Milton Friedman

The death of Milton Friedman is an occasion to reflect on the power of one astonishing human mind. Friedman crafted modern conventional wisdom in so many areas that it's hard to remember what went before, as the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Benjamin Bernanke, once observed. As an economist, Friedman launched a rethinking of Keynesian theory and monetary policy. As a libertarian he brought us such innovations as school vouchers. As a political theorist, he reminded the world that political freedom and economic freedom go hand in hand....Milton Friedman, The NY Sun,, 11/17/2006

There have been many, worthy obits about economist, libertarian and political theorest Milton Friedman, who died yesterday at 94. This unsigned front page editorial in today's NY Sun, New York's only serious conservative paper, is the best this writer has read. Read it all. And while you're at it, you might try this memoir by Amity Shlaes, a columnist for Bloomberg News, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Today's papers will be filled with tributes to the scholarly contributions of Milton Friedman, who died yesterday at the age of 94. They will note the way that the great economist invented modern monetarism. And the fact that Milton vanquished orthodox Keynesianism with a single phrase — "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Then there is how Milton inspired Paul Volcker to push interest rates to the sky to stop inflation, an event whose benefits we still see in the shape of the yield curve today. Yet there is something Friedman did that is less talked about. He showed us that free markets are humane....Friedman's Warmth, Amity Shlaes, The NY Sun, 11/17/2006

How angry that observable fact about free markets made the Left as the Chicago School went to work on Chile! They transformed it from a Third World country, then a dictatorship, to a democracy and economic leader in Latin America under the aegis of Friedman's ideas. You want to know why the only thing the Left talks about on the subject of Chile is Auguste Pinochet and the coup of 1973? Because the rest of the story, as ancient Paul Harvey puts it, is so embarrassing to their ideas of what should have been done.

God rest the soul of Milton Friedman.

Luther