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"Far from Ideal." The official obituary to the guidepost policy was written at week's end by Gardner Ackley, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In a speech prepared for summer commencement exercises at the University of Michigan, Ackley said: "The policy we have relied on—our wage and price guideposts—is surely far from ideal, and has recently suffered some stunning defeats. But what is more disappointing than the specific defeats is the absence of much apparent recognition on the side of either-labor or management that this problem must be solved if we are to maintain full employment and the full measure of wage and profit incomes that only a full-employment economy can provide."
What that seemed to suggest was that the Johnson Administration's only remaining anti-inflation policy may be to criticize what everyone else is doing.