Statement by the President on the United States Savings Bond Program.

I REGRET that circumstances prevent me from joining you tonight.

You are very much in my thoughts at this time.

Chairman Haughton and every member of your 1967 Payroll Savings Committee deserve the compliments and gratitude of your President and your Nation.

I congratulate you on your remarkable achievements in 1967--a payroll savings dollar volume of $3,500,000,000--and a total of 2,606,640 savings bonds buyers.

But for all that you have achieved in 1967, a greater and more urgent challenge awaits your Committee in 1968. The strength of the dollar has never been more essential to the stability of our world. The opportunity you have for maintaining that strength, for improving our international balance of payments, has seldom been larger or more imperative.

Today, the fate of nations and the fortunes of peoples are intertwined as never before. A vast network of world trade and financial transactions binds millions in one community of opportunity. But their very interdependence also exposes men and governments to common dangers. Sickness in one economy can sap the strength of the world economy; a threat to one key currency endangers the economic health of all.

Today, the universal barometer of the world's economic climate is the strength of the American dollar.

Your own business fortunes rise and fall with the soundness of the dollar. The health of our own domestic economy depends on sound money. Its weakness or strength is equally critical to the health of the international economic system.

You know the present danger. When our dollar outflow is larger than our earnings and credits from foreign countries, a deficit unbalances our international accounts. We cannot let that deficit undermine the strength of the dollar and undercut the stability of the international monetary system. To do so would be to risk bankruptcy of our own prosperity and the fortunes of all nations whose growth is tied to our own.

On New Year's Day, I asked every American to recognize their personal responsibilities for protecting the unparalleled prosperity they now enjoy. I offered an action program for America to keep the dollar strong at home, and to keep men confident in its strength throughout the world.

Your experience and success in promoting savings bonds and Freedom Shares gives us special confidence in you. The savings you have encouraged are a deposit of great hope against the future. Their promise can be enlarged, and that future made brighter, by how well you succeed in helping to restore a healthy balance to our international payments.

I welcome and encourage the man who will do most to sustain your leadership, your new Chairman, Bill Gwinn of United Aircraft. I am grateful to you all, old and new members of the Committee, for the example of your patriotism and the hopefulness you leave in our Nation's heart.