Time Magazine on Milton Friedman's inflationary advice in the late 1960s

Milton Friedman's opinions have particular weight now because the Nixon Administration has placed great reliance on the policies that he prescribes to deal with the current inflation...  Ironically, Friedman's principal complaint is that the Federal Reserve is overdoing the restraints in its effort to cure inflation.  "If the board continues to keep the growth of money at zero for another two months, I find it hard to see how we can avoid a severe recession," he says.  "The board has made the same mistake that it has made all along. It is going too far in the right direction."

~ Time, December 19, 1969

Richard Nixon on closing the gold window

In recent weeks, the speculators have been waging an all-out war on the American dollar.  The strength of a nation's currency is based on the strength of that nation's economy, and the American economy is by far the strongest in the world...  Accordingly, I have directed [Treasury] Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interests of monetary stability and in the best interests of the United States...  Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called "devaluation."  If you want to buy a foreign car or take a trip abroad, market conditions may cause your dollar to buy slightly less.  But, if you are among the overwhelming majority of Americans who buy American made products in America, your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.

~ President Richard Nixon, Bretton Woods speech, August 15, 1971

Henry Kissinger on taking orders from Nixon to bomb Cambodia

[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.

~ Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State

Noam Chomsky on the U.S. bombing of Cambodia

Nixon at one point informs Kissinger . . . that he wanted bombing of Cambodia. And Kissinger loyally transmits the order to the Pentagon to carry out a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves . . . genocide.

~ Noam Chomsky

Murray Rothbard on Milton Friedman's brand of "free market economics"

Mention "free-market economics" to a member of the lay public and chances are that if he has heard the term at all, he identifies it completely with the name Milton Friedman. For several years, Professor Friedman has won continuing honors from the press and the profession alike, and a school of Friedmanites and "monetarists" has arisen in seeming challenge to the Keynesian orthodoxy.

However, instead of the common response of reverence and awe for "one of our own who has made it," libertarians should greet the whole affair with deep suspicion: "If he’s so devoted a libertarian, how come he’s a favorite of the Establishment?" An advisor of Richard Nixon and a friend and associate of most Administration economists, Friedman has, in fact, made his mark in current policy, and indeed reciprocates as a sort of leading unofficial apologist for Nixonite policy.

In fact, in this as in other such cases, suspicion is precisely the right response for the libertarian, for Professor Friedman’s particular brand of "free-market economics" is hardly calculated to ruffle the feathers of the powers-that-be. Milton Friedman is the Establishment’s Court Libertarian, and it is high time that libertarians awaken to this fact of life.

~ Murray Rothbard, "Milton Friedman Unraveled," article originally appeared in The Individualist in 1971, and was reprinted in the Journal of Libertarian Studies in the Fall 2002 issue