Bull Market

To the Editors:

Your cover story [Sept. 6] was excellent. It creatively portrays what's happening on Wall Street and in the economy right now.

Ajay Sirsi

Stillwater, Okla.

Wall Street's rally in the midst of a bust economy is a scam initiated by the Feds and timed for elections. The big-money interests can and will lead the way out, grabbing nice profits, just about the time the small investor decides that he too should put his dollars into the market.

Mike de Martelly

Marlborough, N.H.

I am more worried about Main Street than I am about Wall Street.

Julian Hammer

Carteret, N.J.

"Wall Street--Ole!" omits the fact that numbers can be manipulated to represent success or failure. I am not impressed with our economic gurus. They took forever to admit that our country had financial problems, and now, with the slightest "red flag waving," they thump themselves proudly on how all will be well.

Robert D. Hatfield

Taylor, Mich.

Your opening sentences, "No one predicted it. No one can explain it," are a sad commentary on the reliability and perspicacity of the pundits who are constantly pontificating and analyzing the economy. Rabbi

Samuel M. Silver

Delray Beach, Fla.

It is terrific that the large institutions have become optimistic enough to stimulate an economic rally. Unfortunately, the average American must wait for the big investors to act. They have the power to choose the right time to make their profit.

Lewis Pfau

Cincinnati

P.L.O. Pullout

Is the security that Israel seeks possible [Sept. 6]? Terrorism has not ended just because the P.L.O. has been evacuated from West Beirut. There are now new borders for the P.L.O. to cross. The guns have fallen silent for today. Tomorrow they can be picked up again.

Richard D. Jarumay

Glendale, Ariz.

Yasser Arafat can wax poetic about how much the P.L.O. loves peace. But his followers showed their real values in the bloody way they celebrated their "victory": by firing into the air, killing 17 people and wounding more than 40.

Matthew Dacy

Ripon, Wis.

Sense of Insecurity

In the Essay "The Inevitable Limits of Security" [Aug. 30], TIME offers only negative comments about the Secret Service. The President's protectors risk their lives every day and have no margin for error. The luxury of "worrying about it tomorrow," an attitude common in almost all other professions, is unheard of among the Secret Service.

Assistant Press Mark D. Weinberg

Secretary to the President Washington, D.C.

It is cheaper and much more effective to prevent a crime than to deal with the unpleasant aftermath. Although no security system is foolproof, we must anticipate the possibility of attacks. At the present time we may be battling only the , symptoms instead of the disease. But thus far, it is the best treatment.

Richard D. Sem, President Sem Security Management, Inc.

Brookfield, Wis.

Your Essay on the growing obsession with security among Americans could easily have extended its point to the Defense Department. Nowhere is there a more compulsive and irrational quest for security than in the military. Just as bodyguards make the guarded feel more insecure, our growing nuclear arsenal only increases our nation's sense of vulnerability.

James Tull

Pomfret, Conn.

Resisting Uncle Sam

Our President has asked not for a draft but only for a registration to see who might be available should the need arise. If all the young men who served in the military during World War II had sat back on their thumbs and said no, we wouldn't be having the present problems. There would not be any "rights" to cry about.

Yvonne A. Herron

Des Moines

As one who registered for the draft this year, it concerns me that Enton Eller used the name of God to advocate civil disobedience. He should read God's instruction in Romans 13:1 from The Living Bible: "Obey the government, for God is the one who has put it there."

Craig P. DuMez

Hartland, Wis.

Registering for a future draft will only encourage the U.S. to confront world crises with military strength. Our Government has shown little respect for the American youth who will be forced to carry out the Pentagon's policies. Peace and human dignity are not advanced by preparations for war.

Stephen Newcomer

Oak Brook, Ill.

Stemming the Tide

I wish to clarify two points in your story about Senate passage of legislation to reform the nation's immigration laws [Aug. 30]. Under the legislation, it will be illegal to hire anyone who entered the country illegally. However, businesses with three or fewer employees would not be required to maintain a record of a prospective employee's identification documents. Also, employers would be subject to fines only if it could be demonstrated that they knowingly hired an undocumented person. The prohibition that people who enter this nation illegally shall not be hired is the only way to stanch the flow.

Alan K. Simpson

U.S. Senator, Wyoming

Washington, D.C.

Black and White at Harvard

Regarding the appointment of Jack Greenberg to teach minority issues at Harvard, we are not protesting Greenberg's race [Aug. 23]. Black students and others are lobbying for desegregation of the virtually all-white faculty at Harvard Law. At issue is the rectitude of affirmative action as a remedy for racially exclusive hiring patterns. If Harvard and its defenders can convince the American people that affirmative action equals anti-white racism, then every affirmative action policy at any school or workplace is in jeopardy. If this issue has "no validity" to Jack Greenberg, what must be questioned is not his color but his competence to represent critical black interests.

Muhammad Kenyatta, President Harvard Black Law Students Association Harvard Law School

Cambridge, Mass.

The issue is not that Jack Greenberg's whiteness disqualifies him from teaching a course on minority law. It is, instead, that any black scholar would be better qualified to do so.

Stephanie Voss

Kensington, Md.

I am dumbfounded by the outcry over Jack Greenberg. A lack of minority classes cannot be solved by attacking a leading advocate of their cause.

Matthew M. Neumeier Harvard Law Review

Cambridge, Mass.

Adler's Paideia

A breath of hope comes from Mortimer Adler [Sept. 6]! What currently passes for an educational system in the United States more nearly resembles a glorified baby-sitting service.

David N. LaFontaine

Minneapolis

I am a teacher who is tired, not from teaching but from reading people like Mortimer Adler. If the experts would work in a high school for two years, assuming all duties from supervising dances to hall duty, then their pronouncements might be considered important. They need to emerge from the dark ages of academic theory and ego to the realities of contemporary education.

Graydon A. Lewis

Eugene, Ore.

I took a Paideia seminar with Mortimer Adler last spring. Rather than a "first among equals," he was a bombastic drill sergeant, more devoted to playing "Guess My Interpretation" than to the discussion and evaluation of student ideas.

Trysh Travis

New York City

Peru Pays

Commenting on Mexico's financial situation [Sept. 6], TIME states that Peru will not be able to fulfill its foreign-debt obligations. Peru never intended to reschedule its foreign debt, and will repay the $1 billion due in 1982.

Fernando Schwalb Ambassador of Peru

Washington, D.C.

Psychic Doodles

The article "The Customers Always Write" [Sept. 6] encourages the notion that an Andrea McNichol can take a complex task like doodling and use it to summarize an individual's entire psyche. This pop psychology is dangerous mainly because it can be misused as "science" by employers seeking to screen employees. An analysis of doodling is helpful if the doodler explains what was happening or what he was thinking at the time. To isolate the doodle does a disservice to behavioral analysis.

Mark W. Peterson, M.D.

Decatur, Ala.

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