From Reuters:
Free market economist Milton Friedman dead at 94
Milton Friedman, the free market economist and winner of a 1976 Nobel Prize, died on Thursday morning of heart failure, a spokeswoman for his family said. He was 94.
Friedman’s ideas played a pivotal role in forming the governing philosophies of world leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
He preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy that called for steady growth in money supplies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
http://www.hoover.org/bios/friedman/
http://www.ideachannel.com/Friedman.htm
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1976/friedman-autobio.html
If you don’t know Friedman, you should. He was courageous, and a genius.
NJ should take a look his way when considering ways to reduce property taxes.
I’m sure there are lots of people at the Fed today who believe themselves disciples of Friedman, but I would love to have heard his thoughts on the last seven years of monetary policy in this country. Particularly, the last 5. I’m guessing he was appalled.
For those who might not be familiar with his work, Friedman did not advocate “massive” growth in money supply, but consistent growth, i.e. something like 4% per year.
If I’m recalling my undergraduate economic courses properly, he viewed the consistent increase (to match productivity and workforce increases) as a way to keep a lid on inflation and prevent recession while providing the necessary space for growth.
He opposed the Keynesian concept of increasing government spending (deficit spending) when the economy slowed and decreasing it during good economic times, because he observed the abject failure of the people running the government to decrease spending as the economy improved.
There’s an interview with him in the current issue of Reason on the Fed. Check reasonmag.com for the deets.
I got turn on onto economics by him as an early teen on PBS -Ch 13. In the early 80’s he had a cheezee show – but for whatever reason- I liked it, and started to follow economics. The other PBS guy with a show that open my eyes was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.