Temple of Friedman Set to Drive Out Jesus: The Chicago Boys' Free Market Theology

[struggle4progress]

By Michael Hudson
May 24, 2010

... University of Chicago .. has commissioned Ann Beha Architects, a Boston firm, to remake the Chicago Theological Seminary building into a home for the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics ...

The Chicago Boys .. realize .. that without an Inquisition authority, you cannot have a “stable” free market–that is, a market free for the financial predators who presumably are targeted as the major potential donors to the U/C’s Friedman Center. Chicago School monetarists have achieved censorial power on the editorial boards of the major refereed economics journals, publication in which has become a precondition for career advancement for academic economists. The result has been to limit the scope of economics to “free market” celebration of rational choice theory and a narrow-minded “law and economics” ideology opposed to the ideas of moral justice and economic regulation that formed the basis of so much Western religion ...

Herman Kahn’s wife, Jane, told me that once at a party, Milton Friedman replied to her suggestion of better public welfare and medical care, “Mrs. Kahn, why do you want to subsidize the production of orphans and sick people?” This is not exactly the classical religious spirit.

The problem with the Friedman Institute is that its economic doctrine rose to notoriety in the Pinochet period, the high tide of the Chicago Boys in Chile. Privatization of public enterprise, “freeing” markets from usury laws and promoting deregulation is the antithesis of nearly all religions, whose guiding purpose after all was to socialize their members and create a moral state ...

http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/news/2010-05-24-13-14-34-news.php


Article also posted in Editorials here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x538256

[darkstar3]

1. Not caring one way or the other

about a church or a Friedman Institute, I can tell you that this is an awful example of editorializing, and a rather shoddy hit piece.

[Jim__]

2. A definite irony.

What happens to the Chicago Theological Seminary? Is it closed? Or, is it moving to neew quarters?

[struggle4progress]

3. moving to new quarters. but, yes, it is a great irony that the

friedman economists -- known for their unshakeable religious faith in so-called "free markets" -- are moving into the space occupied by theologians

[Flipper999]

4. One religion moves out, another moves in,

and I yawn.

Friedman was a heartless man who inspired other heartless people to embrace their inner tapeworm. I don't like the philosophy that they preach, but there is nothing illegal about buying a building and setting themselves up there. So... nothing to be done.

If God don't appreciate their dickery, He'll let them know.