Friedman: Freedom champion

San Francisco, Nov. 16 (AP): Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents, died today at age 94.

Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesperson for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death.

“Milton’s passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know,” said Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation’s president and CEO.

In more than a dozen books and a column in Newsweek magazine, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics.

His theory of monetarism, adopted in part by the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated US policy since the New Deal. His work in consumption analysis, monetary history and stabilisation policy earned him the Nobel in economics in 1976.

Friedman favoured a policy of steady, moderate growth in money supply and opposed wage and price controls. A believer in the principles of Adam Smith, the 18th century economist, he argued that individual freedom should rule economic policy.

Outspoken and controversial, Friedman saw his theories attacked by many traditional economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith.

Among Friedman’s most famous books were There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, and Price Theory (with wife Rose).