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Hi Bradley, 
 
When Friedman endorses Greenspan's monetary policy he is in conflict with 
his own statements in so far as he calls them potentially inflationary and 
in so far as he still does not state that he thinks inflationary policies 
are good. And Friedman says himself that there is this conflict - maybe 
implicitly suggesting: "the wiser the man, the more contradiction he can 
endure". 
 
As far as the velocity of money issue is concerned, I remember some most 
impressive statistics about its volatility world-wide in Brown, Arthur J.: 
World inflation since 1950 [nineteen hundred and fifty] : an international 
comparative study Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1985. - XIV, 414 S.  
They obviously did not change Friedman's utterances. 
 
I do not think that it is very rewarding to wait for Friedman to 
acknowledge defeat in this matter. He had a tremendous capacity to profess 
ignorance in the past. I remember an interview he gave to the magazine DER 
SPIEGEL at the end of the 1980s where he was asked to say something about 
the dizzy movements of the interest rates at that time and he simply said 
he did not know how to explain them. Full stop. Next question, please. 
 
What is amazing for me is the public and academic following which  that 
type of argumantation was able to muster for many years - and still is able 
to muster. The new European Central Bank ECB pretty much functions on the 
belief in monetarist principles. Milton Friedman expressly endorses their 
policy as well-- not even commenting on his contradictory endorsement for 
Alan Greenspan. It is to no avail that authors from Paul Krugman to Lester 
Thurow plead with the ECB  to follow  more the current deeds of Alan 
Greenspan rather than the old theories of Friedman-type monetarism. Why is 
that so? This would be my favorate question in this context. 
 
Best regards 
Michael 
 
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