February 8, 1983

With many banks flush with cash as a result of the recent authorization of accounts paying money market interest rates, some institutions have stepped up their attempts to lend this money to the public. Much of the promotional effort these days is designed to help banks make more credit card and unsecured, or signature, loans. Unsolicited mailings to consumers offering such loans, pending the approval of a credit line, are a major part of this activity. ''We see more and more banks starting to promote loans,'' said Barry Leeds, whose firm, Barry Leeds & Associates, is a bank marketing consultancy. ''They are looking at it as anticyclical and making it part of the ongoing product mix, rather than opening and closing.''

''Common sense and common morals tell us that we cannot stand mute while our prior assistance is used in the consummation of a fraud.'' - Randolph W. Thrower, a lawyer and former head of the Internal Revenue Service. (D21:1.)

Despite a sharp drop in auto sales, the General Motors Corporation today reported that its fourth-quarter net income had jumped 49.5 percent, to $145 million, on the strength of the earnings from its auto financing subsidiary. The final quarter's earnings, equal to 45 cents a share, compared with net income of $95 million, or 31 cents a share, in last year's final quarter. For the full year, net income soared to $963 million, or $3.09 a share, from $333 million, or $1.07 a share, in 1981. The 1982 results include $252.2 million in tax credits and a $688 million profit from G.M.'s nonconsolidated subsidiaries, principally its auto finance arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation. G.M.A.C. earned $348 million in 1981.

EIGHTEEN young children who faced almost certain death in infancy are alive and healthy today because of a new technique used in bone marrow transplantation. Photographs of some of the children, all robust, smiling toddlers, can be seen on the wall of a doctor's office at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where the technique was perfected. Only months before their pictures were taken, they were all tragically wasted by infections and were deathly ill. For each of them, less than an ounce of transplanted bone marrow made the difference. The new technique that saved them promises to make bone marrow transplants far more available than they have been, for people suffering from a variety of serious and potentially fatal diseases. In the long range, bone marrow transplants appear to have greater potential for saving lives than transplants of any major organs such as the heart, kidney or liver. A report on current work in in the field was issued yesterday by the scientists at Sloan-Kettering.

Over the last two decades, Alfred J. Buhler, a lawyer and businessman from Liechtenstein, has been connected in interviews and documents with stock and tax fraud, illegal arms deals, kidnapping and questionable overseas payments on behalf of American corporations. But the Central Intelligence Agency has prevented law-enforcement authorities from even questioning him. Some of the reports of Mr. Buhler's activities, including disguising financial transactions for governments, companies and criminals, are in public records and sworn testimony. Law-enforcement officials in the United States and Canada and sources in Liechtenstein have provided other details. But Mr. Buhler and the C.I.A. have refused to respond to oral and written inquiries about their relationship. Thus, the extent to which his business activities overlap his involvement with the intelligence agency is not clear. The relationship raises questions about how much the agency knew about or was even involved in various financial and political scandals, and it illustrates the conflict that arises from time to time between the C.I.A. and law-enforcement authorities.