News stories from Friday September 20, 1974

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

The government's Consumer Price Index rose 1.3 percent in August, the largest monthly increase since 1947, excluding periods when price freezes had just been lifted. Food prices resumed their climb and prices of most other consumer goods advanced. The big exception was gasoline prices, which declined for the first time since last September, the month before the Arab oil embargo began. The 1.3 percent increase brought the price index to 150.2 percent of its 1967 base of 100. [New York Times] Dr. Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, termed the recent decline in short-term interest rates as "encouraging" and said that "tensions" in the country's financial markets have recently been reduced to some degree. [New York Times] An official of Memorial Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., said that former President Richard Nixon was expected to enter the hospital Monday morning for tests and treatment of the phlebitis that has caused a painful swelling in his left leg. An entire wing, consisting of 19 single bedrooms on the hospital's sixth floor, will be reserved for Mr. Nixon, under the protection of Secret Service agents. [New York Times] The special Watergate prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, proposed that the Federal District Court in Washington send a team of physicians to San Clemente to determine how sick former President Nixon might be. He suggested this to federal Judge John Sirica in opposing a defense motion for a delay of two or three months in the Watergate cover-up conspiracy trial, which is scheduled to begin Oct. 1. Judge Sirica took no action on the proposal, but he rejected the delay motion. [New York Times] United States consumers will get the brunt of an increase in the price of natural gas ordered by Canada's Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. The United States buys about 40 percent of Canada's natural gas production, and it was estimated that the increase would cost American utility companies an additional $330 million a year. [New York Times] Representatives of 12 oil-consuming nations including the United States agreed at a meeting in Brussels on the details of a plan under which countries affected by oil-producer embargoes would receive supplies from a common pool when their oil imports declined by more than 7 percent. [New York Times] The Greek Cypriote and Turkish Cypriote leaders agreed to a general release of all prisoners of war. The exchange of an estimated 4,200 prisoners will begin Monday and will continue each day until completed, a United Nations spokesman in Nicosia said. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 670.76 (-3.29, -0.49%)
S&P Composite: 70.14 (+0.05, +0.07%)
Arms Index: 1.44

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	946	7.95
Declines	516	6.24
Unchanged	346	2.06
Total Volume		16.25

* 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*
September 19, 1974	674.05	70.09	17.00
September 18, 1974	651.91	67.72	11.76
September 17, 1974	648.78	67.38	13.73
September 16, 1974	639.78	66.26	18.37
September 13, 1974	627.19	65.20	16.07
September 12, 1974	641.74	66.71	16.92
September 11, 1974	654.72	68.55	11.82
September 10, 1974	658.17	69.24	11.98
September 9, 1974	662.94	69.72	11.16
September 6, 1974	677.88	71.42	15.13