EGYPT: The Roving Economist

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A 75-year-old man with a prim, severe face flew into Cairo last week, looking like an old-fashioned country doctor making his calls. Carrying his little black briefcase and typewriter, and accompanied by his young-looking (44), smiling wife, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht has been making the rounds of world trouble spots, prescribing oldfashioned, bitter medicine for economic ills.

Wherever he went, the reputation of "wizard" preceded Schacht. He had saved the Weimar Republic from the disastrous consequences of inflation, had helped Hitler build a superb war plant in debt-ridden Nazi Germany (he was acquitted of war crimes charges at Nürnberg). For his new patients, Dr. Schacht prescribed no miracle drugs, but time-tested, standard remedies. He warned Indonesia last year to work hard and attract foreign investors. He bluntly told the Iranians last month that they were "lazy," and repeated his injunction to work hard. Sometimes his pronouncements seemed a little hasty. ("I reached Teheran at 3," he said later. "At 5 I met Mossadegh. He showed me everything he wanted to consult me about.

In three hours, Teheran's problems were settled.")

Twenty-four hours after he landed in Egypt he diagnosed Naguib's revolutionary land reform law (TIME, Sept. 22) as sound, contradicting many more hesitant experts who said it was politically smart but economically risky. He also declared that Naguib was a great man and Egypt's economy was basically healthy. His prescription for Egypt: work hard, increase production, avoid useless expenditures. It sounded simple, but U.S. economists and Point Four experts have also found that for the "backward nations" simple remedies are the best. At any rate, psychologically, Dr. Schacht's words had a strong tonic effect. After four days, during which he made more detailed recommendations, the busy doctor packed his briefcase, flew off, announcing he would be back in Egypt in a few weeks to tidy up loose ends. His next patient: Syria.