Milton Friedman Has Died

[scroll down for updates]

[UPDATE: I’ve added the very latest commentary on Friedman here.]

The announcement comes from the Cato Institute.

On every part of the globe Milton Friedman inspired people to live free and make their own choices. He made America and the world a better place, and he will be missed.

Read more about this great man here, here, here, and here.

MORE: View videos of Milton Friedman at Free to Choose, YouTube and Google Video.

UPDATE: The Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation is also announcing the death.

From the WJS:

Mr. Friedman died of heart failure after being taken to hospital near his home in San Francisco, his daughter, Janet Martell, said today. His wife Rose Friedman, who co-authored many of his books, survives him.

Mr. Friedman’s death was also announced at a conference of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington by the institute’s vice president of academic affairs, James A. Dorn. The audience of academics and policy makers observed several moments of silence in observance.

Read press accounts & media obits here. Read blog reactions here, here, here, and here.

Read Milton Friedman’s last interview here. And here’s a Milton Friedman interview from September, and two from July here and here. MORE: A Friedman interview from late last year and another from sometime earlier this year.  UPDATE:  Friedman discusses monetary policy and the Fed. in the Nov. issue of REASON.
UPDATE II: Economists react to the death of Milton Friedman here. Quotable:

“we’d be remiss in not paying respects to Milton Friedman, who passed away today. He changed the economics profession, and was an inspiration not just to students, but people all over the world with aspirations of economic freedom.”

“Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Winner, U Chicago Economist, died today (age 94). He will be missed. He was, without a doubt, the Yoda of Economics.”

“Britain make perhaps the most important point when he states that in Friedman’s public intellectual work there is a tight connection between his policy argument and his Nobel Prize winning arguments from his scientific papers. This tight connection between academic work and public intellectual work is actually the hallmark of Friedman’s greatness.”

“I will forever be grateful for the help Milton Friedman gave Jim Gwartney and me as we set out to construct the economic freedom index. Even as a naive graduate student, Milton treated me as an equal.”

“He was truly a revolutionary thinker. People do not realize how revolutionary because so many of his ideas that were thought to be crazy when he suggested them eventually came to be seen as obvious: school choice, a volunteer army, etc. .. Even at the age of 94 he would teach me something about economics whenever we talked.”

“In purely academic terms, he easily could have won two or three Nobel Prizes from the quality and quantity of his work.”

“The FT has a good obituary up, and the well-deserved eulogies will soon come flooding in. But if you want to be reminded of how charismatic an intellect he was in person, head on over to YouTube, where a number of videos have him declaiming his profound ideas in his signature clear, forceful style.”

“From monetary theory to drug legalization, his intellect was strong and clear, and his ideas have had a large influence in spreading economic and individual freedom. I celebrate a life well-lived.”

NEWS ACCOUNTS & OBITS:

Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times: “Those who wanted to write him off as a right-wing Republican were disabused by the variety of radical causes he championed. I was not impressed in my own student years by the claims to a belief in personal freedom of the pro-market British economists whom I first encountered. It was not until I came across Friedman, and learned that he had spent more time in lobbying against the US “draft” than on any other policy issue, that I began to take seriously the wider philosophic protestations of the pro-market economists.”

New York Times: “Rarely, his colleagues said, did anyone have such impact on both his own profession and on government. Though he never served officially in the halls of power, he was always around them, as an adviser and theorist. In time, his influence was felt around the world.”

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: ““It’s hard to think of anyone who’s had more of a direct influence on social and economic policy in this generation,” said Carnegie Mellon University Professor Allan H. Meltzer, who is preparing a two-volume history of the Fed and has been an adviser to the Bank of Japan. “He, along with others, promoted the idea of low inflation and a more disciplined central bank.”

Brian Doherty in REASON: “Undoubtedly the most successful and influential proponent of libertarian thought in the 20th century, Milton Friedman, died last night at age 94. His successes as both a technical economist and libertarian polemicist are enormous. We can thank him, in large part, for happy events from the elimination of the draft to the conquest of inflation. Just a quick note now–his impact was staggering, and there could never be enough words said in praise of him.”

The Mercury News: “In one of his last interviews, with the Mercury News in late October, Friedman smiled and laughed frequently, reflecting with satisfaction that many of his once-maverick ideas seemed to have been validated by history, including such events as the fall of the Soviet Union, the spread of capitalism throughout the worlds and the shift in how the Federal Reserve Bank fights inflation. “I started out being a very small minority,” Friedman said. “I now have a lot of company. People learn from history, from experience.”

YET MORE:

Art Diamond remembers Milton Friedman.

Walter Block’s personal recollections of Milton Friedman.

Bruce Bartlett on the Death of a Master.

Austan Goolsbee — Chicago Remembers Friedman.

Greg Ip & Mark Whitehouse — How Friedman Changed the World.

Milton Friedman Signs a Copy of Free To Choose.

David Boaz — The World Turner.

Mark Steyn:

I write this from the National Review Mexico cruise on which one of my fellow panellists this week was scheduled to be Milton Friedman. He was taken ill shortly before we sailed, was forced to cancel, and died last night. He was the principal economic influence on President Reagan, Mrs Thatcher and other leaders determined to reverse the ill-effects of Keynesianism in the west, and through them he became equally influential in post-Soviet eastern Europe. He was one of the most important figures of the age, and, had the Republican Congress understood why, they might still be in power.

Arnold Kling:

What struck me [reading Friedman’s biography] was that Friedman won the Clark Medal, given to the economist under 40 with the most achievements, in 1951. At that time, he had published none of the works for which he is famous, either inside our outside the economics profession. Well, maybe one–the Friedman-Savage utility function (1948). He received the most prestigious award that the profession offers, and in hindsight he had not even gotten started.

Mark Skousen:

Milton Friedman, the intellectual architect of the free-market reforms of the post-World War II era, was a dear friend. I was probably the last person to have lunch with Milton. We met at his favorite restaurant in San Francisco and I showed him a picture of him standing next to John Kenneth Galbraith, the premier Keynesian and welfare statist of the 20th century. It was a picture in contrast: Milton Friedman, around 5 feet tall, and Galbraith, almost 6 feet, 10 inches in height. Beneath the picture was a caption by George Stigler: “All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.” Milton was so pleased with the photo and caption that he sent it to all his friends only a few weeks before his passing.

Tim Worstall has many additional links and quotes on the passing of Milton Friedman here.