As Washington fiddles...

Since the record plunge of the Dow Jones industrial average nearly a month ago, the financial markets have fluctuated with nearly each scrap of economic news. The big news--a Washington deal on the deficit--has failed to materialize in the way Wall Street had hoped. The result is likely to be more instability and more peaks and valleys as the market lurches erratically forward. . See also (Newsweek, 11/23/87, 2c, 1 graph, p49, 2p)