The global financial crisis: time for Friedman's helicopters?

Milton Friedman once said that money should be dropped from helicopters to prevent another Great Depression. 

He was, of course, speaking metaphorically.  Friedman was a libertarian who didn't like big government.  He was the monetarist who helped turn the tide against the Keynesian interventionism of successive US and UK governments.  

Friedman was acknowledging that at time of crisis one needs to be flexible. He wouldn't have approved of a huge Government works programme but dropping money from the skies is an interventionist act.

Whether the bail-out proposal before Congress is the right way to tackle the problem is clearly debatable. But something has to be done to stop the economy tipping over. If all the banks were allowed to go to the wall the social catastrophe could be greater than in 1929.  This is because more people have money in pensions, saving accounts and banks than ever before. 

Both Friedman and Keynes came from the liberal political tradition. They drew different conclusions but, like everything, their views have been caricatured. I suspect that if they were alive today they would have been more likely to agree than differ.