Economic Turnabout

Seven years after war's end, Europe's most thoroughly defeated nation was fast becoming the strongest. Last week, submitting his 1953 budget to the Bundestag, West German Finance Minister Fritz Schaeffer recited these amazing facts:

P: Exports doubled in the past two years; today Germany is a creditor nation with a $600 million surplus in international trade. She has a favorable balance in the European Payments Union, where many of her World War II victims have deficits.

P: National savings up more than 5 billion DM ($1.2 billion) in four years.

P: A total of 1,375,000 new housing units built since 1949.

P: Production up to 145% of 1936, when Germany began humming with Nazi-spurred industry.

Buttressed by such figures, Schaeffer recommended a step that other Western European states could only envy, not emulate: a 15% slash in income taxes, a 20% cut in corporation levies.

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