I was at the Cato Institute’s annual monetary conference yesterday, where Anna J. Schwartz was one of the featured speakers, when the sad news came that Milton Friedman had died. Anna was stoic as ever; perhaps she already knew. The final speaker of the day was Robert Barro, who had been asked months ago to speak about Milton Friedman’s influence. Barro noted with regret the additional poignancy his reminiscences would now have.

I had been asked to talk about inflation targeting. I prefaced my remarks by noting that asking me – someone who favors relying on markets rather than politics for monetary and banking arrangements – to discuss whether the Fed should adopt inflation targeting is like asking someone who advocates privatizing the mail whether the US Postal Service should adopt an explicit delivery-time target for priority mail. (Do Fed Ex, UPS, and DHL offer their customers a delivery-time commitment? Yes? Then, at least until we abolish the postal monopoly, it makes sense to give the USPS such a target. Application of the argument to the Fed is pretty straightforward.) My paper should eventually appear in the Cato Journal. Jim Dorn told me the conference issue would be dedicated to Milton Friedman’s memory.