10 SEPTEMBER 1994, Page 27

Bear market

MY MILTON Friedman mug has arrived. So has my Hayek T-shirt. It shows the great liberal economist trying to look like Mahat- ma Gandhi. 'Competition', he is saying, 'must be seen as a process in which people acquire and communicate knowledge.' The Institute of Economic Affairs has taken him up on it and gone into the memento market on its own account. It now offers a wide choice of gifts and souvenirs — money clips featuring the author of The Wealth of Nations, golf umbrellas, teddy bears, and shirts, mugs and tea-towels starring a sequence of IEA heroes called 'Six great economists'. (Don't bother to order Gal- braith.) I still think that my favourite free- market label is the Adam Smith Institute's whisky, Spirit of the Invisible Hand.