Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
Milton FriedmanThe preservation of liberty, not the promotion of efficiency, is the primary justification for private property. Efficiency is a happy, though not accidental, by-product - and a most important by-product because liberty could not have survived if it had not also produced affluence.
Milton FriedmanSocialism, in the traditional sense, meant government ownership and operation of the means of production. Outside of North Korea and a couple of other spots, no one in the world today would define socialism that way. That will never come back.
Milton FriedmanWhat central banks can control is a base and one way they can control the base is via manipulating a particular interest rate, such as a Federal Funds rate, the overnight rate at which banks lend to one another. But they use that control to control what happens to the quantity of money. There is no disagreement.
Milton Friedman