Show 1 i 4 THE VOICE VOKE OF BUSINESS Why Are Those People At the Bedside So Sad By Arch Booth executive vice pr prel tl dent of th the Chamber of Commerce of the fhe United St Stat Stela e Youve You've heard the one about the physician physician phy who determined to look at the brighter side reported The patient died in the best of health Well Welt Im I'm beginning to wonder If It that can happen to a national economy CONSIDER THE evidence Business is booming Profits are arc up ers arc are operating at capacity selling everything they can make Retail sales are arc at record highs with consumers buying everything they can get their hand on There arc are shortages of skilled labor leading some experts to speculate that the definition of full employment should bo be changed to reflect what we have now about 5 percent unemployed instead of the traditional four percent figure which Is beginning to look rather rather ra ther arbitrary THANKS TO the high corporate profits pro profits fits federal tax revenues from business will be up enough next fiscal year that the government will probably show a much lower deficit than expected ear ear- earlier earlier lier and may actually show a surplus The foreign trade balance registering register register- ing sharp deficits in recent years shows signs of improving after alter the last dollar devaluation MANY ECONOMISTS believe the inflationary inflationary inna spurt in prices early this year was caused by temporary influences They expect things to cool off ocr later in inthe inthe inthe the year assuming no new spending binge by the federal government And the society is cooler too Our campuses are ending a a calm academic year Our big cities are arc free of riots Many former revolutionaries have qu quo faded away others are making names for themselves working within the system they tried and failed to destroy You hear little talk these days that America is coming apart at the seams ON TOP of all that we have disentangled disentangled disen tangled ourselves from the longest and most frustrating war in our If U all of the foregoing sounds to you like a picture of a nation in the best of health that's the way it sounds to tome tome tome me too SO WHY is the stock market so low And why are foreigners showing their lack of confidence in the dollar by demanding demanding de de- manding more dollars for gold Do the speculators know something we dont don't E I doubt it I suspect the answer lies ii more in th realm of psychology than economics BOTH THE stock market and the In International In money markets arc highly sensitive to mood mood swings And moods are contagious Let tet a few big speculators peculators start buying optimistically and soon they are arc Imitated by others Prices go up quickly and the expectation of a rising rising ris ris- ris ing market becomes a self fulfilling pro Conversely a little pessimism Inthe in inthe inthe the wrong places can produce exactly the reverse effect The moods that produce these waves of buying and selling arc are not always related to economic events Right Hight now for example the Watergate scandal is making many people feel uneasy Watergate Watergate Watergate Wa Wa- has absolutely nothing to do with the national economy unless w we want to togo togo togo go to the tile extreme of imagining an impeachment impeachment im attempt that ends in civil turmoil and what reasonable man would go to that extreme Nevertheless something like can trigger one of these swings mood and that eventually fly lly may have an effect on the economy ALL OF which leads me to conclude that in many ways big speculators are arc area arca a lot less sophisticated than the average citizen Expecting a pot not of gold at the end of every rainbow is not very realistic But nut neither Is it realistic to fear lear every bird Inthe sky is a threat to your ne new hat |