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I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.

Milton Friedman

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Milton Friedman
Age: 94 †
Born: 1912
Born: July 31
Died: 2006
Died: November 16
Economist
Essayist
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Milton Fridman
Severe
Decline
Stock
Equally
Depression
Money
Country
Accompanied
Time
Sharp

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The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
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No major institution in the US has so poor a record of performance over so long a period as the Federal Reserve, yet so high a public reputation.
Milton Friedman
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The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization.
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It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society.
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In a free society, it is hard for 'good' people to do 'good', but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for 'evil' people to do 'evil', especially since one man's good is another's evil
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If you look at the balance sheet, the US is heavily in debt. If you look at the income account - the amount of interest the US pays abroad - it is almost exactly equal to the amount of interest that it receives from abroad. American assets held abroad are earning a higher rate of return than foreign assets held here.
Milton Friedman
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The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.
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My interest in political philosophy was rather casual until I met Hayek.
Milton Friedman
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We had much freer trade in the 19th century. We have much less globalization now than we did then.
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To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.
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Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.
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The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure.
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If a country is an attractive place for foreigners to invest their funds, then that country will have a relatively high exchange rate. If it's an unattractive place, it will have a relatively low exchange rate. Those are the fundamentals that determine the exchange rate in a floating exchange rate system.
Milton Friedman
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A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
Milton Friedman
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A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.
Milton Friedman
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The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the rule of the game and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.
Milton Friedman
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How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant.
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Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
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The central banks cannot control interest rates. That's a mistake. They can control a particular rate, such as the Federal Funds rate, if they want to, but they can't control interest rates.
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China's productive system draws upon the other East Asian countries to a great extent. The volume of trade is much larger than the net amount being exported from China. China needs substantial reserves to finance all that.
Milton Friedman