weeded out via the marketplace) and corporations must not make charitable contributions (their only legitimate function was making profit for shareholders). The next year, Friedman coauthored his academic magnum opus, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, which argued that government did not cure financial panics and depressions but caused them. Such ideas were so out of the mainstream that one economist compared him to a fencer attacking a battleship with a foil. But “the bald little professor with the elfin face and the tart tongue,” as a journalist described him, was also a
...more
