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Show Economic Highlights Industrial News Review Happenings that Affect the Dinner Pails, Dividend Checks and Tax Bills of Every Individual. National Nation-al and International Problems Inseparable In-separable from Local Welfare. Under present business conditions, no news is apt to be good news. While business is showing no particular improvement, im-provement, the decline has apparently apparent-ly been interrupted and a measure of stability reached. It is hoped that political po-litical moves during the next few months will have a helpful effect on business in the future. Last summer the country underwent a time of financial fin-ancial liquidation with strengthening of our financial structure. This was followed by a similar period of commodity com-modity liquidation, which seems now coming to an end. The next step will doubtless be further commercial liquidation li-quidation and readjustment to put many of our industries on a basis to show earnings in normal times. oOo Since 1C.29 ..here has been a decline in foreign markets for American agricultural ag-ricultural products but last year the decline showed a tendency to slacken. It is believed that once the problems of disturbed monetary systems and trade barriers are partially settled, the trend will be reversed and larger quantities of our farm products will reach foreign lands. Domestic demand for products is naturally awaiting industrial in-dustrial recovery. Even a slight change for the better in business generally, gen-erally, should cause marked improvement improve-ment in farm markets. oOo Potential bank credit is the equivalent equiv-alent of the money existing in the country. At the moment, this credit supply is unusually large. Member banks of the Federal Reserve have $600,000,000 of excess reserves, and it is stated that these banks could expand their credits by $9,000,000,000 without borrowing from the federal treasury. Interest rates on money are at unprecedented low levels. oOo Latest reports on major industries show: Motion Picture A new alignment of the motion picture industry is forecast, fore-cast, with Rockefeller interests a large factor. The industry's principal difficulty is in real estate carrying charges on theatres built during boom years. Textiles Future has hopeful appearance, ap-pearance, with cloth demand steady. Oil Refmers breaking even, despite des-pite low gasoline prices. Cigarettes December showed gain in consumption, as compared with decline de-cline in most other months of 1932. Tires Price-cutting has broken out again, with resulting disturbance. Meat Packing Outlook good for moderate profit during coming fiscal year. Automobile Sales continue to improve, im-prove, with January well over a year ago. It is interesting to note that price reductions have resulted from improved efficiency, and not by reductions reduc-tions in dealer margins or in quality. oOo . In an effort to check rapidly diminishing dimin-ishing passenger revenues, the railroads rail-roads of the country are planning various classes of rate reductions designed de-signed to bring back lost business. February 1, western roads made marked passenger fare cut. The seasonal sea-sonal decline in freight car loadings is showing a tendency to moderate, as compared with the same period a year ago. With an estimated $1,500,000,000 at stake In the form of mortgaged debt in nine states, mid-west farmers are sticking' resolutely to their campaign against foreclosure sales. In a growing grow-ing number of instances, groups of farmers have prevented open auctions of properties and bought them in at extremely low figures. Various public . - officials are tending to aid in preventing prevent-ing foreclosures, oQo The exodus from city to the farm in direct opposition to the trend of a few years ago-has swelled the farm population to 32,000,000, close to the J91Q peak. Some farm communities object, as new school facilities and relief re-lief funds thus become necessary, However, a. compensating factor is that a wider market for farms is provided pro-vided oOo A decidedly better feeling is noticeable notice-able in Australia, with government and private finances improved. Chinese Chi-nese industries are active, and a better bet-ter yeftr is forecast. Wholesale prices rising in Japan. Improvement in several sev-eral industries js noticed in France, with, the crop situation promising; Favorable factors in Norway are improved im-proved shipping, better crop returns and, firmer prices. |