Award-winning Australian economist makes friends and enemies in DC

Tuesday was a heady day for Australian economist Samuel Gregg, formerly of Sydney’s Centre for Independent Studies but now ensconced in the United States.

It started with Senator Marco Rubio lashing a sympathetic interview with Gregg carried in The Wall Street Journal (“Another day, another attack on commonsense economics by free market fundamentalists,” wrote the Florida senator). And ended with Gregg being awarded the Bradley Prize for Economics, which comes with $US250,000 ($377,600) and is given to individuals whose extraordinary work protects “the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism”.