Milton Friedman Speaks: Money and Inflation (B1230) - Full Video

This is absurd. An opinion column in the NYT does not constitute an authoritative reference on the matter. Try some Milton Friedman [0] on for size: Now the first step towards understanding the cause of inflation is to recognize that it is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It's always and everywhere a result of too much money - of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. [...] inflation in the United States is made in Washington and nowhere else. [...] We have evidence for the United States for over a hundred years; for Great Britain, for two hundred years; for Sweden, for two hundred years. There has never in history been an inflation that was not accompanied by an extremely rapid increase in the quantity of money. There has never in history been an extremely rapid increase in the quantity of money without an inflation. Or otherwise, "inflation is a printing press phenomenon." There is very clearly a falsifiable hypothesis here: inflation increases if and only if the monetary supply increases. The induction is based on decades of empirical data, and Friedman presents a series of charts to illustrate the correlation. This, to me, sounds at least like an attempt at science - falsifiable hypothesis verified against empirical data, and clearly predicts that inflation will result if the monetary supply is increased. We may quibble over the specifics and the numbers, just as one may quibble over what the exact percentage probability of rain is on a