We Need a Little More Milton Berle right now!................
No, but the Gods of the Copybook Headings, wearing all black, are stealthily positioning themselves by the exit doors.
One of my students went to the University of Chicago for an MS in economics. She was extremely bright, but socially awkward. Her dad was a colleague where I was teaching and told the story of how her daughter ran into Friedman while walking across campus:
Her, stopping Friedman: "Aren't you Milton Friedman?"
Dr. Friedman: "Yes, I am."
Her: "My undergrad professor talked about you all the time. I thought you were dead."
Joe admits that Marx, Lenin, and Satan are running the show.
Perhaps an interesting story.
In 1990 or 1991 I was invited on an all-paid trip to Munich by the Mont Pelerin Society along with many other young scholars in an attempt to bring in new members to the dying organization. At one point, I was in a small room with five Nobel Prize winners in economics, including Buchanan, Tullock, and Friedman.
On one of the days, we took a barge down the Rhine. The barge had a full spread of food and Miltie was standing there so I went up to him and asked how he could support the Fed when “free banking” had worked in America extremely well from 1830 to 1860 (only one depression/panic, caused by, as I later proved with a colleague from Columbia, reactions to the Dred Scott decision).
Here was the “godfather” of free market economics defending the gubment (I know, I know, the Fed “isn’t the gubment” wink wink) and opposing free market banking that had a great historical record.
Freidman is the reason we lowered our import tariffs resulting in the deindustrialization and the rise of China.
He’s also the reason we have an income tax.
Well, ‘Brandon’ isn’t ‘running the show’ either these days.
So, WHO is?
We need a lot more Feidman, and a whole lot less John Maynard Keynes, right now.