Subject: | |
From: | |
Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:39 2006 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
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
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]
|
|
|