A Failure Of Government

clipped from www.bloomberg.com “He wouldn’t agree” it was a failure of capitalism, said Anna Schwartz, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Friedman’s co-author on “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960.” “It was a failure of government.” The Fed conducted “very easy monetary policy, which permitted the asset-price boom,” she said yesterday in a telephone interview. “It had nothing to do with capitalism failing. It had to do with the policies and institutions that conducted them.” Even Posner, the title of his book notwithstanding, said he’d like a “moratorium on regulatory reform until this is over.” Milton Friedman would have said the same thing, only his moratorium would have been permanent.