Daily News from New York, New York • 170

by OwenMorit: Saving the savings bond problem of more redemptions than investments in 1979. On Nov. 1, in an effort to short-circuit its balance of payments, Treasury hiked rates on new and existing series-EE savings bonds from 7 to 8 and from to 7Vi on series-H and HH bonds. Think Social Security is in trouble? Consider the plight of the U.S. Savings Bond.

Savers cashed in savings bonds at record rates in 1980. No wonder. Many savers weighed the 6Y2 and 7 interest that they were getting on savings bonds and found it wanting But no one is betting the drain will stop. By late November, banks were again offering 14 on 6-month certificates of $10,000 or more. Con cy gress has passed a law allowing Treasury to make semiannual adjustments.

So if the drain continues, the new administration in Washington has authority next May to hike the rate on new and existing bonds another 1. Clearly, patriotism is no longer a hedge against rampant inflation. against interest rates of almost 15 that financial institutions were offering on 6-month savings certificates of $10,000 or more. Often they got free toasters in the bargain. It's been a bad two years for Treasury.

One estimate reckdned a $7.7 billion runoff in sales in one 12-month period. There was a similar American surplus: college grads Sky terminals The helicopter as a flying taxi is no longer a flight of fantasy. The whirlybirds made 90,000 landings in 1980, and the experts say that the number will soar to 120,000 in the coming year. It's an unlimited horizon, and now the city mulls how to keep pace with the growth. There are active helicopter pads at E.

Oth and E. 34th Streets, Wall Street and Battery Park City. Leonard Pickarsky, director of the city's Department of Ferries and General Aviation, says there are four expansion possibilities. One is enlarging the E. 34th Street sky terminal, now the city's biggest with 44,000 landings a year.

Another is activating a closed pad at W. 30th Street. Also, he has hopes for controversial Flushing Airport. Besides a possible role as an executive airport to ease air traffic at nearby LaGuardia Airport, 'Flushing would be an ideal heliport, says Pickarsky. Actually, the emphasis on the choppers is part of a larger Koch Administration policy here to discourage use of private cars.

Increased ferry use is also in store. One of two new earless Staten Island ferryboats, the $15 million Andrew Barberi, financed with mass-transit funds, is due to dock in January. Pickarsky's office is considering applications from private firms to operate ferries between Brooklyn Heights and Manhattan, between Liberty State Park in' Jersey City and the Battery, and between Atlantic Highlands, N.J., and the Battery. The latter aim would be to hasten trips to Atlantic City and cut traveling time for Jersey shore commuters. Behind the increased use of helicopters is a new generation of choppers that can seat up to seven passengers.

Existing choppers carry two or three. There are helicopters today that seat 20 passengers, and those bus-sized jobs loom in the future. Yet the colleges continue to turn out grads in large numbers. Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reckons that there will be an excess of 2.8 million candidates for jobs traditionally filled by grads.

Enrenhalt does sees growth for some college-oriented occupations, including programers, bank officers, aerospace engineers, registered nurses, petroleum engineers, life scientists, statisticians, dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists, veterinarians, dietitians, psychologists, mining engineers, pharmacists and, of course, economists, who never seem to suffer in bad times. Is a college degree a ticket to unemployment? Not quite. But increasingly, we're producing more college graduates than we need in certain fields. In the 1980s, consequently, we can look to graduates moving into jobs that historically did not require a degree as a condition of employment. The 1970s saw a record 18 million college graduates pour into the job market at the very time that the professional and technical fields had become oversaturated.

By 1979, 18 million Americans had college degrees, filling one of every five jobs. Now the dawn of the 1980s sees a continued slowdown in the needs of the professional and technical fields. Overdue: The public library rising between 5 2d and 53d Streets will have at least three floors of indoor retail space each. And Albee Square Mall amounts to an indoor mall along Brooklyn's downtown Fulton Street. Retail sales in the city rose 13 in August over August 1979 to indicate the changing habits of shoppers.

Michael Hirschfeld, who runs Gar-rick-Aug Associates here, a store-leasing firm, says the regional shopping center "is dying. By the year 2000, it will be dead." His argument: The energy crunch is killing the suburban malls and people are shopping where they work to save energy. Owen Moritz, urban affairs editor for the Daily News, reports on city problems on the fourth Sunday of every month. Future shopping: The inside story Fifty years after construction began at Rockefeller Center, and with it the revolutionary idea of indoor shopping, the inside or urban mall has gained newfound credibility. Citicorp Center and the World Trade Center are said to be successful all-weather shopping centers.

In both cases, daytime working populations of 100,000 are within sight of these indoor malls. Now, new office buildings notably Trump Tower at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street and a glass-sheathed tower known as 875 Third Avenue, For 19 years, the New York Public Library has contemplated moving its central public facility, the Mid-Manhattan branch, into the old Arnold Constable building at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street. The event may finally begin in 1981. The library trustees gained- $8 million this year from bonds sold through the state Dormitory Authority that make possible the move into the 65-year-old, 6-story limestone and granite building. The library bought the old Carriage Trade department store in 1961.

Architect Giorgio Cavaglieri has designed a central facility in which full-length glass panels will replace the old Constable display windows, permitting outsiders a clear look into the high-ceilinged first floor, where the popular library will be housed. The general reference collection will fill Constable's old second floor. All six floors will be used to service more than one million patrons a year. (The Mid-Manhattan branch has been housed next door in rented space at 10 E. 40th St.) It's a saga nearly worthy of a book.

SUNDAY NEWS MAGAZINE NEW YORK DEC. 28. I960 22.