Tape 3 - untitled
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- | Hello. | 0:02 |
Instructional Dynamics Incorporated welcomes you | 0:03 | |
to this week's commentary on the current economic scene. | 0:06 | |
Reporting to you will be one of the nation's | 0:09 | |
leading economists, Professor Paul Samuelson, | 0:11 | |
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. | 0:14 | |
- | Good morning. | 0:17 |
I see that the world of international finance | 0:18 | |
is beginning to act up again. | 0:21 | |
- | Dr. Samuelson, exactly what do you mean by that? | 0:23 |
- | Well, let me mention two items | 0:26 |
that have come into the news. | 0:29 | |
First, the British balance of payments deficit | 0:32 | |
has definitely worsened in October. | 0:37 | |
Imports into Britain have risen, | 0:42 | |
and exports have declined after some more favorable | 0:45 | |
behavior during the summer months. | 0:50 | |
The question we're asking ourselves now is, | 0:53 | |
is this just something to be expected | 0:57 | |
in the way of relaxation after a very good performance? | 1:00 | |
Or is it perhaps an omen that Britain | 1:03 | |
is beginning to have a resumption of the problem | 1:07 | |
that she faced repeatedly, before she devalued the pound, | 1:10 | |
before she was forced to devalue the pound, | 1:15 | |
exactly one year ago. | 1:18 | |
How is the | 1:20 | |
post evaluation adjustment taking place in Britain? | 1:22 | |
The second question has to do with the franc. | 1:28 | |
There is a definite run against the franc | 1:32 | |
and a run by Frenchman out of the franc, | 1:35 | |
going on right now. | 1:37 | |
General de Gaulle has put the capstone on this, | 1:40 | |
because he has come out and denied | 1:43 | |
that the franc will be devalued. | 1:45 | |
And when the general does that, we all ask ourselves, | 1:48 | |
does this mean that in fact it will take place? | 1:51 | |
Let me try to analyze these two events. | 1:57 | |
First, | 2:04 | |
I think that the British situation | 2:05 | |
bears very careful watching. | 2:08 | |
There has been some adjustment since the devaluation. | 2:11 | |
But, to my mind, it's been a very slow, | 2:15 | |
and inadequate adjustment. | 2:19 | |
And I still have my fingers crossed as to whether | 2:22 | |
the British are out of the woods. | 2:25 | |
I heard the British Ambassador, who came up here to Boston | 2:28 | |
not very long ago, speak. | 2:30 | |
He had very comforting words. | 2:33 | |
He said, "It's true our deficit | 2:35 | |
"between imports and exports still prevails. | 2:38 | |
"But our order books are very good." | 2:41 | |
This is pie in the sky. | 2:44 | |
This is the old Herbert Hoover prosperity around the corner. | 2:45 | |
I'd like to see Britain turning that corner. | 2:49 | |
And, | 2:54 | |
I must say that the October figures | 2:56 | |
do not make one sanguine. | 2:59 | |
Now, I'm interested in this because | 3:01 | |
what happens to the British pound, | 3:03 | |
has definite relevance for what happens to the French franc, | 3:06 | |
and what happens to the French franc, | 3:09 | |
has definitely relevance to what might happen, | 3:11 | |
a little bit later, to the dollar. | 3:14 | |
Let's turn then to the franc. | 3:17 | |
At the beginning of this year, | 3:21 | |
not very many months ago, | 3:24 | |
France was an island of serenity | 3:27 | |
in the General de Gaulle's words. | 3:28 | |
France was riding very high. | 3:31 | |
France regarded herself as a surplus country, | 3:33 | |
not a deficit country, in international trade. | 3:36 | |
The French lectured us. | 3:39 | |
I can tell you it's a mighty hard dollar | 3:41 | |
to be an American, top political official. | 3:43 | |
And to have to go to Paris, | 3:46 | |
and have the French lecture you | 3:48 | |
on what constitutes financial soundness. | 3:50 | |
Given the record of the French over these many, many years. | 3:53 | |
It's no secret that the French have been | 3:57 | |
staging a bull raid on gold. | 4:02 | |
And we're doing that at the beginning of this year. | 4:05 | |
The French have a big, long position in gold. | 4:07 | |
They're goal is to double the price of gold. | 4:11 | |
And, being a surplus country, | 4:16 | |
they were in a good position | 4:19 | |
to create a great deal of trouble for the dollar. | 4:20 | |
And for international finance generally. | 4:24 | |
It's a new wind that blows nobody good. | 4:27 | |
And the April uprising | 4:30 | |
in the student's quarter in Paris, | 4:33 | |
which spread like wildfire into a general strike, | 4:36 | |
throughout all of France. | 4:39 | |
And which revealed that the island of serenity | 4:42 | |
was in fact, | 4:45 | |
a volcano of activity below the surface. | 4:48 | |
That has changed France's capacity | 4:52 | |
to meddle in international finance. | 4:56 | |
I think that it | 4:59 | |
has done the French economy | 5:02 | |
a very considerable amount of harm. | 5:05 | |
In the first place, | 5:07 | |
in order for de Gaulle to get the situation under control, | 5:09 | |
and it's interesting how the voters rallied | 5:13 | |
around to him. | 5:16 | |
When the alternative that appeared before their eyes, | 5:17 | |
was the know nothingness of | 5:20 | |
the new left. | 5:24 | |
The communists were as aghast, | 5:27 | |
as those on the right were. | 5:30 | |
The students had no thought out program. | 5:33 | |
Red Rudy may be a great orator, | 5:36 | |
who would do well in Berkeley. | 5:40 | |
And did well in the sore bun, | 5:43 | |
but he had no positive program for running the country. | 5:45 | |
And the French people rallied around de Gaulle. | 5:49 | |
But to go ahead to pay the price. | 5:52 | |
And part of the price was some very vague notions | 5:54 | |
of participation by the workers in management. | 5:58 | |
I don't know what that means. | 6:02 | |
De Gaulle doesn't know what that means. | 6:04 | |
We have a German precedent in which there are | 6:06 | |
very tame trade union leaders on the board of directors, | 6:10 | |
boards of directors of a number of the large corporations. | 6:15 | |
Doesn't mean anything. | 6:19 | |
And we don't know how seriously de Gaulle | 6:21 | |
intends this participatory democracy. | 6:24 | |
We do know that one of the reasons | 6:28 | |
why there was a split between Pompidou and de Gaulle. | 6:31 | |
Pompidou, the stalwart, who in fact won the election | 6:35 | |
for de Gaulle, and who was then renounced by his leader. | 6:39 | |
Well Pompidou was associated, | 6:43 | |
at least in the French mind, with the Rothschild interests, | 6:46 | |
took a very dim view of this participatory movement. | 6:51 | |
But in addition, and more concretely, | 6:57 | |
vast wage increases had to be promised to workers | 7:00 | |
as the price for this election. | 7:03 | |
It's hard to calculate what they are in percentage terms, | 7:05 | |
but surely 10% is not too | 7:08 | |
large of an estimate to make. | 7:14 | |
Now, if there's any way in the world to ruin | 7:16 | |
a modern, mixed economy. | 7:20 | |
It's by having, in a very short period of time | 7:22 | |
exorbitant increases in money wages, imposed by government. | 7:25 | |
This was Peron's secret weapon. | 7:31 | |
I mean by that, this is what ruined the Argentinian economy. | 7:35 | |
The same thing has happened in the Caribbean. | 7:39 | |
There is no economy in the world, | 7:42 | |
which, in a short period of time, | 7:45 | |
can raise money wages by 40%, and yet that | 7:47 | |
was what Peron tried to do. | 7:50 | |
Well now the French have not tried a 40% increase, | 7:51 | |
but it's at least a 10% increase. | 7:54 | |
And if therefore, the franc was pretty much at equilibrium. | 7:58 | |
Before the events of April and the summer, | 8:02 | |
it's doubtful whether the franc is still in equilibrium. | 8:05 | |
So there is good reason for Frenchman to be concerned. | 8:09 | |
And there is good reason for speculation against the franc. | 8:12 | |
I ran into a group in Los Angeles, | 8:17 | |
in my travels just this week, | 8:21 | |
who found that they could take a short position | 8:23 | |
against the franc, at a very favorable price. | 8:25 | |
And they will make money, and they'll make a lot money, | 8:30 | |
if there's even only a one to three probability | 8:32 | |
that the franc will be devalued. | 8:36 | |
Now, the devaluation of the dollar | 8:39 | |
is a very rare event, and very unlikely to happen. | 8:42 | |
It's not an event that takes place lightly. | 8:46 | |
But the French have a history, ever since World War I, | 8:49 | |
of devaluating at the slightest provocation. | 8:54 | |
The minute they feel some competitive disadvantage. | 8:57 | |
So, de Gaulle's reassurances they won't devalue, | 9:00 | |
can hardly be taken at face value. | 9:04 | |
There is however, one alternative | 9:06 | |
factor, that may be causing the weakness of the franc. | 9:10 | |
I have in mind the strength of the mark. | 9:15 | |
The German surplus is tremendous. | 9:18 | |
And the Germans don't seem to be able | 9:20 | |
to get rid of that surplus. | 9:22 | |
The result has been speculation | 9:25 | |
in the minds of financial people all over the world, | 9:28 | |
that the German Mark will be, not depreciated, | 9:31 | |
but will be appreciated, the reverse. | 9:35 | |
Just as the German mark was appreciated by 5%, | 9:38 | |
along with the Dutch guilder, in early 1961. | 9:42 | |
Well, there's a lot of French money, going out of francs | 9:46 | |
and into the German mark. | 9:50 | |
I don't know whether the mark will be appreciated. | 9:53 | |
I can only | 9:57 | |
weigh the evidence on one side or the other. | 9:59 | |
We have announcements that it will not. | 10:01 | |
What we do know is, | 10:03 | |
that it's not politically popular inside of Germany | 10:05 | |
to appreciate the mark. | 10:08 | |
The 5% appreciation of the mark and the guilder in 1961 | 10:11 | |
was one of the | 10:16 | |
best explicit economic acts by governments in this decade. | 10:20 | |
But instead of the people of those countries | 10:26 | |
looking back upon those incidents with great satisfaction, | 10:29 | |
that they saw their duty and they did it, | 10:32 | |
and they found their duty pleasant. | 10:34 | |
Instead, I'm told these are very unpopular historical acts. | 10:36 | |
If the weakness of the franc is just due | 10:46 | |
to speculation on the mark's appreciating, | 10:50 | |
and if we learn in a month or two, | 10:54 | |
that the mark is not going to appreciate, | 10:56 | |
then the French franc situation could improve | 10:59 | |
almost as rapidly and remarkably as it has deteriorated. | 11:01 | |
But I think it, goes a little bit deeper than that. | 11:05 | |
Most Americans, of course, are not engaged | 11:09 | |
in speculating in foreign exchange. | 11:12 | |
The late John Maynard Keynes, when he was a young man | 11:16 | |
in his 1930s, made a fortune by such speculations. | 11:20 | |
But, that's a side show as far as we're concerned. | 11:25 | |
The reason that I'm interested in the matter, | 11:28 | |
is this is one world. | 11:31 | |
And, if the British had to devalue again, | 11:34 | |
there would be such uneasiness created by that event, | 11:38 | |
that there would certainly be a bear raid | 11:43 | |
against the dollar. | 11:46 | |
I don't say it would topple the dollar, | 11:47 | |
but I do say that it would stretch our defenses, | 11:49 | |
in defense of the present parody of the dollar. | 11:55 | |
This brings me to | 12:00 | |
our own belts payments. | 12:03 | |
I've nothing new to report in this regard. | 12:06 | |
We still find that our exports are languishing | 12:09 | |
in comparison with our imports. | 12:15 | |
I don't mean by that, that our imports on goods and services | 12:17 | |
vastly exceed our exports. | 12:21 | |
Such a situation has been typical of Britain, | 12:24 | |
and of many countries. | 12:27 | |
But, what I do mean is, | 12:29 | |
that they are so close together, that we're in trouble, | 12:31 | |
because we should have a substantial private export surplus, | 12:35 | |
in order to finance our Vietnam War activities. | 12:41 | |
And in order to finance the voluntary private investment, | 12:45 | |
which American corporations want to do abroad. | 12:49 | |
This brings me up to the subject of | 12:53 | |
what the President-elect Mr. Nixon and his team | 12:57 | |
are likely to do about the international situation. | 13:00 | |
But before I go into that, I perhaps ought to | 13:03 | |
join in the great game that is pre-occupying the nation | 13:07 | |
at this moment. | 13:11 | |
Who will be Nixon's team? | 13:13 | |
Which economic experts will he turn to? | 13:16 | |
As I speak at this moment, the only appointments | 13:21 | |
that have been announced, | 13:25 | |
have been administrative appointments. | 13:26 | |
And so, it's still open season for | 13:29 | |
reasoned calculations and speculations on this topic. | 13:34 | |
- | Professor Samuelson, as it stands right now, | 13:39 |
could you tell me who the dark horses are? | 13:41 | |
And who perhaps the favorites are in this race | 13:44 | |
for the administrative posts | 13:47 | |
on Mr. Nixon's economic cabinet? | 13:49 | |
- | Needless to say, I'm not an insider on this matter. | 13:51 |
So I feel perfectly free to gossip and to | 13:55 | |
consider all possibilities. | 14:00 | |
I should add that most of my information comes, | 14:02 | |
as Will Rogers said, from reading the newspaper. | 14:07 | |
And so if I pass on a rumor, | 14:11 | |
that's still makes it a rumor. | 14:14 | |
The important man that I've been watching, | 14:18 | |
is Arthur F. Burns of Columbia University, | 14:22 | |
and chairman of the | 14:27 | |
eminent National Bureau of Economic Research. | 14:33 | |
Arthur F. Burns made his reputation as a scholar, | 14:37 | |
and it is a very high reputation, | 14:40 | |
as a student of business cycles. | 14:42 | |
He was associated with the late Wesley Mitchell in | 14:44 | |
what has been one of the most important | 14:49 | |
American enterprises in economics, | 14:51 | |
study of the business cycle. | 14:53 | |
It's no secret that the business cycle, | 14:57 | |
although it is not a thing of the past, | 14:59 | |
like the passenger pigeon, or the Dodo bird, | 15:01 | |
or the dinosaur, | 15:05 | |
is nevertheless much tamed. | 15:07 | |
And being an active man, Arthur Burns has turned | 15:10 | |
his attention to the whole range | 15:13 | |
of macroeconomic questions. | 15:16 | |
As I've studied Mr. Nixon, and as I've studied Burns, | 15:20 | |
it seems to me that their thinking | 15:24 | |
goes very parallel in many ways. | 15:27 | |
I think that there are extremists | 15:31 | |
in the Nixon team. | 15:33 | |
But I don't think that by temperament, | 15:36 | |
a cautious man like Nixon is likely to give them much rope. | 15:40 | |
So, | 15:44 | |
I face this problem. | 15:45 | |
Where could Burns be in the government? | 15:47 | |
Burns is now in his early 1960s, | 15:51 | |
he was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. | 15:54 | |
It's unlikely it will be anti-climactic | 15:58 | |
for such a man to accept that same post. | 16:01 | |
Indeed, the name one always here is Paul McCracken | 16:05 | |
of the University of Michigan Business School. | 16:07 | |
A very good man in my judgment, for that post | 16:10 | |
of chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. | 16:13 | |
I can't quite see Burns being made | 16:17 | |
the secretary of treasury. | 16:20 | |
Not that he might not make a very good | 16:24 | |
secretary of the treasury, but he is an academic man, | 16:26 | |
he is an economist, and it's not part | 16:30 | |
of our national style in political life, typically. | 16:32 | |
To appoint experts like that, | 16:36 | |
to a cabinet post of that sort. | 16:40 | |
Where does that leave him? | 16:45 | |
Well, I've encountered some very interesting speculation | 16:47 | |
just running around the cocktail circuit in Washington, | 16:53 | |
and I'll just pass it along. | 16:57 | |
Because, | 17:00 | |
it solves my problem, | 17:02 | |
where I could picture him. | 17:05 | |
The gossip is that William McChesney Martin, Junior, | 17:09 | |
the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, | 17:13 | |
who has been there, lo, these many years. | 17:17 | |
And who is a Democrat. | 17:20 | |
And, whose term must expire, | 17:22 | |
and who can not be reappointed by 1970, | 17:28 | |
that Martin will be asked to be secretary of treasury. | 17:33 | |
This would be that bipartisan movement | 17:37 | |
that Mr. Nixon spoke of, as he tries to lead the country | 17:39 | |
towards reconciliation, and towards consensus. | 17:43 | |
Martin is a Democrat. | 17:49 | |
Now, Mr. Dooley, | 17:50 | |
would not regard Martin as much of a Democrat, | 17:54 | |
but that is his affiliation. | 17:59 | |
And, if he is a Democrat, he certainly is the kind of | 18:02 | |
Democrat, that Wall Street would like to see in that office. | 18:05 | |
And he is the kind of a Democrat that the | 18:09 | |
gnomes of Zurich, would like to see in that office. | 18:11 | |
This does not do him justice. | 18:14 | |
He's a better man than may seem to be implied | 18:16 | |
by those remarks. | 18:20 | |
But this leaves an opening at the Federal Reserve. | 18:21 | |
And it seems to me that a person | 18:25 | |
with Arthur Burns' qualifications, scholarly qualifications, | 18:27 | |
might very well, within the American | 18:33 | |
political style of life, | 18:37 | |
be named by a man like Richard Nixon | 18:39 | |
as the chairman of the Board of Governors | 18:42 | |
of the Federal Reserve system. | 18:45 | |
That is a very powerful position. | 18:47 | |
Now, | 18:50 | |
let's | 18:51 | |
review what is one to think about that appointment, | 18:54 | |
if in fact it were made? | 19:01 | |
I must say, the possibility that it would be made | 19:04 | |
has changed the betting odds in my view, | 19:08 | |
on the Nixon determination | 19:11 | |
to try to break the back of inflation | 19:15 | |
by engineering a contrived, temporary slow down | 19:20 | |
in the American economy, | 19:26 | |
for the year say 1969. | 19:27 | |
The temptation for Mr. Nixon, | 19:32 | |
is to follow advice that has been given to him | 19:36 | |
by such bankers as George Moore | 19:38 | |
of the First National Citibank. | 19:40 | |
And by | 19:42 | |
a number of these business executives who met | 19:45 | |
at the Business Advisory Council last month, | 19:48 | |
and their business economists. | 19:52 | |
Which is, in 1969, let the rate of unemployment grow. | 19:55 | |
Then, by 1970 when the congressional elections come along | 20:02 | |
you can have the economy on an upbeat. | 20:07 | |
And, it won't hurt you politically, | 20:10 | |
but it will have helped our balance of payments, | 20:12 | |
it will have broken the back of inflationary expectations. | 20:15 | |
Now. | 20:19 | |
I have been writing in my Newsweek columns, and elsewhere, | 20:21 | |
that I don't think that Mr. Nixon has the | 20:26 | |
courage to do this. | 20:31 | |
I don't think he has the political solidarity | 20:33 | |
in congress to do this. | 20:38 | |
But, | 20:41 | |
since we know that in these next four years, | 20:42 | |
the Republicans are going to attach | 20:46 | |
much more importance to Federal Reserve policy. | 20:48 | |
Because, they believe more than most of the Democrats | 20:51 | |
have done, in the | 20:56 | |
money supply theory of macroeconomics. | 20:59 | |
That money growth is the prime determinate | 21:03 | |
of what's going to happen to corporate profits, | 21:07 | |
and what's going to happen to money, Gross National Product. | 21:10 | |
Of what's going to happen to Real Gross National Product. | 21:13 | |
Of what's going to happen to the price level, | 21:16 | |
of what's going to happen to profits. | 21:18 | |
Believing this, it's very important for Mr. Nixon to have | 21:21 | |
an instrument of control in the independent Federal Reserve. | 21:28 | |
And Mr. Burns, Dr. Burns, Professor Burns, | 21:32 | |
could be that instrument. | 21:38 | |
Personally, and I speak now as a | 21:42 | |
middle of the road, new frontiersman, | 21:47 | |
if you can believe that, I, | 21:50 | |
look with some misgivings upon this tactic. | 21:54 | |
And because I know that Dr. Burns | 21:58 | |
is a man of strong principle, I look with even more | 22:01 | |
misgivings upon it, because I think he might | 22:03 | |
just stand his ground and attempt this ploy. | 22:07 | |
But, it's not for me here to editorialize as to what | 22:14 | |
I want or don't want. | 22:18 | |
Although I occasionally lapse into that. | 22:20 | |
It is for me to try to appraise the betting odds. | 22:24 | |
And what this means for interest rates, | 22:27 | |
what I means for the stock market, what it means for | 22:29 | |
American business generally. | 22:32 | |
And, I've done a little rethinking and I now | 22:35 | |
have marked up the probability | 22:40 | |
that we will have a little bout of stagnation. | 22:42 | |
I won't say deflation, but a movement towards less inflation | 22:50 | |
because of the possibility that Arthur Burns, | 22:54 | |
will be in the, | 22:57 | |
in the Federal Reserve. | 22:59 | |
Now when I say I mark up that probability, | 23:00 | |
remember, this is all speculation. | 23:03 | |
And, I mark up the probability say from 30% odds, | 23:05 | |
30-70, | 23:13 | |
to 35, not to 50-50, and certainly not to 90-10. | 23:15 | |
Let me comment upon my use of language. | 23:22 | |
I hope I offend nobody, when I use the | 23:26 | |
odds from the novelty of Las Vegas. | 23:30 | |
I'm simply trying to indicate the | 23:32 | |
degree of likelihood that'll prevail. | 23:36 | |
I also hope I will offend nobody | 23:39 | |
by my use of specific numbers. | 23:43 | |
People can argue that economics is an art and not a science. | 23:47 | |
And I agree. | 23:51 | |
People can argue that all we can have in this game | 23:52 | |
is qualitative insights, and not quantitative insights. | 23:56 | |
And in a measure, I agree. | 24:00 | |
Qualitatively I agree, but quantitatively | 24:03 | |
I don't fully agree with that statement. | 24:06 | |
Let me make clear therefore, that when I use odds | 24:10 | |
like 35 to 65, it doesn't mean that I have great confidence | 24:13 | |
that 35-65 is a better number than 30-70. | 24:19 | |
But, it's the only way | 24:24 | |
that I have to indicate to you, | 24:27 | |
the degree of my qualitative belief. | 24:30 | |
It's because I am not | 24:33 | |
able, precisely, to reduce things to a science, | 24:36 | |
that I must use the numerical language of art. | 24:39 | |
It's in that sense that I'm using probability. | 24:45 | |
- | Getting back to the economy, Professor Samuelson, | 24:48 |
are there any signs of fiscal restraint yet, | 24:51 | |
showing up in the economy? | 24:54 | |
- | Up to this moment, in the middle of November, | 24:56 |
very few such signs, actually. | 25:01 | |
Most signals are still go, go. | 25:05 | |
There are, however, beginning to be perhaps | 25:08 | |
here and there, | 25:12 | |
little bits of evidence of a weakness. | 25:13 | |
Let me mention, for example, that October retail sales | 25:16 | |
were down a bit. | 25:22 | |
The automobile sales, which of course have been humming, | 25:23 | |
finally in the first 10 days of November, | 25:30 | |
do for the first time, begin to reveal | 25:35 | |
a little bit of weakness. | 25:37 | |
We were going at about a nine million annual rate | 25:39 | |
of cars sales. | 25:44 | |
And, in these first 10 days, | 25:47 | |
we've gone down to eight million. | 25:50 | |
Now, I don't think that's | 25:54 | |
enough of an oscillation really to | 25:57 | |
be worth lingering over. | 26:02 | |
These things go up and they go down. | 26:05 | |
If it begins to spread in other directions, | 26:08 | |
then we will have something. | 26:10 | |
I still think that the fourth quarter | 26:14 | |
of the Gross National Product | 26:18 | |
is going to show about a 15 billion increase. | 26:20 | |
That is less than the third quarter, | 26:27 | |
which was almost 18 billion. | 26:30 | |
And the third quarter was less than the second quarter, | 26:34 | |
which was 22 billion almost. | 26:37 | |
So, there is a little bit of easing off. | 26:41 | |
But this isn't, still the amount of easing off that | 26:45 | |
had been confidently predicted at the time, | 26:50 | |
of July, when the tax bill was initiated | 26:55 | |
by Mr. Mills and passed by the congress. | 26:59 | |
I suspect that there will be less inventory accumulation | 27:03 | |
in the fourth quarter. | 27:08 | |
Instead of having an annual rate of inventory | 27:11 | |
accumulation of seven and half billions, | 27:14 | |
we may have only five billion. | 27:17 | |
But it still looks to be the case | 27:21 | |
that in the first quarter of next year, | 27:24 | |
and perhaps in the second quarter, | 27:28 | |
we will have the greatest amount of weakness. | 27:30 | |
It still looks to be the case that in the, | 27:34 | |
starting in the third quarter of 1969, | 27:39 | |
the economy will definitely be on the upbeat. | 27:41 | |
The McGraw-Hill survey has come in | 27:45 | |
of businessmens' intentions to invest | 27:47 | |
in plant and equipment, and it is up. | 27:51 | |
It's an 8% figure. | 27:54 | |
It's hard to believe, but | 27:58 | |
it was hard to believe the Gallup polls in some cases. | 28:01 | |
Although we know that these surveys | 28:04 | |
are more fallible actually, than the Gallup polls are. | 28:07 | |
I'll be talking next time about what seems to me | 28:12 | |
to be some of the incompatibilities of policy | 28:16 | |
that face the new administration. | 28:20 | |
We know that election rhetoric can't be taken too seriously. | 28:23 | |
And I don't want to dwell, | 28:26 | |
and indulge in any recrimination in this matter. | 28:29 | |
Most of the incompatibilities of policy | 28:32 | |
that I'm gonna comment about next time, | 28:35 | |
would also have faced the Democrats if they had won. | 28:38 | |
Well, sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. | 28:41 | |
Enough for now. | 28:44 | |
- | Thank you Professor Paul Samuelson | 28:46 |
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. | 28:48 | |
If you have questions or comments, or suggestions | 28:51 | |
for topics you would like discussed in this series, | 28:54 | |
please send them to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 28:57 | |
166 East Superior Street, Chicago, 60611. | 29:01 |
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