Future Monetary Possibilities

Milton Friedman is what is known as an early bird. He is also a man of great courtesy, and this, plus, of course, the certainty that he is right, is what helps him to face the most vehement critics with equanimity. During the conferences and seminars at which I have had the good fortune to be a participant along with him, I have taken advantage of his habit of early rising and his affable disposition in order to explore in greater detail the doctrine of which he is the unchallenged high priest, namely, monetarism, and at the same time learn more about his economic, political and social convictions; because, though Friedman is well known in Europe as the founder of the ‘Chicago School’, in the United States he is even better known as the theoretician of liberalism, even extremist liberalism. My conversations with Milton Friedman have left me with a great admiration for his powers of dialectic and the clarity with which he expounds his ideas. At the same time, though, I have also been left feeling somewhat ill at ease with regard to the way his theories of monetarism, which were originally open to amendment in the light of experience, have been changed into a dogma which admits of no concessions.