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Show I WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS British Ask Special Loan Favors; Senate Rejects Economy Measure; Gi's Apply for War Risk Rebates (FDITOR'S NOTE : When opinions are expressed In these columns, thej are those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) Touched Off Probe f BRITISH LOAN: True to Form Even before the talks got fully underway, the trend of the discussion dis-cussion concerning British-American finance deals was becoming familiarly clear. THE PROBLEM was Britain's current financial crisis. The hope rested with U. S. procedure as it affects assistance. That the U. S. was thoroughly under the spell of British need and persuasion was shown In the statement that this government is hospitable to a proposal pro-posal to relax terms of the British loan pact. Under the current preliminary proposal, the U. S. would grant Britain permission to discriminate temporarily against American goods. Under the British loan pact, Britain got 3.75 billion dollars from the United States in return for a promise to treat American exports the same as those from British empire em-pire countries and Europe. Now, the British want that requirement re-quirement knocked out. Here's how the British plan would work: BRITAIN could, for instance, refuse re-fuse to license British buyers who want to buy American goods, but It could give "open licenses" to Britishers who, for example, wanted want-ed to import Italian goods. Since the Italian imports could be purchased pur-chased with sterling, this would save Britain dollars. Thus, with the monetary talks hardly underway, the British are asking a double burden of the American taxpayer money from the taxpayer to solve Britain's economic eco-nomic problem while at the same time setting up what amounts to a boycott of American Imports which will further cost the American taxpayer tax-payer if he happens to be one of the businessmen affected by the ruling. And, as the pattern seems to be, officials were reported favorable to the British proposal and symp-tomatically, symp-tomatically, too were planning to by-pass congress In Implementing that approvaL WATCHMAKING: Pioneered in U. S. Many Americans believe precision watchmaking Is an exclusively Swiss craft. Hence the small but lusty U.S. jeweled watch industry delights In pointing out that basic production methods now used by the Swiss were developed here a century ago, and that this "American "Amer-ican system" was adopted by the Swiss about 1875. Two years ago American craftsmen crafts-men proved they hadn't lost their ingenuity. An Elgin, 111., watch manufacturer introduced a rust-proof, rust-proof, acid-proof "durapower" mainspring which was called the most revolutionary advance in watchmaking since introduction of jeweled bearings 200 years ago. Now, by way of improving on perfection, the same factory announces an-nounces its technicians have learned how to squeeze every last ounce of power out of the wonder-alloy mainspring. Their method was to eliminate the conventional annealed arbor end of the spring, which had always been dead, unproductive weight. By pre-forming the arbor end, possible pos-sible only with the new alloy, they have put" the entire length of the spring to work. The result: A longer long-er run cf the watch between windings, wind-ings, hence a boon to lazy and forgetful for-getful thumbs and forefingers! DIVIDEND: Rebate for GI's The federal government, in one of the most amazingly simple forms ever to come out of Washington, Washing-ton, was receiving applications from World War II veterans for rebates on GI insurance premiums. REJOICING over the windfall, surprised and delighted with the simple application form, veterans were flooding the mails with their application cards. "It's like finding money on the street," one veteran declared. The dividend payments from national na-tional life insurance surplus funds are to be made to persons who hold or have held these policies. The average payment is estimated at $175. To be eligible for a rebate, the veteran must have had his service life insurance in force at least 90 days. The dividend would not be issued on any service life insurance issued after December 31, 1947. Cedrio Worth, special assistant to Navy Undersecretary D. A. Kimball, is shown as he appeared ap-peared before the house committee com-mittee investigating the B-36 bomber program. It was Worth who touched off the probe. He admitted writing the document containing serious charges against Defense Secretary Johnson and former air force secretary Symington. SPENDING: Slash Rejected The United States senate stood firm in support of President Truman's Tru-man's estimate of the financial needs of the nation for the next fiscal year. A move to force the President to slash federal spending to a level 5 to 10 per cent below his advance estimates was defeated. But the margin was only three votes. The economy amendment, had it carried, would have required the President to hold spending for. the current fiscal year some two billion to four billion dollars below the estimates he made last January. FOES of the proposed economy asserted it amounted to passing the economy buck to the President. . Supporters of the amendment answered an-swered that the President was in better position than anyone else to determine where to cut. After the decision on this Issue, the senate passed by a voice vote a 14.80 billion dollar appropriation bill to pay for national defense the cost of the army, navy and air force. This was 500 million less, however, than President Truman had asked. IN OPPOSING the economy rider, Sen. Scott Lucas, majority floor leader, said the amendment was a "political gesture," an attempt at-tempt to tell the President to do what congress lacked the courage to do. He asked if economy supporters sup-porters would "impeach him" if Mr. Truman failed to save as much as ordered. On the contrary, contended Senator Sen-ator McClellan of Arkansas, "it is sound legislation necessary in the public welfare, and failure to balance bal-ance the budget or hold the deficit to the minimum this amendment makes possible may well prove to be a stupid and dangerous blunder." TELEVISION: Color Must Wait For those who want color In television, there were four more years of waiting. That was the expressed conviction convic-tion of a television manufacturer, Benjamin Abrams. He said that while color television had been demonstrated successfully, "it still is in the laboratory stage and it will be years before it is available for the general public." He then es-. timated the waiting time as four years. Abrams said that at the present stage of development of color television, tele-vision, he did not believe manufacturers manufac-turers could turn out adapters for less than $300 to $500. And he estimated esti-mated a set built especially for color would cost $1,000. He declared present sets would not become obsolete even with the advent of color. But he said widespread wide-spread interest aroused by the FCC exploration of color television was causing some prospective customers custom-ers to postpone buying sets. Abrams took issue with charges that manufacturers are deliberately deliberate-ly holding back color video. He declared de-clared it would be in the manufacturers' manu-facturers' own interest to bring out color sets quickly if they could produce them at prices within range of the general public Summing up he said: "You can't push a button and have color television tele-vision appear over night." |