PHASE II: Red Ink at the A&P;

Although business executives generally have enthusiastically supported President Nixon's wage-price controls, they have always been aware that those controls might tip some none-too-profitable companies all the way into the red. Last week that theoretical possibility came true—and not for some small, struggling concern but for the nation's second largest retailer, A&P. For its third fiscal quarter, ended Nov. 27—a period that included nearly all of the wage-price freeze and two weeks of Phase II controls—A&P reported a loss of $1.1 million, v. a profit of $12.9 million in the like quarter a year earlier. The deficit was the first...