COSTLIER BEEF is in sight; choice grades soared in Chicago stockyards to $25.50 per cwt., highest since May 1955. With the 13 major feeding states reporting 10% fewer cattle on feed lots than a year ago and shipments down to a two-month low, stockyard prices climbed $2.50 in three days.

NEXT YEAR'S AUTOS will ride on smaller tires as all Big Three plus American Motors switch from the 15-in. wheel to 14-in. Chief reason: trend to lower cars, which will see some '57 models dropped more than 5 in. from '56. New tires will be 17% wider than present models so more tire will touch road, provide more traction.

NUCLEAR CRUISER will be built by Bethlehem Steel's Quincy, Mass. yard. Navy's first A-powered surface ship, part of its --56-'57 building program (TIME, May 21), will cost around $87.5 million, be a guided-missile vessel.

FLY-BY-NIGHT PROMOTERS will find it harder to float stock under new SEC rules. Commission, which formerly exempted stock issues of $300,000 or less from its full-disclosure regulations, will withhold exemption from all brokers with record of SEC violations, require more detailed information on small issues of new companies that showed no profit in one of two previous years.

SUIT AGAINST G.M. is planned by Greyhound, automaker's best bus customer. Greyhound charges that 570 out of 1,000 double-deck, air-conditioned Scenicruiser buses purchased from G.M. for $53 million developed lubrication troubles.

LARGEST SHOPPING CENTER in the South, seven miles from downtown Houston, will open Sept. 20. The $20 million, 60-acre Gulfgate has 60 air-conditioned stores, parking space for 5,000 cars, is expected to gross $60 million the first year.

IRON-CURTAIN SHIPMENTS by U.S. firms are running double the 1955 rate. The Commerce Department has issued $12.7 million worth of export licenses for the year's first half v. $13.4 million for all of 1955. New items licensed include farm machinery, cold-rolled steel sheets for auto bodies, railway-car air-conditioning systems.

PROMOTER LOUIS WOLFSON, who built Merritt-Chapman & Scott into a $135 million diversified corporation, is beginning to prune back. He plans to sell a profitable subsidiary, Newport Steel (1955 earnings: $626,287), to Chicago's Acme Steel Co. Previously sold Merritt-Chapman subsidiaries in '56: Nesco Division (house-wares), Utah Radio Products, Shoup Voting Machine Corp.

BIG OIL DEAL involving sale of Southern Production Co.'s oil and gas properties to Sinclair Oil is in the works. If Southern Production stockholders agree, company will sell out for $42.5 million cash, plus an additional $65 million out of production over the next ten years.

WOOL COMEBACK is cutting U.S. stocks to lowest point in years as demand outstrips production. Low wool prices and reaction against synthetic fabrics, whose novelty is wearing off, has upped wool consumption 20% above 1954 low point, 10% above last year.

PERSONAL DEBTS are owed by 63 % of all U.S. family units, according to a Federal Reserve Board survey. About 9% owe on mortgages alone, another 17% have both mortgage and other debts, some 37% owe nonmprtgage debts only. Of the 20% of families who owe money on cars, one-fifth report repayment periods of 31 to 36 months; one-third 25 to 30 months; two-fifths 24 months or less.

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