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No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money.

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
Phenomenon
Monetary
Central
Bankers
Increase
Propositions
Deflation
Money
Inflation
Banker
Every
Primarily
Accompanied
Would
Quantity
Proposition
Decline
Rapid
Disagree
Rapids

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The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.
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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.
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The Great Depression was not a sign of the failure of monetary policy or a result of the failure of the market system as was widely interpreted. It was instead a consequence of a very serious government failure, in particular a failure in the monetary authorities to do what they'd initially been set up to do.
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Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised.
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To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.
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You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
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The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.
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What's the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There's a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
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There's no way to avoid a burden on your freedom. The costs themselves are a burden on your freedom. The restrictions that are necessary in order to get rid of the terrorists are a burden to your freedom. So there's no way in the short run to avoid a restriction on your freedom.
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A private enterprise system needs some measuring rod, it needs something, it needs money to make its transactions. You can't run a big complicated system through barter, through converting one commodity into another. You need a monetary system to operate. And the instability in that monetary system is devastating to the performance of the economy.
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On aging societies, there is no reason why a country that has a lot of old people can't be prosperous if, during their working lives, individuals provide for their retirement.
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Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
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The argument for collectivism is simple free market is not.
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And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?
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Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.
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Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
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So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free-enterprise system.
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There is only one social responsibility of business
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The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
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The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.
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