"... the late Milton Friedman ... friend of the Fed ..."
Milton Friedman was certainly no friend of the Fed. He blamed its mismanagement of the money supply for the prolonging of the Great Depression.
...and in one of his last interviews with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN, Friedman indicated that the Fed had made "mistakes," but in no way indicated that he thought it was a lousy system.
How sad that his free market philosophy didn't extend to the Marxist central bank.