Economist Milton Friedman died, aged 94

Friedman was a leader of the Chicago monetarist school that advocated a free market and minimal government intervention

Nobel laureate, American economist Milton Friedman died yesterday in San Francisco. Friedman was 94 years old when he died.

Friedman, who coined the term "there are no free meals" won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976. He is considered the high priest of monetaristism. His ideas gained popularity in the XNUMXs when they influenced the policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

These leaders won the election thanks to Friedman's idea that money supply is the main factor driving economic growth and the rate of inflation. Thatcher thanked Friedman, calling him an "intellectual freedom fighter." "He revived the free economy when everyone else forgot about it," she said. There was never a less gloomy advocate of the most gloomy science. I will miss a friend full of wisdom and sarcastic humor," Thatcher told the BBC.

The current chairman of the Conservative Party in Great Britain, Gordon Brown defined Friedman as one of the greatest theoretical economists of the twentieth century. "He had a great influence on economic policy after World War II, and his advice in the field of monetary policy was trusted."

Friedman was also a great supporter of deregulation (in the framework of which competition was introduced into many markets such as communications and aviation) and privatization. During his thirty years as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Friedman was an advocate of the free economy and his approach was known as the "Chicago School". He was known as a sharp and fluent speaker, and it was said that he never lost an argument.

"If John Maynard Keynes dominated economic thought in the middle of the 2003th century, Friedman dominated economic thought toward the end of the century, and far into the current century," said a spokesman for the American Institute for Free Economics in Washington. Ben Bernanke, the head of the American Central Bank - the Federal Reserve, said in a speech in XNUMX that "his thinking so influenced the global macro-economy that the only obstacle in reading it today is the failure to understand the source of the article and the perception of how revolutionary it was."

Friedman was born in Brooklyn on July 31, 1912, a member of a family of Jewish immigrants and financed his studies up to university through his self-employment. During his lifetime he also advised Presidents Reagan and Nixon and wrote influential journal articles. Among his books "Consumption Function Theory", "The Tyranny of the Status Quo and the Freedom to Choose" were later turned into TV series. However, his work was not limited to the economic field. He advocated freedom of choice and supported, for example, home schooling of students at Beit Pasar Elementary School as well as the removal of the criminal transfer of drugs and prostitution. He was one of the supporters of the abolition of conscription for the US Army after the Vietnam War, something he later defined as one of the achievements he was most proud of.