Something I did not read in any of the obituaries for Milton Friedman which I meant to write the other day and never got around to:
- Monetarism, ie. targeted money supply expansion as monetary policy, as Dr. Friedman prescribed, never, and I mean NEVER WORKED... in fact, it produced pretty disasterous results everywhere (US, Britain, Chile, etc.) it was tried and was often quickly abandoned.
- While Friedman's legacy might be reminding us of the importance of keeping inflation in check and advocating price stability (both pretty basic to the discipline of Economics in general) his assertion that "inflation is always a monetary phenomenon" is widely disputed and you won't find anyone, especially a reputable economist, who calls him or herself a "Monetarist" nowadays.
Okay, that felt good to get off my chest.