Missing Milton Friedman
WW:
Free-marketeers and inflation: Missing Milton Friedman | The Economist: I don't claim that the right, loosely defined, is chock full of Murray Rothbard fanatics. And whatever it is that is keeping Ben Bernanke's Fed from loosening up, it's not the enduring intellectual legacy of Murray Rothbard. At least, not directly. But I do believe elements of Ron Paul's Rothbardian monetary philosophy enjoy a great deal of currency on the grassroots right, and I believe this exerts a considerable gravitational force on the institutional right, such that arguments for zero or very low inflation are accorded more weight than they would were Milton Friedman still in full effect.
If only the free-market right still had such a powerfully persuasive "technician advising the state how to be more efficient", our economy might now be slightly less screwed. Maybe it would help were "advising the state to be more efficient" less widely considered "evil work".
