Reply #11: Yale’s Tobin Guides Obama From Grave as Friedman Is Eclipsed (good news!)

[ozymandius]

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- So long, Milton Friedman. Hello, James Tobin.

After a three-decade run, the free-market philosophies of Friedman that shaped U.S. policy are being eclipsed by the pro- government ideas of Tobin, the late Yale economist and Nobel laureate who brought John Maynard Keynes into the modern era.

Tobin’s stamp is on the $787 billion stimulus signed by President Barack Obama, former students and colleagues say. His philosophies are influencing Austan Goolsbee, a former Tobin student advising Obama, and Ben S. Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve. Unlike Friedman, Tobin provides guidance for today’s problems, said Paul Krugman, a Princeton University economist.

....

Like Keynes, Tobin was an advocate for the role of government in maintaining full employment, said James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas in Austin. The current economic and financial crisis has validated that philosophy, said Galbraith, a former Tobin student and the son of the late John Kenneth Galbraith, who was a friend of Tobin.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ajz1hV_afuSQ&refer=exclusive

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Of course, we can do without the bank whore, Bernanke, as a champion of Tobin and Keynes. The Friedmanites will howl over the repudiation of their bankrupt ideology in the celebration of Tobin. Just read a bit further down the article to glimpse the University of Chicago economists grasping for relevancy.

In sum, I love the James K. Galbraith quote: "Milton Friedman's misfortune is that his policies have been tried."