Milton Friedman Quotes

I have never believed that central banks should have rigid inflation targeting. That is not a good thing to stabilize. There is nothing in economic theory to back this.

The Federal Reserve Board is indefensible in theory and indispensable in practice.

So many of the great thought leaders that have shaped economics - Gary Becker, Milton Friedman - what an unbelievable success story they've had in their field.

The Nobel Prize in Economics is an incredible recognition for the work that my students, colleagues and I have done over the years. We all worked hard, but we were also lucky that the financial applications were so important.

The States is run by the Federal Reserve, an institution that answers only to itself and to a few large banks. It's modelled on the Bank of England. Ben Franklin said that one of the main reasons America revolted was to get away from the Bank of England, the mother of all central banks - the most pernicious and insidious of all.

Let’s throw the economists out and use common sense instead.

'The General Theory' was not truly revolutionary at all but merely old and oft-refuted mercantilist and inflationist fallacies dressed up in shiny new garb, replete with newly constructed and largely incomprehensible jargon.

Keynes eliminated economic theory's ancient role as spoilsport for inflationist and statist schemes, leading a new generation of economists on to academic power and to political pelf and privilege.

People like, George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sax, Dean Baker, Robert Poland, Larry Summers have said they all support a transaction tax.

Negative interest rates have been employed by many, many central banks.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the debate about monetary policy and the nation's financial system had been going on for over a century. Increasingly, the shortcomings of the existing system were causing too much harm to ignore.

I'm a big fan of economist Milton Freidman.

I don't think Keynesian Monetarism has to be Democrat or Republican.

I don't think central banks are going to give up fiat currency anytime in my lifetime.

Government should eschew suasion and directives to banks on interest rates that run counter to monetary policy actions.

When I did my research on this topic, I came to the startling conclusion that the Federal Reserve System does not need to be audited - it needs to be abolished.

I did not criticize the Central Bank's position.

I've always believed that a speculative bubble need not lead to a recession, as long as interest rates are cut quickly enough to stimulate alternative investments. But I had to face the fact that speculative bubbles usually are followed by recessions. My excuse has been that this was because the policy makers moved too slowly - that central banks were typically too slow to cut interest rates in the face of a burst bubble, giving the downturn time to build up a lot of momentum.

The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on depressions will be scientifically created.

Bad as "independence" is, the main fault of the Federal Reserve System - an admirable system if conducted in the public interest - is that too much power and control rests in the hands of people whose private interests are directly affected by the Federal Reserves' actions.

Insanity has infected all the central banks of the world.

It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.

Having examined the nature of fractional reserve and of central banking, and having seen how the questionable blessings of Central Banking were fastened upon America, it is time to see precisely how the Fed, as presently constituted, carries out its systemic inflation and its control of the American monetary system.

Economics departments are dominated by Marxism, which is taken straight or on the rocks, in the form of Keynesianism.

One nanny said, "Feed a cold"; she was a neo-Keynesian. Another nanny said, "Starve a cold"; she was a monetarist.