mahatmakanejeeves
How Milton Friedman Saved Chile
Get a barf bag ready. This reminds me of Peggy Noonan's claim that dolphins carried Elián Gonzalez to safety.
How Milton Friedman Saved Chile
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703411304575093572032665414.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7832690
I read the WSJ article yesterday and it is excellent. Of course the primitives, not knowing anything about the foundation of Freidman's Monatary Policy except to attach the words "trickle down" to it (a concept which is but a slither of his whole economic viewpoint, much of which is way to complicated for liberals in general to understand).
Here are some of the highlights of the article:
In 1973, the year the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile was an economic shambles. Inflation topped out at an annual rate of 1000%, foreign-currency reserves were totally depleted, and per capita GDP was roughly that of Peru and well below Argentina's.
What Chile did have was intellectual capital, thanks to an exchange program between its Catholic University and the economics department of the University of Chicago, then Friedman's academic home. Even before the 1973 coup, several of Chile's "Chicago Boys" had drafted a set of policy proposals which amounted to an off-the-shelf recipe for economic liberalization: sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on.
In left-wing mythology—notably Naomi Klein's tedious 2007 screed "The Shock Doctrine"—the Chicago Boys weren't just strange bedfellows to Pinochet's dictatorship. They were complicit in its crimes. .... In fact, Pinochet had been mostly indifferent to the Chicago Boys' advice until the continuing economic crisis forced him to look for some policy alternatives. In March 1975, he had a 45-minute meeting with Friedman and asked him to write a letter proposing some remedies. Friedman responded a month later with an eight-point proposal that largely mirrored the themes of the Chicago Boys.
For his trouble, Friedman would spend the rest of his life being defamed as an accomplice to evil: at his Nobel Prize ceremony the following year, he was met by protests and hecklers. Friedman himself couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed by the obloquies; he later wryly noted that he had given communist dictatorships the same advice he gave Pinochet, without raising leftist hackles.
As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet's democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America's richest people. They have the continent's lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.
Friendman's Monetary Policy works.
Of course, this can't be accepted by the primtives.
ProfessorGAC
4. Absolutely Ridiculous
There is not one whit of evidence in that whole article. It's conjecture based upon opinion based upon feelings based upon philosophy.
The econometric evidence is not only absent from this article, it's absent from reality.
GAC
Because you're too lazy to look it up that means it's not true? That's not how the real world works, you dolt. You can prove nothing wrong in the article.
blm
7. Man, she's a major IDIOT - GOPs demand LESS regulations for businesses including BUILDERS.
Hurricane Andrew devastated Homestead because of unscrupulous builders. I remember a handful of homes built by Habitat for Humanity - built strictly according to code - survived.
Liar. Conservatism itself demands the individual to conduct any work he's doing to be the highest standard possible.
HughBeaumont
10. Wow, SOMEone didn't read "The Shock Doctrine".
Saved, my ASS. The exact OPPOSITE happened to them AND Argentina. Unbridled disaster corporatism KILLS everything it touches.
Another liar. "By 1990, ... per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) .... Chileans have become South America's richest people. They have the continent's lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line." Theirs no denying that except through lies, of which liberals are the poster children.
Keynesian economics has proven, and is proving again, to be the road to economic disaster. But don't tell that to the primtives. Some college prof who gets gov't funding to back up claims that fly in the face of human nature and don't play out in real life told them differently.
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