Most important business event of last week was the opening of Congress and the jack-in-the-box stockmarket which it produced. Up on Franklin Roosevelt's mild opening message, stocks flopped on the next day's offering of his 1939 budget figures, with their near-record deficit (see p. 13).
That the stockmarket should react unfavorably to indications of continued pump-priming was proof of business' confusion. Heretofore, such pump-priming talk has boomed the market, and even Wall Street admits that sharp curtailing of government largess would toboggan stock prices. Last week's pessimism apparently stemmed from the realization that new deficits may mean new taxes. But this...
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