Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economic thinkers of the 20th century, a Nobel Prize winner who popularized the belief that free markets rather than government action were the best tools to improve living standards, died Thursday in San Francisco. He was 94.

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Milton Friedman and his acolytes are popular targets of scorn in Central and South America, where Chicago-style economics was practiced under regimes like that of former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet. Friedman and some of his associates served as advisers to authoritarian right-wing governments. Critics such as Columbia's Stiglitz say that association calls into question the link between free markets and political freedom that is central to Friedman's message.

Even in the United States, the ascendancy of Friedman's free-market thinking has been accompanied by a widening gap between rich and poor that has even some of his followers concerned. "I have some misgivings about those increasing inequities,'' said Buchanan, the Nobel laureate from George Mason.

Niskanen, the libertarian, said Friedman's belief that the way to reduce the size of government was to cut taxes has backfired and has "made the Republican Party rather casual about cutting taxes" because the spending can be shifted to debt and to future generations.

much more at  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/17/FRIEDMAN.TMP
and various news sources.