Economist Milton Friedman Dies

Nobel Prize-winning Right-wing economist Milton Friedman has died at the age of 94. The Washington Post charitably describes him as "...one of the most influential economists of the past century." The economic policies collectively described as "monetarism" long attributed to him were largely the work of far less popularly recognized economists such as David Ricardo (1772-1823) and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), but Dr. Friedman used the platform of his fame to eventually turn the central banks of many countries around the world to more or less strict discipline in the growth of their money supplies, thereby dampening the strong inflation/deflation swings that had wracked economies in the past. These same policies, however, were imposed upon developing countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to far less impressive ends in terms of the misery visited primarily upon the poor of those nations.

Among the leaders he advised on economic policy were Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, and General Augusto Pinochet, the brutal dictator of Chile.

Friedman's status as a Nobel laureate allowed him considerable ability to promote his radical views that markets free of government intervention were ideal, and he was rarely brought to task, particularly in his writings like the book, Free to Choose, for his persistent conflation of "free markets," a paradigm of economists, with human freedom, a reality denied to the vast majority who labor under the fist of free market economics that always seem to favor the few over the many.

Contrary to that negative view of his work, Dr. Friedman was honored in 2002 by President George W. Bush, who said of him: "He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions."

Milton Friedman is survived his wife and two children, as well as by a large and still-growing number of economists who, like the late Dr. Friedman, just don't give a damn about anything but the elegance of their theories.