How Milton Friedman Came to Australia: A Case Study of Class-based Political Business Cycles Download

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Thirty years ago, in April 1975, Milton Friedman, came to Australia to declare that the world economic situation manifestly unsound.[1] Friedman asserted on that trip what Michael Kalecki predicted in his 1943 article would be the response of ‘captains of industry’ to Keynesian macroeconomic policies; it was that ‘…government expenditure financed by borrowing will cause inflation’ (Kalecki, 1990: 348). A chorus of Australian businessmen and mandarin economists came out in support of Friedman, leading to the demise of Keynesian macroeconomic policy and the rise of neo-liberal policies.

Milton Friedman, at the time was the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago; and acknowledged head of the ‘Chicago School’ of monetary economics, called ‘monetarism’. A year later, in 1976, Friedman received the ‘Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel’, confirming his status in the financial community and the neo-liberal mainstream of the economics profession during this period. At the time he was also a regular contributor to Newsweek magazine.

Submitted On:

26 Mar 2007

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admin (admin)

File Date:

26 Mar 2007

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Jerry Courvisanos and Alex Millmow

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164.67 Kb

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