Dollar panic hits Euro-bonds

Investors to dump a nominated The banks are reeling losses. THE PANIC flight from the dollar has created 'easily the most serious crisis in the Euro-bond market's ten years of existence' says one banker.

are rushing bonds deand traders under their Last weekend one of the top Euro-bond banks, the Kredietbank of the Benelux, said it was ceasing trading in these bonds.

Trading in bonds is now running only half the level of a year ago. During the past week alone more than $100m-worth of bonds was sold in a sharply falling Canvey 'oilmada' sails SIX HUNDRED Canvey islanders launched their 'oilmada' against the government on Saturday and sailed into London aboard four pleasure boats and several fishing vessels. They docked at Westminster and angrily marched on Downing Street.

Their modern armada was the latest in a series of protests against two giant oil once President Nixon's second closest aide, has said that he acted on the President's instructions when he carried out actions which could lead to his indictment on criminal charges.

He told this to top Republicans within hours the testimony of John McCord, a convicted Watergate burglar, whose evidence to the Senate Watergate inquiry market. One Swiss banker explained: "My clients just don't want long-term • dollar paper and frankly I agree with them.' This situation is especially serious for the consortium banks which placed the majority of Euro-bond issues and underwrote the bonds on offer.

A distinctive feature of the Euro-bond and related markets has been the formation of consortium banks, in which most of the big names of international high finance are involved.

SERIOUS

EFFECTS The pull-out from Euro-bond market will t ave extremely serious effects for the Tory government's tempts at 'management' refineries to be built on Canvey Island, Essex.

Environment secretary Geoffrey Rippon recently granted planning permission for the refineries. Shouting, 'Oil out! Rippon out!' and waving banners, the islanders halted trafic in Whitehall.

A delegation handed 20,000 petition signed by tion of 400 signatures.

directly implicated the President in the attempts to cover up the scandal.

Ehrlichman and H. R. (Bob) Haldeman were the two leaders of the White House palace guard. If Ehrlichman begins to reveal what actually happened in these top circles, Nixon cannot avoid being dragged down.

John Mitchell, once the President's law partner and the man who left the job of Attorney-General to take a leading post in the ComBY JOHN ¡PENCER the inflationary The government is trying to overcome the effects of the £1,000m balance-of-payments deficit by encouraging local authorities to raise foreign currency in the Euromarkets.

But now that the shutters are going down on the Eurobond markets the Tory government will be brought face to face with the impossibility of raising further funds at the same time as much of the invisible earnings the City gets from Euro-market coupon-clipping suddenly dries up.

MEANWHILE mounting evidence of the slide towards recession in the United States is having a direct effect on the New York stock market as investors are beginning to sell in response to slump predictions.

BELLE 25330 Rippon has now agreed to meet a delegation of Canvey councillors early next week. Said Clir Mrs Dot Shaw: "This gives us hope. We are all bitter and angry with frustration because we have not been able to see anyone in government?

Canvey Island urban council had subscribed £500 towards the cost of hiring the boats.

mittee to Re-elect the President, has told a reporter: *Any attempt to make me the fall-guy isn't going to work!

Mitchell himself has already been indicted on charges of corruption and perjury for having accepted $200,000 from shady financier Robert Vesco who wanted to escape an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All the indications now point to the direct involvement of Nixon-not just in Wall Street fell 16 points on Friday, not least because of an article on the front page of the 'Wall Street Journal, which listed the opinions of a number of leading economic analysts who predict a slump.

The prestige National Bureau of Economic Research which keeps a continuous watch on business trends is quite definite in its predictions.

Director Geoffrey H. Moore, says: 'We now see clear evidence that a slowdown, and very possibly a fully-fledged recession, lay It should begin to show up in the index of leading indicators before many months.' He cites • several technical and statistical indicators which bear out this standpoint.

The bureau's prediction is echoed by A. Gary Shilling, chief economist of White, Weld and Co, the big New York stockbrokers. Shilling believes a full-scale recession will be under way by early next year.

REACT

STRONGLY Similar predictions from other economists are also quoted by the Wall Street Journal'. The significance of the article lies not in the predictions, so much as in the fact that the stock market is now beginning to react strongly to them.

Wall Street is also feeling the direct impact of the international monetary crisis. Foreign holders of dollardenominated bonds are selling their shares en masse in a panic flight from the shaky American currency.

According „to sources quoted by Reuter's news agency: 'Overseas corporations and other institutions which are large • holders of US Treasury Bills, government and corporate bonds and common stocks, are becoming increasingly concerned about the future of their investments in the current political and economic climate in the United States' LIQUIDATE HOLDINGS Some of the very large institutions are actively discussing the partial or even full liquidation of their holdings.

In the last two and a half months, Reserve Board, the months, according to the net sale of government securities by foreign holders was $2,800m-nearly 10 per cent of the total foreign holding.

the Watergate bugging affair, but in a whole complex of corruption and criminal activity designed to systematically subvert the constitution and abolish basic democratic rights.

The President's efforts to control the Watergate inquiries through a combination of threats and bribery appear to have failed.

He has been forced to announce the appointment of a Harvard law protessor, Archibald Cox, as special investigator into the scandal.