You need advice regarding the economy who do you go to, Barack Obama or Milton Friedman?

Grand Theft Pants(the third)

Friedman started out alright in the 1960s, and his monetary theory is useful (hence the Nobel Prize), but the bulk of what follows through the 70s, 80s and especially the 90s and beyond that emerged from the Chicago school (it was pretty much downhill from the 1970s) has been firmly discredited.

The problem is that they created a theory that essentially rested on Fama's hypothesis that markets are essentially efficient (The Efficient Market Hypothesis) which has been firmly discredited by this and preceding economic crises.

In reality, if you had been paying attention to what happened where the Chicago School recommendations were put into practice both in this country and abroad, you'd have seen it for the failed abstract concept that it is.

Seriously, if the markets were inherently efficient, there would be no opportunity to make money off of them (and if you are an active investor, you know exactly what I mean). Every position an investor takes (long or short) is essentially a bet that the market has valued a particular asset incorrectly.

In the Friedmanite universe, markets reflected all of the available knowledge inputs, the participants all had access to these inputs, and their decisions were rational, so there is no way something like the economic collapse we just experienced could have happened without some Government entity stepping in to distort prices.

Which is why the supply siders and such have been pointing frantically at any Government Bogey men they can scrounge up even when the attribution is ridiculous.

In short, lots of people have Nobel prizes in Economics. Some are advising Obama. Some others have practical experience beyond abstract theory and are advising Obama.

So... you really don't have a valid premise: I would put the Efficient Market Hypothesis up against the body of respectable economists and investors any day of the week.

The EMH is dead, and almost everyone in economic circles knows it and freely admits it, and they are busily adjusting to that reality.

Nobel Laureates Elinor Ostrom, Oliver E. Williamson and Paul Krugman are way more relevant than Friedman and his failed trickle down economic theories.

Friedman’s influence on both Bernanke and Greenspan is well known and it is no doubt because of the faith they placed in his theories and his interpretation of history that they allowed the crisis to get where it was when Obama took the White House.

Friedman supplied the “theoretical” base for failed policies and started a thirty year, delusional “greed is good” period, launched by Thatcher/Reagan policies, that set us back to the 30s from an economic sciences POV.

If Friedman or Mises were accurate then this economic disaster we are in was deliberately caused by the Republicans for the express purpose of letting a few greedy people monopolize America.

Your choice:

Accurate but greedily evil;

Or idiotically incompetent but well-meaning...

Well Obama is using John Maynard Keynes so it's Kenynes or Friedman. I take Friedman because he is proved. Aside from WWII Keynes has been wrong every time applied. It's just a classroom theory better left on the chalk board. Never will the world be in total war again with so much spent by governments at the same time.

I cannot speculate as to whether he is conspiring to do what you suggest. However, what he is doing will have the same effect. Our country is being taken down through the economy.

Friedman by far

Milton Friedman once said "We are all Keynesians now."

Obama's never had a real paying job. I'll take Friedman.

I'll take the guy who cooks the books for the NY Yankees.