Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
You know what else would have been great Steve? In 1964, it would have been great if every member of Congress had read Gone With The Wind before they voted on the Civil Rights Act. Then they might have realized how much happier Blacks were when their masters took care of them in the good old days before Northern carpetbaggers filled their heads with crazy notions about voting and going to decent schools.
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Thanks for stopping by Danny,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct about Greenspan, but at least he recognizes that the the reality of the meltdown in the credit markets is inconsistent with the predictions that he had made based on his ideology. Moore is trying to sell the idea that policy makers should stick with the fiction rather than learn from reality.
That's right, Greenspan was a perfect and consistent disciple of Ayn Rand. She told him to take the job of dictator of the economy, knowing that her fictional hero John Galt had been tortured to convince him to do so. Such a stupid red herring in her book would mask this grand Objectivist covert action.
ReplyDeleteShe told Greenspan to teach that productivity leads to inflation (not government watering the currency) and that he should sometimes blast the economy with bizarre hyper rate increases (May 1999 to mid 2000) and then slam it back down to basically zero while not saying anything when the government decreased the reserve requirements to nearly nothing, then suppressed any natural upward pressure on rates while funny money and sham mulitpliers ran rampant.
She then ordered him to stay silent until the world economy self-destructed. Her final order, before he retired into infamy, was to have him blame Objectivism, therefore destroying her along with him.
She's long dead, you say? Oh.
John Donohue
Pasadena, CA
Greenspan was not only a devotee of rand but recently went before congress recenty and all but recanted his objectivist economics.
ReplyDeleteSo it really makes you wonder about the timing of this piece, or at least the intellectual integrity of it's author.