This is a nice article about the past, present and future of the U of Chicago especially its business and economics departments. It includes wide range of quotes including from James Galbraith, Robert Lucas, Mirowski and (Obama advisor) Goolsbee.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a3GVhIHGyWRM --------------------------------------------snip At the University of Chicago, once ascendant free-market acolytes are finding themselves in an unusual role: They're battling a wave of government intervention more sweeping than any since the Great Depression as the U.S. struggles with the worst recession in seven decades. By the end of November, the government had committed $8.5 trillion, or more than half the value of everything produced in the country in 2007, to save the financial system. The European Union had ponied up more than $3 trillion to guarantee bank loans and provide capital to lenders. And China had unveiled a $586 billion stimulus plan and its biggest interest-rate cut in 11 years. The intrusion is anathema to the so-called Chicago School of economics and its patriarch, the late Milton Friedman. Nobel Dominance For half a century, Chicago's hands-off principles have permeated financial thinking and shaped global markets, earning the university 10 Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences starting in 1969, more than double the four each won by Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Chicago's laissez-faire imprint underpins everything from U.S. President Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and the fall of communism that decade to quantitative investment strategies. In 1972, Friedman helped persuade U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz, former dean of Chicago's business school, to approve the first financial futures contracts in foreign currencies. Such derivatives grew more complex after Chicago economists created the mathematical formulas to price them, helping spawn a $683 trillion market that's proved to be a root of today's financial system breakdown. On Dec. 16, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its target lending rate to as low as zero for the first time and said it will buy mortgage- backed securities. Free Market Friedman, who died in 2006 at age 94, defined the Chicago School in 1974 as he spoke to a board of trustees dinner. "'Chicago' stands for a belief in the efficacy of the free market as a means of organizing resources, for skepticism about government intervention into economic affairs," he said. Friedman was explaining a movement that had taken hold in the U.S. and was percolating in Europe and South America. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
