Friedrich Hayek is generally regarded as the apostle of a brand of economics which holds that the market will assure the optimal allocation of resources — as long as the government doesn’t interfere. It is a formalized and mathematical theory, whose two main pillars are the efficient market hypothesis and the theory of rational expectations.
This is usually called the Chicago School, and it dominates the teaching of economics in the United States. I call it market fundamentalism.
Emphasis mine. The zombies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Freidman just crapped bricks. Hayek, of course, was an Austrian Schooler. He taught at the University of Chicago for a while, but he taught politics. I've heard it said that that was because Friedman wouldn't let him teach economics, though that may be apocryphal. Certainly Friedman always credited Hayek as an influence, but in fact the two great free-market schools are diametrically opposed on all sorts of issues. If you want to see the modern manifestation of this go to YouTube and watch what happens when Ben Bernanke (Chicago) has to answer questions from Ron Paul (basically Austrian).
As an aside, all my economics profs (of which there weren't that many; I'm an undergrad dropout) were Chicago Schoolers, but if you've read this blog this far you may be aware that I find the Bernank to be a bit wanting as a member of the breed. However I guess it's possible that he'll still demonstrate why he runs the Fed and I'm a network engineer.
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