Outspoken Adviser

"I have found," President Nixon told his press conference last week, "that economists are the most independent breed of the human species, except for members of the press." With good reason, the President was referring specifically to William J. Fellner, 68, whom he has nominated to the three-member Council of Economic Advisers. His Senate confirmation hearings had not even begun when Fellner advised the Administration to stop trying to get the unemployment rate down to 4% and counseled acceptance of a 5% rate as more realistic. For good measure, he criticized the Administration for overstimulating the economy last year, advocated rapid junking of Phase IV price controls, and also declared that he would risk bringing on a recession in order to get inflation under control.

The testy impression left by those remarks is not quite the one that the Hungarian-born Fellner, who arrived in the U.S. in 1939, made on his colleagues at Yale, where he taught for 21 years before retiring in June. They remember him as a scholar of grave old-world courtesy who developed a surprising facility as an amateur bartender (he is one of the few people left who knows how to mix a sidecar). He has, however, been acquiring a reputation as a hard-liner on inflation and as a holder of what Nixon wryly described as "rather, shall we say, outspoken" views. Fellner's views are, in fact, not all that unusual. His daring in voicing them out loud assuredly is--and it promises some lively times on the CEA, especially if, as rumored, Fellner eventually succeeds Herbert Stein as head of the council.

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