Conversation 001-105

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The Murphy thing you worked out, you talked to him a little bit more?

Right, and I'm giving him some papers tomorrow, Mr. President.

Right.

Well, he's just the right man.

He'll do a good job.

Right.

He'll protect us with state and let him tell old Green that he's gone.

But, you know, all that sort of thing.

No, we've got it all set.

Good.

Okay.

Good, Mr. President.

Secretary Connolly, please.

Yeah?

Yes, he's having dinner, sir, at Paul Young's.

Could I reach him there?

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

Hello?

Secretary Conley.

Hi, John.

Yes, sir.

How are you, sir?

Hope I didn't interrupt your dinner.

Well, I may be restraining what I say.

I'm sitting in Paul Young's restaurant.

That's a good place, yeah.

Early in C.R.

Smith.

I just, well, I just wanted to tell you that you must be a damn good Secretary of Treasury.

The Dow went to 938 today.

Did you hear that?

God, did it really?

It went up five points to 938.

Did you see the headlines in the afternoon, Star?

I couldn't believe it.

John, tomorrow...

Bunny Lasker's coming down to present me with a bull, you know, sort of a little medallion or some sort of thing.

Yes, sir.

At around 12.15.

I thought if you could come over, it'd be a nice thing.

All right, sir.

Are you free?

Yes, sir.

Sure, I'll be there.

Yeah.

12.15?

Yeah, about 12.15.

All right, sir.

I think it's a good thing for us to, you know, when things are going our way, let's ride it a little and get the confidence.

All right, great.

Don't you think so?

I'll say this, it bears our judgment.

Thirty days ago, you recall, we went away to the middle of April and we thought the picture would look better then.

And it sure does.

You know, I think GM ever is to be extremely proud of where we're at.

Well, you get the credit.

You know, you came on and everybody got confidence.

Well, tell CR not to sell.

I'll tell him not to sell.

He's pleased, though, with what Secor Brown did, isn't he?

I haven't even talked to him, but I'm sure he is.

Well, you're telling that wouldn't have happened unless we'd have put down our money.

I couldn't agree more.

I know it wouldn't have.

That was one of the reasons we haven't done it.

I'm going to pay him that.

Great.

Okay.

All right, sir.

Thank you.

Yeah?

Mr. Shillings, returning your call.

Hello, George.

Yes, sir.

Hope you noticed the headline in the star.

Yeah, that bounced right.

If we finally got one good headline, I don't know what the Post and the Times do with it.

They'll probably knock it down, but it's just good to have one good one right now.

Yes, but the 28 and a half is a pretty good figure, isn't it?

Well, a word that I used, Ron asked me to come in and brief on it.

I saw it.

that it was a good solid gain and i think it is the um to make it really strong i think you need to combine it with the march retail sales that we tried about the other day i'm going to hit that with editors tomorrow night because the um actually when you break that gnp down the auto increase

accounts for a very heavy proportion of the real increase, and so they'll say that's because of the strike.

Right.

And the answer to that is that retail sales, as we came toward the last month of the quarter, were strong, and that retail sales figure goes across the board.

It isn't just autos.

Mm-hmm.

so while others are strong and then you'd expect them to be in this that's fine it's uh broader than that so we tried to bring that out and of course the stock thing went up again today nine thirty above uh the date of your inaugural yeah we're not way above but we just eight or nine points above anyway yeah it's it's it's up the main thing it's above well we uh ride the good news when we got it sure right i'm i'm a believer in that and the uh and uh

put it out in a way that we don't try to overstate it.

No, no.

But I think at least I have the impression Ron felt that we gave it a good strong.

Oh, yes, he felt very good about it.

Very good, very good.

I'm a little reluctant, as I told Ron, to do that because of McCracken's sensitivity, particularly right now.

But that's all right.

I reassured, I guess.

I reassured McCracken.

And now and then we've got to put a new voice in, you know.

Everybody's got to play this game.

And he would not have played it as strongly as you did, and we've got to play it strong.

I'm over here working on this talk I have to give next week.

Oh, yeah.

And the theme that I'm using is the old Navy command, steady as you go.

Good.

And that's going to be the way I'm building that up.

I hope you'll...

i can try out a little bit of it on you sure um you bet your last year that uh you're in accord with oh i think that's exactly the right theme that we're not going to be panicked uh we weren't panicked earlier and we're not going to be panicked now to go for tax reduction or is that i think we're just going to stay right where we are and we're not going to worry about whether it's uh two billion below what we'd hoped or a billion and a half or or uh anything that we're just saying that uh you can't you we can't

fix these numbers exactly.

And on the retail sales thing, I think this is terribly important.