In memoriam: Milton Friedman

SAN FRANCISKO, 16. novembra 2006. (Beta-AP) - Dobitnik Nobelove nagrade za ekonomiju Milton Fridman koji se zalagao za slobodno tržište i savetovao američke predsednike Ričarda Niksona, Džeralda Forda i Ronalda Regana, preminuo je danas u San Francisku.

To je danas saopštio portparol Fondacije Miltona i Rouz Fridman Robert Fanger koji nije precizirao šta je uzrok smrti. Fridman je imao 94 godine.

"Miltonova strast prema slobodi uticala je na živote više ljudi nego što bi on to ikada mogao znati", rekao je predsednik fondacije Gordon Sent Andjelo.

Fridmanovi spisi i ideje izmenili su stavove američkih predsednika, svetskih lidera, poslovnih ljudi i mladih ekonomista, navodi se u saopštenju Sent Andjela.

U više od 12 knjiga i u kolumni u nedeljniku "Njuzvik" Fridman se borio za slobodu pojedinca u ekonomiji i politici.

Nobelovu nagradu za ekonomiju dobio je 1976. godine.

"On je svojim brilijantnim umom unapredio moralnu viziju - viziju društva u kojem su ljudi slobodni, slobodni da izaberu, ali u kojem vlada nema slobodu da zanemari njihove odluke. Ta vizija je promenila Ameriku i menja svet", rekao je predsednik SAD Džordž Buš 2002. godine.

Fridman se zalagao za politiku stabilnog, umerenog rasta novčane mase, suprostavljao se kontroli plata i cena i kritikovao vladu kada je to pokušavala da uradi.

Taj nobelovac smatrao je da vlada treba da dozvoli slobodnom tržištu da deluje da bi prevazišlo inflaciju i druge ekonomske probleme.

On je s druge strane pozivao i na usvajanje "negativog poreza na plate" kako bi ljudi koji zaradjuju manje od odredjenog iznosa dobijali novčanu pomoć države.

Bio je najveći. Slava mu!

Umesto da se takav covek kod nas cita,izucava,studira,

Jok,

Na nasim fakultetima su predavaci iz ekonomije bar do pre neku godinu bili sve GO MARKSISTA do marksiste...

Imao sam tamo neke 90-91. godine u svom posedu listu svih nasih profesora na Bg-fakultetima,gde je pored njihovih imena pisalo sta su ti drugovi uzimali za diplomske i doktorske disertacije...

Njih 98 % su doktorirali ili magistrirali na Marksov pogled na svet,na SAMOUPRAVLJANJU pogotovu,a cesta tema je bila "o uticaju Socijlisticke svesti na proizvodnji kromira u SFRJ i tako slicne skaradne teme,,,

Dakle,ja ne da nebi dao "master" danas tim studentima koji su diplomirali u Srbiji tih davnih godina,nego bi ih proglasio za skart strucnjake koji moraju biti odvojeni i izolovani od kontakata sa studentima,djacima i proizvodnjom svega i svacega kod nas.

Blago onima kojima su predavali takve velicine kao sto su Friedman, Porter, Sachs, Stiglitz, koji su saradjivali sa njima ili koji su ucili iz njihovih knjiga. Njima znanje iz ekonomije sigurno ne nedostaje.

"ekonomska sloboda je osnovni uslov političke slobode.
omogućavajući ljudima da međusobno sarađuju bez
prinude ili usmeravanja iz centra, ona smanjuje prostor na kome deluje politička moć. usto, raspršivanjem moći slobodno tržište obezbeđuje protivtežu bilo kakvoj koncentraciji političke moći.
kombinacija političke i ekonomske moći u istim rukama
siguran je recept za tiraniju."
Milton Fridman

čovek koji je istrajao i uspeo u svojoj
poluvekovnoj borbi za liberalne ideale.

... mogla bi devedesetdvojka da pusti film Komandni Visovi (Commanding Heights). Jedan od najboljih dokumentaraca koje sam gledao. A i knjiga je dobra, ima i na srpskom, ako se ne varam.

Free-market economist Milton Friedman dead at 94
By Jim Christie and Duncan Martell

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and a champion of free markets, died on Thursday morning of heart failure at age 94, a family spokeswoman said.

The winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for economics, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy involving steady growth in money supply, ideas that played pivotal roles in the governing philosophies of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty, when it had been all but forgotten," Thatcher said in a statement. "He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of 'the dismal science' (economics)."

"If you had to ask people across the world to name an economist, by far his name would be the most common," Gary Becker, who won the 1992 Nobel Prize for economics, told Reuters. "He could express the most complicated economic ideas in the most simple language."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a statement the "direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate. Just as important, in his humane and engaging way, Milton conveyed to millions an understanding of the economic benefits of free, competitive markets, as well as the close connection that economic freedoms bear to other types of liberty."

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan added: "He had been a fixture in my life both professionally and personally for a half century. My world will not be the same."

INFLUENCED REAGAN

St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole said much of modern central bank thinking stemmed from Friedman's work and his most important contribution was to bring theoretical economic thinking to bear on public policy issues.

"You look at what Reagan did, it was what Milton had been advocating for a long time," said Martin Anderson, a Hoover Institution fellow and domestic and economic policy adviser to the Republican Reagan. "What Milton did was to confirm what he (Reagan) thought and make it more confident, and that became 'Reaganomics.'"

While Friedman found favor among conservatives, he was most interested in obtaining practical results by tapping markets, said Robert Reich, a labor secretary in the Democratic Clinton administration. "He was more experimental than doctrinaire."

Ken Livingstone, London's left-wing mayor, credited Friedman for inspiring his flagship "congestion charge" policy to reduce traffic by charging drivers for entering the city's center.

"The biggest effect Milton Friedman had was making inflation unacceptable," said Tom Campbell, a graduate student under Friedman and dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "We don't talk about the risk of inflation in the 10, 12, 20 percent range anymore because people won't stand for it."

CONTROVERSIAL

In 1976, Friedman's years of teaching and nearly two dozen books were recognized with the Nobel Prize for economic science. Friedman, however, was not without controversy.

His work was not initially popular, emerging at a time when government spending and intervention were widely credited with helping end the worldwide depression of the 1930s. His Nobel ceremony in Stockholm prompted a large turnout of demonstrators who criticized him for economic advice he provided the government of Augusto Pinochet, who led Chile's 17-year dictatorship in which some 3,000 leftists were killed.

"He tried not to let the political composition of the government interfere with things he thought would be better for the people in the country," said Allan Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University.

Later, Friedman raised his profile further as a columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine and through frequent television appearances.

In a retrospective on his work, the Brooklyn-born Friedman traced his roots and those of the so-called Chicago school of economics back to 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith. He moved to California in 1977, when he became a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

(Additional reporting by Alister Bull in Washington)

By JUSTIN M. NORTON

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who championed individual freedom, influenced the economic policies of three presidents and befriended world leaders, is dead at age 94.

Friedman died Thursday in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.

"Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty when it had been all but forgotten," said former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, one of the politicians and colleagues who lauded Friedman on Thursday. "He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal science."

In numerous books, a Newsweek magazine column and a PBS show, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics. The longtime University of Chicago professor pioneered a school of thought that became known as the Chicago school of economics. His work is still widely influential in the business world, academia and politics.

Friedman's theory of monetarism was adopted in part by the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated U.S. policy since the New Deal. He was a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

His work in consumption analysis, monetary history and stabilization policy earned him the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976.

"He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision - the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions," President George W. Bush said in 2002. "That vision has changed America, and it is changing the world."

Friedman favored a policy of steady, moderate growth in the money supply, opposed wage and price controls and criticized the Federal Reserve when it tried to fine-tune the economy.

A believer in the principles of 18th century economist Adam Smith, he consistently argued that individual freedom should rule economic policy. Friedman saw his theories attacked by many traditional economists such as Harvard's John Kenneth Galbraith.

"He, more than any other person, has changed the composition and ideology of the economists' profession," said Paul Samuelson, a 91-year-old professor emeritus of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was a contemporary liberal foil to Friedman's conservatism.

In an essay titled "Is Capitalism Humane?" Friedman said that "a set of social institutions that stresses individual responsibility, that treats the individual ... as responsible for and to himself, will lead to a higher and more desirable moral climate."

Friedman argued that government should allow the free market to operate to solve inflation and other economic problems. But he also urged adoption of a "negative income tax" in which people who earn less than a certain amount would get money back from national coffers.

"Milton was one of the great thinkers and economists of the 20th century, and when I was first exposed to his powerful writings about money, free markets and individual freedom, it was like getting hit by a thunderbolt," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California said in a statement.

Friedman lived to see free market reforms spread in the former communist world and Latin America, but played down his own influence.

"I hope what I wrote contributed to that, but it was not the moving force," Friedman told The New York Sun in March 2006. "People like myself, what we did was keep these ideas open until the time came when they could be accepted."

Born in New York City on July 31, 1912, Friedman began developing his economic theories during the Great Depression when President Franklin D. Roosevelt based his New Deal on the ideas of Britain's John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the time.

Keynes argued that the government should intervene in economic affairs to avoid depressions by increasing spending and controlling interest rates.

Friedman graduated from Rutgers University in 1932 and earned his master's degree the following year at the University of Chicago.

After working for the National Resources Commission in Washington from 1935 to 1937, he served on the staff of the National Bureau of Economics Research in New York from 1937 to 1945 and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1946.

After World War II, he taught at the University of Minnesota, then returned to the University of Chicago. He became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1977.

Friedman married Rose Director in 1938. They had two children, Janet and David, and Rose was co-author of some of his books.

Among his most famous books were: "Price Theory," 1962 (with Rose Friedman); "Capitalism and Freedom," 1962 (with Anna J. Schwartz); "An Economist's Protest," 1972 and "There Is No Such Thing As a Free Lunch," 1975.

Friedman wrote columns for Newsweek from 1966 to 1983 and was one of the few economists to bridge the gap between academia and the public. He supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968 and served on Nixon's commission for an All-Volunteer Army in 1969 and 1970.

"Among economic scholars, Milton Friedman had no peer," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said. "The direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate."

The Friedmans started the foundation that bears their names in 1996 to promote and advocate parental choice in education.

Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, a think tank that promotes free market concepts, said that "ultimately, what Milton believed in was human liberty and he took great joy in trying to promote that concept."

Friedman is survived by his wife and two children.

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Associated Press writers Martin Crutsinger in Washington and Mark Jewell in Boston contributed to this report.

ovaj post je otprilike ono kako smo mi shvatuili, takodje, o cemu treba pisati na blogu big time .......neko bi rekao, so what, bice u times, u neewsweek, etc, ali nije to to....fascinantno je koliko se u nasoj mainstream politici pa i strucnoj javnosti koja bi povremno nesto i trebala da dojavi siroj javnosti malo prica o svetskim trendovima koji ce-hteli mi ili ne-uticati na srbiju. ...... bilo je ovih dana i u srbiji i o njoj bitnih dogadjaja o kojima na drugim mestima ( novinama i tv u srbiji) na zalost nisi mogao skoro nista da cujes, ili je ono sto je preneseno bilo neadekvatno znacaju.....i kad cujes, nije od onih od kojih bi, takodje, moralo , jer se busaju u grudi da su lideri, perjanice, kopce, karike...

elem, i ovogodisnji dobitnik nobelove nagrade za ekonomiju je amer, sa takozvane columbia school, kazu da je iduci iz iste -JAGADISH BHAGWATI, ..toplo , toplo preporucujemo njegovu knjigu In Defense of Globalization.

da nam pozajmis knjigu kad je zavrsis :-)

Margaret Thacher je bila odushevljena njime ...

sta je sve kod nas prevedeno od njega ?