THE ECONOMY: End of an Easygoing Era

Newsmen languidly covering President Eisenhower's vacation at Augusta, Ga. suddenly perked up last week when Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson and Defense Secretary Thomas S. Gates flew in from Washington for a 2½-hour huddle with their boss. Pressing topic: the U.S.'s nagging deficit in international payments and the resulting drain on U.S. gold reserves, eroding international confidence in the soundness of the dollar.

Next day the President sent ripples of concern spreading around the world with a sweeping presidential directive designed to slow the U.S.'s gold outflow by curbing U.S. spending overseas. "A definite improvement in...