October 18, 1975 – CBS Radio – The World This Week – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
It was a lot about New York this week. In what would best be described as a cliffhanger ending, coming an hour before deadline, New York City escaped its narrowest, brush with default when it was learned shortly after 2. p.m. EDT that the city’s teacher’s pension fund would come through with $150 million in time to prevent a city default on $453.1 million in notes that fell due Friday. State and city officials worked frantically to shore up a multimillion-dollar package of pension funds to meet $453 million in debt obligations the city faced. The amount to avoid default was reduced to $394 million in late morning, when the city’s 11 major commercial banks said they had agreed not to press for $59 million in city notes due for redemption today. At the city controller’s office, a spokesman said holders of $250 million in notes had already filed for redemption and that several firms, mostly brokers, showed up today with about $30 million more in notes. New York City could breathe easy, even if it was for six weeks, but after that . . .
To the North from Toronto, The Canadian government’s price and income guidelines announced by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau allowed for wage boosts of 8 per cent to enable everyone to keep pace with the rising cost of living ‘ An additional 2 percent was also to be permitted as part of everyone’s share of the country’s expected growth. Trudeau emphasized that they do apply to all forms of income — rents, dividends and fees as well as executive salaries and corporate profit margins. Any newly negotiated pay increases which exceed the 10 per cent ceiling would be subject to roll-back by the proposed anti-inflation review board.
And the Moroccan government announced that King Hassan II will lead a massive “march of conquest” into the Spanish Sahara between November 4 and November 6. But reliable sources said the march will be scaled down from 350,000 volunteers to a token, symbolic group if an agreement with Spain is reached by November 4. Morocco is using the planned mass march to try to speed up negotiations in Madrid on transfer of the phosphate-rich North African land to which both Morocco and Mauritania claim historic ties. At a news conference, Information Minister Ahmed Taibi Benhima reiterated that 350,000 unarmed volunteers would cross the border, protected by the Moroccan army, regardless of what happens in negotiations with Spain on a takeover by Morocco and Mauritania. “If there has been agreement by the time the march begins, then we will not allow Algeria to enter the negotiations by Moroccan Foreign Mouknas, and Spanish leaders.
And while New York City was sweating out looming defaults, that’s just a slice of what happened for the week ending October 19th, 1975 as reported by The World This Week from CBS Radio.
