Economist Calls Curbs on Travel 'Hitler Tactics'

A Harvard economist has attacked President Johnson's recent measures designed to cut down the United States deficit in the balance of payments as reminiscent of Hitlerian economics.

In a letter to the ew York Times printed yesterday Gottfried Haberler, Galen L. Stone professor of International Trade said that the measures are "a further big step into the mass of specific controls that used to be called the Schachtian system, named after its inventor, the Nazi economic wizard Hjalmar Schacht."

According to Haberler, Schacht introduced a number of measures, such as a tax on travel in Austria, in order to avoid devaluing the mark. Devaluation would have meant a loss of political prestige, and was therefore considered an unacceptable alternative.

"To prevent tourists from going outside the Western Hemisphere is ... a shocking infringement on individual rights," Haberler says. He also opposes the measures because they would restrict international trade, and, by discriminating against Europe, "add a strong touch of economic warfare."

The basic problem, Haberler argues, is that the dollar is inflated beyond its real value, "These measures add up to disguised devaluation," he said in an interview yesterday. Haberler urges that "an open devaluation, preferably in the form of a floating (exchange) rate, would be far better than are disguised in a multitude of haphazard, discriminatory taxes and controls."

Haberler also warned that the measures presently proposed would prove insufficient because Johnson is still pumping money into the economy by initiating new programs. "(This) batch is only a beginning," he said.