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Ominous Word. The only overt effort the Administration made to buck up the stock market was a brief statement to reporters by Secretary Dillon. Calm-voiced and grey-suited, Republican Dillon was the very image of confidence. "I see no reason for panicky selling," he said. "The general economy is very sound." But to many, his reassurance recalled some of 1929's reassuring statements. That word "sound" was a favorite adjective in the autumn of 1929. There was President Herbert Hoover's statement that the "fundamental business of the country" was on a "sound and prosperous basis." And there was the joint statement by representatives of 35 brokerages declaring that the market was "fundamentally sound."
Far more persuasive reassurance came later in the day from the stock market itself: a dramatic turnaround that carried the Dow-Jones industrial average from a low of 563.24 around noon back to 603.96, for a hefty 27-point gain above the Monday closing.
When the market perked, gloom began to disappear from the New Frontier. It was, after all, the President's 45th birthday, and among the presents was $5,000,000 turned over to him under the terms of the trust fund set up for him by his father. Trucks drove up to the White House with floral tributes to the President. Among them was a rocking chair covered all over with yellow chrysanthemums and white carnations, a present from Frank Sinatra. The White House ordered it sent to Children's Hospital, where the kids had a lot of fun with it. The White House could even grin gamely at a newly minted Wall Street joke about Joseph P. Kennedy's awakening after Blue Monday and saying: "To think I voted for that s.o.b!"*
"An Overcommitted Life." But for all the more hopeful signs, the Administration's economic watchmen knew full well that during the days and weeks ahead they would have to stare more intently than ever at the economic indicators. The chief watchman, the man whose task it is to interpret the U.S. economy for the President, is Walter Wolfgang Heller, 46, sometime head of the University of Minnesota's economics department. Kennedy has come to be very fond of Heller, likes his undogmatic approach to economic policy and his dry, professorial wit. Heller jokingly says that his post cannot be very important because the yearly budget for the Council of Economic Advisers is "midway between that of the Battle Monuments Commission and the Indians Claims Commission." When the Billie Sol Estes scandal brought into public prominence the name Walter E. Heller & Co. (no kin), a Chicago finance company that had lent a lot of money on Estes' bogus mortgages, Heller said that to avoid confusion he was changing his handle from Walter W. to W. Wolfgang Heller.