– Oddly, Mr. Setrini seems to scorn Milton Friedman more than he recalls his teaching, or even the fact that he, like Joseph Stiglitz, was a Nobel laureate. Setrini is silent regarding Friedman’s effect on the Latin American country where his policies were most rigorously followed. By any reasonable standard, the improvements to the oil- and gas-poor Chilean economy and the benefits accruing to that nation’s poor during the heyday of Chicago economics set a standard not matched in any Latin American economy that has held closer to the COHA line. In fact, countries closer to the COHA model, if one may call it that, have demonstrated an inability to address the problems identified by Friedman, Stiglitz and most other observers despite those countries’ vast disposable wealth flowing from their stores of oil and gas.

– Mr. Setrini’s opening paragraphs fail to distinguish between Friedman’s free-market economics and the oligarchic, land-based economy of Paraguay. To imply (as Mr. Setrini does) that Friedman did or would support the historic Paraguayan economic model is not defensible on the record.

– Mr. Setrini’s effort to lay the miserable failure of Mexico’s PRI-controlled economy at the foot of Friedman or his followers is proof that even economists should study history. PRI, which was supported by COHA during the election in which it lost power to Vincente Fox, burdened its long-suffering country with over sixty years of one statist economic program laid upon another. A Chicago approach? Even COHA and its contributors cannot have gone that far down the rabbit hole.

– Several of Stiglitz broad proposals might have been lifted directly from the Friedman playbook, especially his suggestion that national bureaucracies cease to be empires of their own (or vast employment schemes) and become smaller, better controlled arms through which governments pursue credibly achievable objectives. While there are certainly differences between the two men, they are closer to one another than either is to COHA’s economic critiques and proposals.

– On the other hand, there is the reported Stiglitz assertion that East Asian economic success has grown from “agrarian reform.” Did he say that? Oh, I hope not. A glance at the atlas shows just four countries at the easternmost end of the Eurasian landmass, Russia, N. Korea, S. Korea and China. Which of those economies credits its growth to agrarian reform? Tellingly, which of those would not attribute its economic strength to increased free markets? Of course, the one that would not, the one with the strongest government-enforced agrarian reform, is North Korea. That model of COHA economics is a basket case, reliant for its food (and porn mags for its caudillo) on the world’s strongest free market economies.

McElhone

Paco