FOR weeks, Washington has been waiting for Lyndon Johnson to fill a looming vacancy on the seven-man Federal Reserve Board, expecting his choice to signal whether the board will stress easy or tighter money. Last week, Johnson took the trodden path: he reappointed James Louis Robertson, 56, whose term officially expired in January, to another 14-year term as governor. Robertson agrees with Johnson that the thriving U.S. economy is not yet in a boom and thus needs no hike in interest rates to restrain its growth. Says he: "I don't intend to begin fighting inflation until inflation begins." The tall, spare Nebraskan fought the board's decision to raise stock-margin requirements from 50% to 70% last November (he wanted a 10% boost), and was the only member to vote against last July's discount rate hike from 3% to 3.5%. A lawyer of direct style and breezy off-hours informality, he was in a Washington junkyard looking for an iron fence for his home when his reappointment was announced.

EXPANDING a dime-store chain into the discount business has been an $80 million gamble for Harry Blair Cunningham, 56, president of S.S. Kresge Co. The gamble seems to be paying off: last week Kresge opened four more of its K-Marts, raising the total of its discount branches to 61 out of a chain of 876 stores. Detroit-based Kresge still ranks behind Woolworth and W.T.

Grant, but under Cunningham it is growing faster than either; its sales in January and February ran 28% ahead of the record levels of 1963, when they reached $504 million. A Pennsylvania farm boy who was once a reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot, Cunningham started in a Kresge stock room 36 years ago, became chief executive in 1959. He promptly replaced all its vice presidents with younger men, but kept up the firm's traditions: no smoking or coffee drinking in the offices, men separated from women in the company cafeterias. On weekends, Cunningham likes to pop into K-Marts unannounced. While he chats with managers, his wife pushes a shopping cart--thus faithfully reinvesting some of his $100,000 salary.

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