TOP Government economists were called to a White House meeting last week to report on the business outlook. Their conclusion: a good chance of a strong fall pickup, and no general business letdown this year or in the early months of '54.

SECRETARY of the Treasury George Humphrey, worried about criticism of his tight-money policy, will soon make a major speech defending it. He will argue that higher interest rates benefit the many rather than the few because there are more moneylenders than borrowers in the U.S. Among the moneylenders Humphrey includes anyone who has insurance in a mutual company or has money in a pension fund which invests it.

RAILROADER Robert Young's "Train X," the low-slung, speedy (up to 150 m.p.h.) train which Young thinks will cut costs drastically and transform passenger travel, will soon be built. The train will have shorter cars, a far lower center of gravity than conventional trains. To build it, Young's Chesapeake & Ohio is teaming up with the New York Central, which is 10% owned by the C. & O. The deal is the first evidence of cooperation between C. & O. and the Central, in which Bob Young thinks he should have a directorship.

PHILIP Morris is flirting with the idea of putting a new filter-tip cigarette on the market. The lure: booming sales of filter cigarettes, which account for about 2% of all cigarette sales and are expanding fast.

POCKET Books, Inc. is getting ready to invade the phonograph-record business in September with a line of hit tunes on 7-inch, 45-and regular 78-r.p.m. plastic records that will sell for 35-c-.

US. Steel, which like other steelmakers gets most of its manganese (needed to harden steel) from foreign-controlled sources abroad, has a big stake in a huge new manganese deposit of its own. The deposit, estimated at 50 million tons, was discovered in French Equatorial Africa by a French development company (Comilog), which is 49% owned by Big Steel. U.S. Steel will help dig the ore, lay a railroad to bring it 250 miles to the seacoast.

CANADA Dry's advertising agency, out to meet the competition of Schweppe's quinine water (TIME, June 8), issued a calypso-beat song, Keep Cool, to the disk jockeys and jukeboxes. Sample lines:

It ain't no sin to let the fun begin,

A-sippin' Quinac and a little gin.

REYNOLDS Metals and Kaiser Aluminum are likely to bow out of the Air Force's ill-fated heavy press program (TIME, June 29), and Harvey Machine Co. may do so too. Reason: the Air Force, which was to supply funds to construct buildings to house the machines, has shifted the expense to the operators. If all three companies abandon the program, the Air Force will be left with only ten presses of the 20 it had once planned, and only six companies to run them.

WESTINGHOUSE will soon take a big step to strengthen its sales in the Middle East. With the help of Lebanese capital, it will build a plant to assemble refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines and other electrical appliances at Beirut. By manufacturing locally, Westinghouse hopes to undersell British, German and U.S. competitors who must pay high shipping and customs costs to import finished products into Arab countries.

FLOYD Odium's Atlas Corp., big dealer in "special situations," has bought 500,000 shares of William Zeckendorf's Webb & Knapp, and has an option to buy 500,000 more shares by January. Odium insists that it is only a "routine small transaction," but Wall Streeters speculated that it might mean Odium is backing Zeckendorf in some new ventures.

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