Dear Time-Reader: While you are reading this Man of the Year issue of TIME, our editors are preparing another annual feature for next week's issue: TIME'S year-end review of the U.S. economy.

The subject is a dramatic one because economics has been major news throughout 1954. As we have reported week after week, the economy of the U.S. adjusted to the "recession," moved successfully from the Korean war rate of spending to armed peace, continued to thrive and confound the "gloom peddlers" and to help support the defense structure of the entire free world. Even one of the new names for the cold war now has an economic ring: the era of "competitive coexistence" with Communism.

The purpose of the year-end reviews is to wrap up the economic developments of the entire year and project them into an estimate of what may be expected in the year to come. This is how some of our last year's predictions stood up against the news of 1954: we predicted a production of 5,500,000 autos; the final figure is 5,500,000. We said there would be 3,500,000 unemployed; the peak figure was 3,725,000. For refrigerators we estimated 3,500,000 units would be produced; 3,425,000 units were turned out. We expected a drop in the gross national product of not more than 5-10%; the actual figure was around 3%. Last year's story also told of the healthy prospects for the stock market. Last month (TIME. Dec. 6) we were able to report the story of the fabulous bull market of 1954.

Work on this year's review and economic estimate for 1955 got under way in November, under the direction of Senior Editor Joe Purtell. Associate Editor Osborn Elliott, writer of the story, and Jane Meyerhoff. the researcher assigned to the project, began drafting the first of the detailed queries that went out to TIME correspondents.

Correspondents George Bookman and Mary Elizabeth Fremd began working with Government agencies in Washington. From Seattle. Bob Shnayerson reported the burgeoning picture of the Northwest from sockeye salmon to the timber boom. The general condition of Midwest business was reported by George Harris in Chicago. Fred Collins reported the automotive story of Detroit. Cleveland's progress as a major automotive and chemical center, the uranium-stock boom in Salt Lake City, the new skyscraper skyline of Denver, were parts of the big story that began to flow in to our New York editorial offices.

By this week most of the material was in (the correspondents filed some 100,000 words of research), the writer and researcher had finished their own interviews, and the story is now being written.

Cordially yours,

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