Button Up Your Overcoat

Americans were treated last week to a rare brand of presidential counsel -- an oldfashioned, almost motherly rendering of helpful hints on how to lick high prices. Ford requested -- and got -- prime-time tri-network coverage of his speech to the Future Farmers of America in Kansas City, Mo. It was a rather inflated forum, given the caliber of the message. "Bring budgeting back in style," he said. "Brag about the fact that you are a bargain hunter . . . save as much as you can and watch your mon ey grow."

Chiding ever so gently, the President urged those tempted to waste at table to "take all you want but eat all you take. The first words I can remember in my dad's house were very simple but very direct. Clean up your plate before you get up from the table. And that is still pretty good advice." One waited for the suggestions to purchase a good heavy coat, drink a glass of warm milk before retiring and feed a colchand starve a fever. Ford came close. "Guard your health," he warned. "This will materi ally strengthen our attack on inflation."

Certainly there can be no argument with the President's admonition to conserve food and fuel. Some of his other preachments about hoarding bucks, however, were enough to give even Franklinesque economists pause. Slug gish consumer buying, rather than ex cess demand, is one element of the cur rent stagflation. Economizing when demand is weak and saving when savings are already high are two Ford prescriptions that if taken too literally could result in deepening the recession with out necessarily curbing inflation.

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