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Milton Friedman and ABCT

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Pike posted on Tue, Jul 7 2009 11:15 AM

Hi,

Why did Friedman believed ABCT was wrong? What were his arguments? In what examples did he find it wrong?

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As far as I know, he didn't specifically address it, as most economists don't, but someone correct me if I'm wrong. Roger Garrison has some good stuff discussing Friedman. Essentially Friedman dealt with aggregates so his analysis inevitably left out what Austrians are talking about.

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Pike:

Hi,

Why did Friedman believed ABCT was wrong? What were his arguments? In what examples did he find it wrong?

According to Lawrence White.

existence is elsewhere

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Pike replied on Thu, Jul 9 2009 5:54 AM

That's what looks strange to me. He usually makes very good and tough arguments and than on ABCT just  "It is, I believe, false". It is even a contradictory with his position wanting to abolish FED, if boom-bust cycles happened unpredictably than we need central bank to "fix it".

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Friedman was a positivist. He justified his position by saying that there is no empirical evidence for ABCT.

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xahrx replied on Thu, Jul 9 2009 9:13 AM

You might want to look up Joe Salerno's response to critics of Rothbard's book on The Great Depression.  While not specific to Friedman, it summarizes and deal with monetarist critiques of ABCT pretty well in the context of TGD.

"I was just in the bathroom getting ready to leave the house, if you must know, and a sudden wave of admiration for the cotton swab came over me." - Anonymous
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Pike replied on Fri, Jul 10 2009 11:05 PM

What kind of evidence monetarists look for? In this recession you had cheap money from FED, that money inflated real estate bubble, whan bum turn into bust all that malinvestments where exposed and you have a recession. From monetarists point of view what evidence is lacking here?

xahrx:

Is it a book or article, do you have a link ?

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