Free Republic

Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, promoting "Free to Choose" on the show Donahue.Worth watching....Donahue...actually conducted a decent interview.

Yesterday would have been the 103rd birthday of Milton Friedman, who was one of the most brilliant economists of the last century. In honor of Friedman, here are his 20 best quotes. 20) “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” 19) “Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny,...

Lovers of Big Government and apologists for debt like Paul Krugman have tried to paint Milton Friedman as a contradiction. They say that Friedman’s insight that more Fed intervention might have mitigated the Great Depression is inconsistent with his view that the Depression would have been less severe without the Fed. Krugman can typically be discounted because his partisanship diminishes his perceptiveness. It is, however, disappointing when National Review joins the fray and publishes opinion claiming that Friedman “would likely have supported a much more aggressive monetary response to our economic downturn.” Professor Ivan Pongracic of Hillsdale College explains that...

Such was the title of a debate held at the Asia Society, sponsored by Thomson Reuters, which I attended several weeks ago. Coming at a time of agonizing societal fissures arising from debates over austerity, stimulus, and the wisdom of government intervention into the economy, this event pitting the backers of a Hayekian view of economics against those who espoused a Keynesian model seemed incredibly timely. After explaining to the audience the general structure of the debate and how it would be judged-spectators were given gadgets similar to those distributed at IQ2 debates, which they were to use to vote...

The headline of a story in today's Detroit Free Press characterizes Gov. Jennifer Granholm's understanding of the state film production subsidies: "Goal of film tax credit is jobs, not more revenue." There's a story from the 1960s about the late economist Milton Friedman visiting a large public works project in a third world country that was funded by U.S. foreign aid. Given the substantial investment, the famous economist was surprised to see thousands of men with shovels moving dirt one spadeful at a time. He asked his host, "Why don't they use bulldozers?" "It creates more employment this way," came...

As political talking heads ponder the necessity for yet another stimulus package our domestic economy is wallowing with unemployment approaching 10%. Politicians on the left continue to embrace the last pork loaded stimulus bill claiming that while it didn't quite meet expectations for curbing job loss -- things would certainly be much worse without it. In the meantime, Republicans argue that while the government's attempt to stimulate the economy was all well and good -- the legislation was severely misguided and not enough of the new borrowed and printed money is getting into the economy fast enough. Lost in this...

Investment banking model is dead, says Roche By Anette Jönsson | 29 September 2008 David Roche gives his view on what the financial sector will look like after the current credit crisis, which he says was created by excess liquidity and the shift to a "new monetarism" model. The financial sector will look very different after the current financial crisis with a dramatic increase in regulation, slower credit growth and a forced return to a traditional relationship banking model where banks fund themselves primarily through deposits, argues David Roche, president of London-based global investment consultancy, Independent Strategy. “The wholesale money...

'INFLATION IS always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." I can think of few sentences in economics that have engraved themselves more deeply in my memory than Milton Friedman's famous line in his Encyclopedia Britannica entry for "Money." Even before I went to university, I had become fascinated by the problem of inflation. No wonder: In 1975, when I was 11, the annual rate hit 27% in Britain. At Oxford, however, I was prescribed John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith. I discovered Friedman only when I began work on my doctoral dissertation on the German hyperinflation of 1923. Suddenly all...

How to Cure Health Care By Milton Friedman Archived Issue - Winter 2001 Since the end of World War II, the provision of medical care in the United States and other advanced countries has displayed three major features: first, rapid advance in the science of medicine; second, large increases in spending, both in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars per person and the fraction of national income spent on medical care; and third, rising dissatisfaction with the delivery of medical care, on the part of both consumers of medical care and physicians and other suppliers of medical care. Rapid technological advance...

GOLD AND PAX AMERICANA Nelson Hultberg "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad," goes the ancient saying. If this is true, then our leaders in Washington are headed straight for the cuckoo's nest. There is a virulent, hubristic madness consuming our political elites in this first decade of the 21st century. It manifests in the intrusiveness of the Nanny State, in the relentless debasement of our currency, in the manipulation of our markets, and in the outrageous taxes that sap the entrepreneurial vigor from our lives. But scariest of all, it manifests in the employment of unbridled...

Trashing the Constitution: How misconstruction of the monetary powers and disabilities subverted the Founding Fathers’ intent Presented by Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Esq., FAME Foundation Scholar To The Rotary Club of New York March 25th, 2003 at the Princeton Club, New York, NY Introduction by Dr. Lawrence Parks, Executive Director, FAME (Slightly edited for clarity) Dr. Lawrence Parks: Before I introduce Dr. Vieira, I want to spend less than two minutes positioning his topic. Our monetary system is an abomination. It violates almost all of the principles that civilized people hold dear: · From the Biblical point of view, our...