[Reader-list] The Original Friedman

[Shivam Vij]

I like this one in the Guardian:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2006/11/post_650.html
best
s

On 11/17/06, aasim khan <aasim27 at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> The man who advised Pinochet and campaigned for
> legalisation of marijuana is dead.
>
> Many believe he was the man who turned Chicago School
> into the power capital of the new world.
>
> A small obit from The Independent:
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Milton Friedman, free-market economist who inspired
> Reagan and Thatcher, dies aged 94
>
> Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist
> economist who was an intellectual architect of the
> free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and
> an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime
> Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94.
>
> Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian
> Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the
> most influential economic thinker of his time. Over
> that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that
> changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the
> economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant
> economic philosophy of the industrial world.
>
> Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money
> chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the
> result of too little money in the economy. He argued
> that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism,
> but of government, as the monetary authorities in the
> US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus
> making a bad situation worse.
>
> As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002,
> Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now
> chairman of the US central bank - sought belated
> forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great
> Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged.
> "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs
> underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his
> name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the
> United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other
> writing including a regular column in Newsweek
> magazine. He urged deregulation and individual
> initiative as the keys to economic success - a view
> embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan,
> and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain.
>
> Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the
> economics of liberty when it had been all but
> forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter.
> Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal
> science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid
> wisdom and mordant humour."
>
> Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he
> led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods
> system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was
> devalued twice in the early 1970s.
>
> In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.
> In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks
> adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the
> money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the
> 1970s oil-shocks.
>
> His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond
> economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the
> military draft, and called for the decriminalisation
> of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy,
> not least when he and other Chicago School economists
> advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow
> in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically
> elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by
> pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet.
> "Freer markets lead to free people," he said.
>
> "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a
> direct influence on social and economic policy in this
> generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie
> Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume
> history of the Fed, said yesterday.
>
> Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning monetarist
> economist who was an intellectual architect of the
> free-market policies of Republican US presidents, and
> an adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime
> Minister, died yesterday in San Francisco. He was 94.
>
> Over half a century, Mr Friedman, the son of Hungarian
> Jewish immigrants, established himself as arguably the
> most influential economic thinker of his time. Over
> that post-war period, "Friedmanism" - the belief that
> changes in money supply dictate fluctuations in the
> economy - supplanted Keynesianism as the dominant
> economic philosophy of the industrial world.
>
> Inflation, he believed, was caused by too much money
> chasing two few goods. Conversely, deflation was the
> result of too little money in the economy. He argued
> that the Depression was not a failure of capitalism,
> but of government, as the monetary authorities in the
> US and Europe reduced liquidity in the system, thus
> making a bad situation worse.
>
> As Mr Friedman celebrated his 90th birthday in 2002,
> Ben Bernanke - then a Federal Reserve governor, now
> chairman of the US central bank - sought belated
> forgiveness for the error: "Regarding the Great
> Depression, you're right," Mr Bernanke acknowledged.
> "We did it. We're very sorry." Those monetary beliefs
> underpinned the 30-plus books that appeared under his
> name, most notably perhaps A Monetary History of the
> United States, 1867-1960, as well as a host of other
> writing including a regular column in Newsweek
> magazine. He urged deregulation and individual
> initiative as the keys to economic success - a view
> embraced by the US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan,
> and by Mrs Thatcher in Britain.
> Mrs Thatcher said: "Milton Friedman revived the
> economics of liberty when it had been all but
> forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter.
> Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal
> science. I shall greatly miss my old friend's lucid
> wisdom and mordant humour."
>
> Friedman, and the "Chicago School" of economics he
> led, helped to bring down the post-war Bretton Woods
> system of fixed exchange rates, as the dollar was
> devalued twice in the early 1970s.
>
> In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.
> In subsequent years, the Fed and other central banks
> adopted his prescription of rigorous control of the
> money supply to stamp out the inflation left by the
> 1970s oil-shocks.
>
> His laissez-faire philosophy extended beyond
> economics. Mr Friedman was a fierce opponent of the
> military draft, and called for the decriminalisation
> of prostitution and drug use. He courted controversy,
> not least when he and other Chicago School economists
> advised Augusto Pinochet in Chile, after the overthrow
> in 1973 of Salvador Allende, the democratically
> elected president. Mr Friedman defended himself by
> pointing to the ultimate fall of General Pinochet.
> "Freer markets lead to free people," he said.
>
> "It's hard to think of anyone who's had more of a
> direct influence on social and economic policy in this
> generation," Professor Allan H Meltzer of Carnegie
> Mellon University, who is preparing a two-volume
> history of the Fed, said yesterday.
>
>
>
>
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