January 19, 1978

US Sup Ct enhances plea-bargaining power of criminal prosecutors by ruling that they may threaten defendant with 2d, more serious indictment if he refuses to plead guilty to initial trial and demands trial; holds that accused forger Paul Lewis Hayes, charged with forging $88 check, had not been deprived of his const right to due process of law when prosecutor carried out his threat and forger wound up with life imprisonment instead of 5-yr term initially offered him (M)

Carr allegedly swindled thousands of London mkt investors out of millions of dollars over last 18 mos; illus (M)

Fed Reserve Bd repts capacity utilization rate on nation's mfg industries was 83% in Dec, compared with 82.8% in Nov and 69.6% recession low in '75 (S)

Comment on Grosvenor family, probably wealthiest pvt landlord in GB; Grosvenor fortune could be conservatively estimated at $500-million; illus of Lord Gerald Grosvenor, heir to real-estate empire; illus (L)

L Silk, assesses economists' reaction to BLS concept of employment-to-population jobless rate adopted by Comr Julius Shiskin as means of determining degree of full employment; notes number of economists identified with Repub Party, including Fed Feserve Bd Chmn Arthur F Burns, Council of Econ Advisers former Chmn Herbert Stein and former BLS Comr Geoffrey Moore, have favored new concept; notes Moore holds US already is employing more people, relative to population size, than in '56 or any other yr in which unemployment rate was at or below 4%; Sar A Levitan, chmn of Pres comm on employment and unemployment statistics, criticizes concept; chart (M)