This Day in Wall Street History 1912: Milton Friedman is born

This day in 1912 marks the birth of Brooklyn, N.Y.'s leading conservative economist, Milton Friedman.

Born in New York's largest borough, Friedman picked up a string of degrees from schools including Rutgers University and Columbia University, before taking up a post in the University of Chicago's mighty economics department.

An ardent proponent of laissez-faire economics, Friedman readily articulated his faith in a fiscal system that depended less on policy than "natural" forces. Along the way, Friedman became the leading light of the "monetarist" school, which, in the laissez-faire tradition, dismissed the government's role as the supposed engine of business. Rather, Friedman and his fellow monetarists believed in stable interest rates and robust money supplies.

Friedman used a number of his publications, including "Capitalism and Freedom," (written with his wife, Rose) to further stump against "big government." While Friedman's beliefs aroused considerable criticism from liberals, leftists and even a few government-centric voices on the right, he was honored with the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. The lofty award hardly slowed Friedman, who continued his battle against the perceived inanity of the federal government's fiscal policy.

Source: History.com