The Chicago School of Economics

If you want to get a jaundiced view of the Chicago School of Economics, read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, see here.

I was a little surprised to read the following post from Stephen J. Dubner, a co-author of Freakonomics with that famous Chicago school economists Steven Levitt. It talks about a graduate of the Chicago School, Steven N.S. Cheung:

...he was born in Hong Kong, studied economics in the U.S., returned to Hong Kong, and was the first economist “to introduce concepts from the Chicago School of Economics into China.” He specializes in the fields of transactions costs and property rights and now lives in Shenzhen.

As it turns out, Cheung was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on several counts including filing false tax returns and bank reports. He and his wife, reportedly living back in Hong Kong by that time, failed to appear in court, and arrest warrants were issued. The charges against him carry a combined penalty of 83 years in prison and $4.8 million in fines.

There are more gory details of fraud and cheating in the post. I find it funny. The Chicago School claimed to be champions of "positive" economics. Under Milton Friedman proposed themselves as having found a more empirical economics of monetarism, efficient markets, and rational expectations. Sadly, the only money-focus, efficiency, and "rationality" I see coming out of the Chicago School is an wonderful adeptness at creating theories that justify fraudulent economic behaviour under a heading of "greed is good". The world has seen too much Chicago School. Maybe they need to change the name of the university or disband.