On the Market
Sir: Why was President Kennedy so quick to act regarding the economic effects of steel prices, and so slow to even recognize the stock market decline? If an economy is to be controlled, then the power that controls must at least be consistent--or is it O.K. to lose money but not O.K. to make money?
JOHN C. ZACHARIS Claremont, Calif.
Sir:
How cleverly your cover artist, Robert Vickrey, concealed the unhappy face with tears dropping from dollar-sign eyes in the June 8 issue. This was truly a remarkable stroke of genius in a magazine cover. I had read the issue before I even knew who was on the cover, I was so engrossed in that background work.
MRS. JOHN DAVIDSON
Boston
Sir:
Jack Kennedy has found an asset to America in Academic Economist Heller: 8 billion more in debt (temporarily, of course), gold reserves still declining, and the market down 150 points. With such an impressively "minus" record, I can hardly wait for the new tax reforms.
Now that our energetic leader has "this country moving again," it would be nice to try a forward gear.
EDWARD J. O'NEILL 'University of Cincinnati Cincinnati
Sir:
During the 1960 campaign, President Kennedy repeatedly promised to "get this country moving again." Last week a great many U.S. voters and investors discovered rather belatedly and painfully that the vehicle he had used to implement this movement was a toboggan.
MERLIN E. WOESNER, M.D. Glendale, Calif.
Sir: Congratulations on your timely article on the bear market. If the New Frontier has its way, this will, however, never happen again.
The Government would insure investors against losses by guaranteeing to purchase securities at parity--the 1962 highs. The certificates will be stored in Billie Sol Estes' cotton warehouses. Called STOC-CARE, the scheme will be a part of the social security program and cost only $15 a year.
ROBERT R. BEAUDETTE Oradell, N.J.
Sir: TIME sure wept for the brave bulls.
Here they were gorging greedily on inflation until their grain was cut off. These were the privileged 8% entitled to buy 100 shares of Anything, Inc. and live happily on dividends ever after.
It all depends on whose bull is being gored.
We hired hands who have too much security but no securities still like that conservative old bromide that the world--and the stock market--doesn't owe anybody a living.
TOM PAYNE Wilmette, 111.
Sir:
I happen to be one of the many stockholders who lost some money in this market. But I can hardly blame President Kennedy or anybody else for my loss. Most of the people, including myself, wanted to make a "fast buck," but it just doesn't work out that way.
By the brokers' own admission, prices of stocks were much too high, so why all the excitement when prices fall? Nobody is forced into the market.
FERNAND A. BAUM Little Neck, N.Y.
Sir:
The article on the stock market was excellent.
FRANK GREENWALL Chairman
National Starch & Chemical Corp.
New York City Sir: Your statement "Itek ... became [a] glamor stock even while . . . still operating in the red" [June 1] is not factual. Itek, founded in September 1957, initially had three profitable years, during which its sales moved from scratch to some $30 million per year, and during which it fully justified investor confidence. Itek's fourth year ended "in the red," largely as a result of unanticipated problems, now being solved.
Your cover story on the market, however good its "gross message," missed one major point: a company pioneering new fields, based on good new ideas and unique people, is worth "more than average." Look at the list of major corporations in existence in 1900 --how many still exist today? Similarly, to be sure, many "glamor" companies being founded today will not survive the next few decades. However, for the survivors, $1 invested today will be worth more than $1 invested in a slower-growing, "established" company, even after speculative excesses have been subtracted. Itek intends to be one of the survivors, perhaps one of the leaders, in the new field of Information Technology, which it has helped pioneer.
T. F. WALKOWICZ
Director Itek Corp. New York City
Sir:
Re your June 1 cover: Shouldn't the bear have had the bull by the horns?
(MRS.) MARY CALL East Lansing, Mich.
Sir:
Cover Artist Chaliapin has pictorially represented a contention that I hold: investment is a blood sport.
DENIS P. MARTIN Sydney, Australia
Sir:
The cover on the June 1 issue has so much force of action and color that I find it most compelling.
Chaliapin is to be congratulated for this both graphic and artistic painting.
(MRS.) REBECCA H. VAN HOUTEN San Antonio
Color Them Livid or Laughing
Sir:
I am appalled that a magazine of TIME'S caliber would stoop so low as to print "For Crayon Out Loud" [June 8]. It is a product of warped, sadistic minds.
(MRS.) BLANCHE A. MCEURLEARY Baltimore
Sir:
I love you, I love you, I love you, for the coloring-book pages. I shall keep this issue forever. (It will probably be your last.)
(MRS.) THERESA BUNN Baltimore
Sir: TIME, June 8, gave me a pain--I laughed so hard over the cartoons "For Crayon Out Loud." (MRS.) SOPHIE FLAGSTAD La Mesa, Calif.
Sir:
Color that book subversive.
YVONNE COREY Bal Harbour, Fla.
Sir:
I think Messrs. Drucker and Kannon have carried our freedom of speech and press a bit too far with their J.F.K. Coloring Book.
I'll color them with mud, if you please.
BARBARA MENSING
Ozone Park, N.Y.
Read No Evil
Sir:
It is surprising to me that Mr. Kennedy didn't just go ahead and call the New York Herald Tribune [June 8] a "gigantic corporation" and . . . well, you know the rest. MICHAEL NICHOLSON Pittsburgh
Sir"
Is it true that when the stock market dipped recently President Kennedy canceled his subscription to the Wall Street-Journal?
(MRS.) NORM A-JEAN BIELAWA Evanston, Ill.
Swiss Miss
Sir:
I read the article about the visit to the U.S. of Ivory Coast's President Felix Houphouet-Boigny [May 25] and his exclamation as he got off the boat: "I am filled with emotion to arrive in this most solid democracy in the world." If this sympathetic President thinks about solidity of democracy in terms of nuclear punch, I agree with him; if he is thinking, however, of the solidity of democratic institutions, I would like to invite him and Mme. Houphouet-Boigny to Switzerland.
FERNAND BERNOULLI Swiss Ambassador to Mexico Mexico City > Let Reader Bernoulli check his address book. President and Mine. Houphouet-Boigny own a villa in Gstaad, Switzerland, and their daughter attends school there.--ED.
Image of a City
Sir:
Please accept our regard for your report on San Francisco crime I May 25].
We are deeply concerned with the image of our city. The facts are that there is no crime wave here and that there is no intention on the part of our neighborhood and community organizations to pre-empt the work and functions of the police, as some reports would have it.
You have brought the matter into clear focus, looking at facts within the framework of the real situation, not the imagined or manufactured event.
G. L. Fox
Executive Vice President San Francisco Chamber of Commerce San Francisco
Folk-Girls
Sir:
If Joan Baez considers herself a folk singer I June 1, she is indeed mistaken. If she believes that by wearing burlap, communing with nature and refusing money, she can maintain an "ethnic" image, it is only to those pseudo-intellectual "preppies" and college "folkniks" that she appeals. To those who know something about folk music, publicizing oneself with the "hair to the navel, dirt in the toes" effect is the grossest form of commercialism.
I can only compare Joan Baez singing folk music to Joey Dee performing La Traviata.
ARTHUR PETZAL
New Shrewsbury, X.J.
Sir: When I was a freshman at Boston University's School of Fine Arts, there was a girl with long, straggly hair, bare feet and dungarees who sat in the school corridor playing a guitar and singing with a voice that contained a magical gravity.
Students and teachers were gathered around her in response to her delicate, yet penetrating, song. This developed into a daily ritual.
Today, all respond to her--Joan Baez.
SUSAN Liss
Brighton, Mass.
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