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Michael, 
 
I don't know to what degree Friedman is in conflict with his own principles 
in making his statement of support for Greenspan. The statement certainly 
appears to be in conflict with his earlier, well-known work, but I wonder 
what Friedman's response has been to the end of the stability of the 
velocity of money during the last 2 decades. If I remember correctly, as 
late as the mid 1980s, Friedman was still arguing publicly that his 
advocacy of monetary aggregate targeting depended completely on the ability 
of economists and central bankers to accurately estimate some measure of 
velocity (or its growth trend). Since this condition never did occur 
(velocity's accurate estimation), I wonder if Friedman has ever publicly 
responded to how this affects his monetary policy suggestions. In the 
"millenial issue" of the  Journal of Economic Perspectives (winter 2000), 
Brad DeLong has a nice survey piece in which he tries to extract the long 
lasting influence of monetarism (The Triumph of Monetarism?), in which he 
says that, "There are few live remnants of the program to control the 
sources of monetary instability identified by Old Chicago monetarism." 
(p.90). But Delong never addresses the issue of what if anything Friedman 
ever said publicly about the collapse of this program for monetary 
aggregate targeting. 
 
Does anyone know if Friedman has publicly responded? That's what we need to 
know, Michael, to know wheteher Friedman has contravened his principles in 
complimenting Greenspan. 
 
Bradley Bateman 
 
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