Birth of Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman was born on 31 July 1912 in Brooklyn. An American economist, Friedman was a leading figure of the Chicago school and a major influence on twentieth-century economic thought. His work on monetarism argued that control of the money supply is the central factor in controlling inflation, and with Anna Schwartz he wrote A Monetary History of the United States, which blamed the Great Depression on the Federal Reserve. He advocated free markets, school vouchers and floating exchange rates in Capitalism and Freedom. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1976 and advised political leaders including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

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