Well, it’s inventor and biggest supporter is, in any case.

Milton Friedman did more for popularizing economic thinking and the understanding of government’s role in causing economic difficulty than any other Economist of the 20th century. He helped foster the Rational Expectations revolution, and, I think most importantly, argued strongly against the Phillips Curve and established grounding for the NAIRU. I think the last paragraph of the FT obit sums it up nicely:

Friedman himself attributed the spread of both free markets and monetarist ideas to belated recognition of the consequences of soaring government spending and high inflation in the 1970s. But so far as the reaction was coherent and rational, much of the credit must go to him. The very success of free market policies has, of course, led to fresh problems; and what would one not give for a reborn 30-year-old Milton Friedman to comment upon and analyse these new challenges?

Goodbye, Milton. And thank you.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 1:27 pm by Timothy and is filed under Things Only Ian Cares About, Things Only Tim Cares About, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.