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Milton Friedman has passed away. He is the reason why I made my career in investment and economics. When I read his work in the late 1970s when I was just starting out, his ideas were the only ones that made any sense to me -- that is, they were the only formal statements of economic theory that seemed to have relation to reality. And they were deeply moral, rooted not only in the actual dynamics of human nature, but revealing how economic behavior is connected to the ideal of human freedom.

In high school my history teacher -- an avowed Marxist -- was proud that his Ph.D. thesis had been a refutation of Friedman's classic Capitalism and Freedom. He thought it was terribly clever that his thesis had been titled "Capitalism aux Friedman." Somehow in my drug-addled youth I got from that the idea that Friedman's middle initial was "O", so when as a young man first discovering Friedman's work I wrote a letter to him, asking him if he would meet with me, I addressed it to "Milton O. Friedman." He replied with a handwritten note scrawled on my letter itself, saying he didn't have time to meet -- with the middle initial "O" crossed out with a pencil-stroke indicating rather extreme annoyance. In more recent years I ended up meeting him several times at Cato events. I got his name right -- but I was as giddy about meeting him as I would have been decades earlier. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay to him is to report that he didn't disappoint me -- his intellect and sparkling wit lived up to my highest expectations (and believe me, they were high).

So many obits and personal reflections have started pouring forth from all over the world, it's hard to begin to catalog them all here. Ben Bernanke's seems to say it all:

"Among economic scholars, Milton Friedman had no peer. The direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate. Just as important, in his humane and engaging way, Milton conveyed to millions an understanding of the economic benefits of free, competitive markets, as well as the close connection that economic freedoms bear to other types of liberty. He will be sorely missed."

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