of substance as well as questions of procedure which will require consideration here." [New York Times] Aleksei Kosygin reportedly died in a Moscow hospital but there was no official announcement. He was said to have succcumbed at the age of 76 to a heart ailment that forced him to limit public appearances and to resign as Prime Minister on Oct. 23, a post he held for 16 years. His rise to the Soviet Union's top leadership began in the textile industry in Leningrad. [New York Times] Two more cabinet appointments were announced by President-elect Ronald Reagan. His nominee for the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is Samuel Pierce, a New York lawyer and former state judge. John Block, former Illinois Director of Agriculture, has been nominated as Secretary of Agriculture. Mr. Reagan's choice for United States representative to the United Nations reportedly is Jeane Kirkpatrick, a Georgetown University professor of political science, and an opponent of President Carter's human rights policies in the third world. [New York Times] Removal of Gen. David Jones of the Air Force as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is said to be under consideration by President-elect Reagan, and Republican officials close to him expect him to make the move soon after he takes office. General Jones is a controversial figure among conservatives. [New York Times] The prime rate for business loans was raised to 21½ percent from 21 percent by most large banks. But there were signs that the upward spiral of interest rates was coming to an end. [New York Times] Ohio increased taxes on consumers and businesses by $395 million to balance its budget, which faced a deficit of $496 million. Gov. James Rhodes, reversing his longtime policy of "no new taxes," had proposed the temporary increase, which was approved by the legislature as an emergency measure. In addition, there will be a budget cut of $101 million. [New York Times] Serious code violations at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, where 84 people died in a fire Nov. 21, contributed substantially to the carbon monoxide poisoning that killed at least 60 of the people who died, according to investigators. They said that if the 26-story hotel had been built and maintained under the standards of the 1970 Uniform Building Code, which governed its design, most of the smoke would have been exhausted harmlessly. [New York Times] Charleston (S.C.) was ordered to desegegrate its consolidated public school district in the city and seven surrounding communities. The Justice Department charged the city and county of Charleston with "egregious constitutional violations" in maintaining a "dual system of public education" for blacks and whites and gave officials 20 days to develop a desegregation plan or face a federal suit. [New York Times] Poland took new austerity measures after a rise in its foreign debt to $23 billion and in anticipation of its first deficit budget, in 1981, since the end of World War II. Meat and butter will be rationed in the first three months of the new year, the number of government employees will be reduced and investments will be curtailed. [New York Times] Britain insisted that no concessions were made to prisoners in Northern Ireland in return for the end of their hunger strike. In Belfast, a spokesman for the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army said that the strike had been a success and that the way London had dealt with it at the end constituted recognition of the prisoners' political status, the strike's objective. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 937.20 (+7.00, +0.75%)
S&P Composite: 133.70 (+0.70, +0.53%)
Arms Index: 0.87

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,085	31.39
Declines	585	14.76
Unchanged	314	4.62
Total Volume		50.77

* 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 18, 1980	930.20	133.00	69.57
December 17, 1980	928.50	132.89	50.81
December 16, 1980	918.09	130.60	41.62
December 15, 1980	911.60	129.45	39.69
December 12, 1980	917.15	129.23	39.53
December 11, 1980	908.45	127.36	60.24
December 10, 1980	916.21	128.26	49.31
December 9, 1980	934.04	130.48	53.22
December 8, 1980	933.70	130.61	53.60
December 5, 1980	956.23	134.03	51.99