ABC,

You hit my weak joint with that video: I couldn't stop looking at her lips
And there in lies my weakness, good looking babes who can talk a good story.

But getting back to Chile for a minute, the issue at hand is what role if any did Milton Friedman play in guiding or helping Chileans out of the stagnant economic grip of the socialistic economic scheme of the Allende years? I say he was in the main a positive force. He helped bring into being an association with high end academic research that has made Chile one of the most sort after developing nation in this area. This all got started in earnest back in the sixties and has bloomed into a solid research tradition. Hundreds if not thousands of advanced students have made their way from Chile into many of the leading American and European institutions of higher learning. The number of PhDs and other advance degree students is not to be easily disputed; and these have had a positive impact on Chilean economic development. One of the interesting aspects of this development in Chile was that under the dictatorship many leftists were forced into going into these institutions to remove themselves from the harsh anti-democratic conditions in Chile. This proved to have a positive result because many of these aforementioned leftist leaning intellectuals got first hand training in the elite colleges and institutions of the West. They learned the inner meanings of the economic lingo and studied hard economic subjects that greatly broadened their understanding of the profession. Then they applied these more nuanced understandings when they returned to Chile. That is why many of these former leftist turned centralist have misgivings about any attempt to bring back the leftist economic schemes of the past. They understand that in our globalized world framework, many of these proscriptions would prove suicidal to the small economies like Chile. Hopefully, a similar process is at work with respects to the DR today. Of course, the blood shed and the overall brutality of the Dictatorship is one few people would endorse as a solution to economic mismanagement. I for one do not believe it to be a necessary condition.

sometimes my initial reaction is not to bother to reply to you at all. then, i simply must. are you aware that under the urgings of the Chicago Boys, all economic theories besides monetarism, Friedman style, were forbidden in Chilean universities? so much for your democratic trends

dread, are you saying that Chileans were prevented from studying the history of economic thought? And what does that have to do with their exposure here in the USA? Or were they also required only to read the monetarist texts? Check out Chile's International Competitive position, I believe 30th and tops in Latin America. How do you like 'em apples Dread? Not a bad showing, Dread.

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this is exactly why i cannot bother to waste my time and energy debating with you. you simply shift the focus of the inquiry around, muddy the waters, and think you have made a point. i asked you, quite simply, to tell me the recommendations of Milton Friedman that would be "welcome" here in the DR. nothing more, nothing less. just give me a list. do not tell me about how Chile did this year, since it is not operating strictly under monetarist economic dictates.. if you would just focus, maybe we could talk.

to say that his economic teachings changed the economic history of Chile cannot be in debate. of course it would have. the question is " how did it change Chile?" YOU say that his recommendations would have been " welcome here". i deduce from that that you mean that their effects were positive. so, Atabey, building on that, let us revisit the question which you, in your accustomed role as the artful dodger, seem to be avoiding...GIVE ME A LIST OF THE PRESCRIPTIONS WHICH WOULD BE "WELCOME" HERE. that is alll i asked for, not some circuitous game of ring around the roses. JUST THE FACTS, ATABEY!

Total craziness idiocy - Chile suffered terribibly for years for nothing!

S.