Facts & Figures

Banking. Recession-wary businessmen, who are doing their best to trim inventories, have also cut back their borrowings. For the twelfth week in a row, business loans from banks declined, the Federal Reserve Board reported. The latest drop, $277 million, was the biggest weekly decline in history. But total outstanding loans of $14.6 billion were still $197 million higher than last year at this time.

Prices. Two more auto companies joined the price-cutting parade. Hudson Motor Car Co. shaved list prices by $15 to $100 (1% to 3.4%) in its first postwar reduction, and Britain's Austin Motor Co. Ltd. lopped off $75 to $200. Following its recent auto cuts, General Motors Corp. cut prices 5% on diesel locomotives ($5,000 to $8,200 a unit), the first general price reduction in the industry since 1939. Said G.M.: "Unfilled [diesel] orders are at the highest point in history."

Autos. For the second time in a year, Buffalo's Playboy Motor Car Corp. hopefully offered a stock issue, for the second time sadly withdrew it. Reason: no sale. At week's end, Playboy, which never got beyond pilot-model production of the small car it had hoped to sell for $1,000, filed to reorganize under the Bankruptcy Act.

Movies. At a televised meeting in Manhattan, stockholders of Paramount Pictures, Inc. approved separation of the company's motion-picture and theater divisions, as provided by the consent decree between Paramount and the Department of Justice (TIME, March 7). As of next Jan. 1, President Barney Balaban will be head of a new Paramount Pictures, Inc., and Leonard Goldenson will become president of United Paramount Theaters, Inc., operating or owning 1,424 movie theaters.

Earnings. Cleveland's once-booming war baby, Jack & Heintz Precision Industries, Inc., turned in a $2.9 million loss in 1948. President Kenneth G. Donald, onetime efficiency engineer who was brought in last year to rescue the company, reported that sales of fractional horsepower electric motors had slipped badly. He had high hopes for a new product: a gasoline motor for bicycles.

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