Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman has been credited with many different accomplishments, including being one of the most effective advocates of economic freedoms and free enterprise, being the greatest economist to ever walk the face of the earth, and having proven every single word said by Lord Maynard Keynes was wrong. For all this to be true or not, it is obvious that Friedman was a brilliant man of many achievements. Milton Friedman was born on July 15, 1912 in New York City. His parents were poor immigrants and his father died when he was a senior in high school. Despite all these obstacles he had to overcome, Friedman received a scholarship to Rutgers University and obtained his BA, an MA in 1933 from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in 1946 from Columbia University. He worked as a research assistant to Henry Schultz at the University of Chicago until 1937, when he began working with the National Bureau of Economics. There he published together with Simon Kuznets the book Incomes from Independent Professional Practice, which also served as his doctoral thesis at Columbia. This book introduced the concepts of permanent and transitory income. In 1933 Milton Friedman met Rose Director, one of his economics students, and six years later they married. Rose and Milton collaborated on numerous books and essays and founded the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation, which promotes school choice, which will be explained in more detail later. In 1976 Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, history and monetary theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy". Milton Friedman coined the phrase “only money matters” to highlight the role of monetary policy in the U.S. economy. Friedman is perhaps the most effective advocate of free enterprise and monetarist policies from 1945 to 1985. His only rival among 20th century economists would have to be Keynes. In addition to being a Nobel Prize winner and an overall brilliant man, Friedman served as informal economic advisor to Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968, then as Counselor to President Nixon. He served as an economic advisor to President Reagan on his advisory board in 1981. Friedman was awarded the Presidentia...... middle of paper ......n acceptable level. Another of Friedman's strongest and most well-known opinions was on the Federal Reserve and how it is practically useless. Friedman, being the great free market capitalist that he is, thinks that the Federal Reserve is acting stupidly, recklessly and disregarding the delay in making its dramatic decisions. Friedman also attributes most economic instabilities to the actions of the Federal Reserve. Milton Friedman was certainly one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. His findings and theories on monetary policy, school choice liberalism, and inflationary relationships impact economic history in a way that few people can. He and his wife Rose now run the School Choice Foundation and have just published Two Lucky People: Memoirs. Bibliography: Friedman, Milton. Brilliant promises, disappointing performances: an economist's protest. New York: HBJ, 1983. Friedman, Milton, and Rose. Free to choose: a personal statement. New York: HBJ, 1980.Hodges, Michael. Milton Friedman- A tribute by MWHodges. May 2001. September 2001.Walters, Alan. A dictionary of economics, The New Palgrave. Vol.2, 1987. Pp.422-427.