----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]