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SV Samuelson
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TRANSCRIPT: SEQ. 1: REPORTER: How about a comment on Mr. Nixon's economic policies?



SAMUELSON: Of course, a Nobel prize and politics have nothing to do with one another, but if you ask me as a professional economist what my view is about the current state of the economy I've been very outspoken as critic, because I think our number one problem right now is the retardation, is the unemployment. By anybody's calculation, including the administrations's own calculation unemployment is going to continue to grow right up into 1971. Well, economics is a science of quantity we have to have the right quantitative dosage. Inflation is a problem, but we don't want to kill the patient just to get at its tapeworms and our number one concern in Washington today should be to keep this unemployment from getting out of hand. As the Vietnam war winds up its the business of good policy to move those resources into useful peaceful purposes. And we have the tools, we've known in terms of economic theories how to do it for 25 years now. It's a question of having the will to use them.




Initials SAW/PW/BJ/1729 SAW/PW/BJ/1736


orig on 10334/70

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Background: Professor Paul Samuelson, the United States economist who has won this ear's Nobel Prize for economics, said in Cambridge, Massachusetts yesterday (Monday) that the number one problem facing the American economy is unemployment.