BUSINESS IN 1955 will break all records, with gross national product hitting $375 billion, some 5% above last year and 3% above 1953's alltime peak, predicts Roy Reierson, chief economist for Manhattan's Bankers Trust Co.

NATIONAL DEBT LIMIT will have to be pushed up this year, possibly to $285 billion, $4 billion higher than the current statutory limit, which expires June 30. At current rates of spending, the debt will fall between $281 and $285 billion by the end of the year. President Eisenhower will probably ask Congress to boost the limit by the end of this month. But this time, he will merely set forth anticipated income, outgo and deficit, leave it up to Congress to work out its own ceiling.

FIRST NUCLEAR REACTOR to be sent abroad by the U.S. will be sold to Switzerland this August. The U.S. will set up a small experimental "swimming pool" reactor, i.e., one immersed in water as both shield and coolant, rated at 10 kw., in Geneva to demonstrate the peacetime uses of atomic energy before a United Nations conference, then let Switzerland have the reactor, plus 55 Ibs. of nuclear material, when the meeting is over.

MEDIUM-PRICED FORD will be developed by Ford's New Products Division. Industrial Designer George W. Walker, who designed Ford's pace-setting 1949 model, has been named vice president in charge of styling, responsible for producing the new series to compete with Chrysler, Oldsmobile and Buick in the $3,100 to $3,500 price range, midway between Ford's most expensive Mercury and its cheapest Lincoln.

MEAT FORECAST has been pushed up another notch by the Agriculture Department, which now estimates that outtmt will hit a record 26,250,000.000 Ibs., about 3% more than last year and nearly 250 million Ibs. ahead of earlier predictions. As a result, beef prices will drop slightly, while pork, now 20% to 30% below last year's levels, will stay about the same.

PAY-AS-YOU-SEE TV poll conducted by the Federal Communications Commission is running heavily in favor of the idea, sponsored by three companies (Zenith, Skiatron, International Telemeter Corp.). In the three months since FCC invited "public advice" on whether it should permit toll TV, it has received nearly 10,000 letters, telegrams and postcards from viewers, with all but 1,500 approving the plan.

DEFENSE CONTRACT PROFITS will come under heavy fire from congressional Democrats, who plan an investigation by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. However, the investigators have little evidence to date of profiteering. The Renegotiation Board, whose predecessors collected $11 billion in excess profits after World War II, has inspected 15,700 cases since Korea, found only 3,000 with excess profits amounting to $470 million.

INLAND STEEL, seventh biggest U.S. steelmaker, with 1954 sales of $533 million, will soon launch a multimillion dollar expansion program to boost both its steel and coke capacity. Major item will be a battery of 87 coke ovens at its Indiana Harbor works.

OLEOMARGARINE MAKERS are in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission over misleading advertising. For the first time under a new amendment to the FTC Act, the commission has ordered two firms (Manhattan's E. F. Drew & Co., Philadelphia's Reddi-Spred Corp.) to stop giving the impression that their vegetable margarines are dairy products--by ads such as "Churned to delicate, sweet, creamy goodness," "The same day-to-day freshness which characterizes our other dairy products."

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