Milton Friedman at The Commonwealth Club: A Reader, Part II

This is the continuation of a previous post.


We decided to make Milton Friedman's Commonwealth Club speeches available here for anyone interested in what this guru of the modern market economists had to say. We think that even if you disagree with his politics and theories, you will find him to be an engaging speaker, and it might help people understand how Friedman's many acolytes in free-market circles think.

The speeches are presented here as scans of the published speeches and question-and-answer sessions from The Commonwealth, the official publication of The Commonwealth Club. We apologize if some of the quality of the scans are not the greatest; we did the best we could without doing damage to the bound copies of the publication. Unfortunately, we do not have audio or video files of these speeches, or we would gladly link to them here.

Click on the images to view them in larger sizes.

July 17, 1987: "In Defense of Dumping"

July 15, 1988: "Internationalization of the U.S. Economy – Fact or Fiction"

July 21, 1989: "Communism and the Market"

June 1, 1990: "A Welfare State Syllogism"

August 7, 1992: "Parental Choices: The Effective Way to Improve Schools"

August 14, 1998: "Two Lucky People"

See the first part of this Milton Friedman reader here.

Paul Krugman Wins Nobel

Princeton economist and New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize in economics.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave him the $1.4 million award in recognition for his work on a new theory regarding free trade. His work "thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography," the Academy said, according to the Associated Press.

Krugman's whose most-recent Commonwealth Club speech was on October 30, 2007, as the first speaker in the A-Ha Speaker Series, presented by The Club and Orrick. In that speech, he spoke about the future of the middle class in the changing economic world, a topic that could be even more relevant today in light of recent stock market meltdowns. See the above video for the Fora recording of that speech. Or you can listen to streaming audio of that speech.

And if you want to go back in time nearly five years, you can listen to streaming audio of his January 6, 2004, speech to The Commonwealth Club, entitled "From Heroes to Scandals: The Collapse of Fiscal Responsibility."