Matt Yglesias flags this from Bloomberg columnist Carol Baum:
The government needs Liddy and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit and Bank of America’s Ken Lewis to continue working to restore their firms to prosperity in the same way the looters in Rand’s novel need Hank Reardon and Francisco d’Anconia and Dagny Taggart, respectively, to run their steel mills, copper mines and railroad.
I sincerely believe that the key to understanding how our society works is realizing that our elites in media, government, and business (and probably other areas I’m forgetting about) are fully invested in the idea that their status is justified. As that idea becomes increasingly hard to defend, they fall back on increasingly ridiculous arguments. It’s just too painful to accept the fact that large portions of our system are, at worst, scams, and, at best, inefficient, unmeritocratic old-boy-networks.
guest
i don’t think the kleptocracy will get it until one of them goes to jail. let’s start by undoing that provision that hank paulson worked in that barred prosecutions for anything tarp related.
NonyNony
As were the French aristocracy in 1789.
The thing that amazes me is that it’s the same dynamic that we’ve seen throughout history, and yet the VERY SMART PEOPLE who make a lot of money seem completely and utterly blind by it.
I’m actually getting kind of uneasy these days. If the VERY SMART PEOPLE don’t wake up and realize that their greed and class privilege is threatening to destabilize the social network of the country, some really fucking bad things might start to happen. I’m talking really bad things – not people on blogs blowing off steam or a half dozen people standing in a city park waving teabags at passers by. People losing their heads and gated communities getting torched bad things.
I hope they figure it out before things get that far.
Comrade javafascist
This is like saying we need the Washington Generals to keep working hard so they can one day beat the Globetrotters.
Gebghis
It’s also why a "2×4 upside the head" approach is often what is needed to straighten things out. (Not actual violence – more like lawsuits, elections, whistle blowing, etc.)
Of course, then you may end up with new elites.
Walker
The comments on Matt’s page as the Objectivitists get themselves into a tizzy are priceless.
Pandit and Lewis are no Reardon. Even if they did not cause the problem, they are replaceable caretakers. By all means, go Galt.
The guy who gave back his bonus at AIG, Douglas Poling, sounds like a good guy. If this portrayal is accurate, we need more like him in charge.
Punchy
Quick question — just what % of Americans have read this tome? I’m guessing less than 10%. So who the fuck would undystand this ref? Clearly not a vast, vast majority of Bloomberg’s readers.
Walker
Glenn Beck is on the case.
MattF
As ever, Bernie M. was ahead of the game– here‘s what the "legitimate and profitable" part of his business model looked like from the inside.
D0n Camillo
I was barely aware of the book "Atlas Shrugged" until two years ago when I started to realize just how much influence it appears to have had on certain member of our media and financial elite. One thing I seem to have noticed is that anyone who quotes Ayn Rand approvingly is either a pimply faced youth who is going through a phase or a fully grown person with some very vile amoral views on life.
NonyNony
@Walker:
Why do you think I’m getting so uneasy?
Tom G
Even the idiots who _think_ they read Atlas Shrugged don’t get it – in Galt’s Gulch, gold coins were the only currency used, and Midas Mulligan (and for that matter Alan Greenspan back when he followed Rand) was a banker who believed in gold-backed notes. Not to mention all the political pull propping up useless firms was on the "bad guys" side.
In such a world, banks like Citigroup would not exist in a form we would recognize, and would very likely be smaller and have several competitors – none of whom would have any political clout AT ALL.
I’d love to see any modern bank try to run under those strict rules.
How many of these "Go Galt" folks actually understand Austrian economics? I suspect very few.
geg6
@Walker:
Agreed. I was endlessly entertained by them this morning. These dimwits actually fervently believe in their own superhero of the universe fantasies. The lawyer who admits to cutting back on clients and not putting in long hours for the clients he’s kept in order to cut back on the amount of taxes he’ll be paying is especially gut splitting. As are the respondents who are telling him what a true fuckwit he is while laughing hysterically. And the defenders of the brilliance of the philosophy and literary stylings of Ayn Rand giving Yglesias shit for admitting to never reading her "books" are even funnier.
After a very bad week and little good news anywhere, I was happy to find a nugget of fun and must remember to thank MattY for providing it.
Jason F
What I want to know is how the "intelligentsia" has become so fixated on the mediocre novels of an obsessed ideologue. Pontificating about the relationship between current events and the plot of The Fountainhead strikes me as being roughly as useful as trying to put everything in the context of the works of L. Ron Hubbard.
The Other Steve
Frankly, I’m waiting for the Atlas Shrugs movie to come out so I can understand these things.
In other news…
OH NO!
NonyNony
@Jason F:
Imagine for a moment that you’re a self-absorbed, selfish asshole. That all of your life you’ve been a self-absorbed, selfish asshole and people around you have been telling you that you’re behaving poorly. That you need to be charitable, and love your neighbor, and not be an asshole, and all that other stuff that Western civilization prizes.
And then, when you’re 13 or 14, you find this wonderful book. And in it you read this lovely parable where all of the True Kings of the World are self-absorbed, selfish assholes and they’re right. Suddenly a new worldview appears: all of the people trying to make you change are wrong, and that you should just go right ahead and be a self-absorbed, selfish asshole. And anyone who tells you differently is a parasite.
That’s the appeal of Atlas Shrugged. It’s a book that tells them it’s okay to be a bunch of greedy fuckers and not feel bad about it. And that if you’re not a greedy fucker, you’re a bad person. You can see why greedy fuckers would really like the book and it’s worldview.
Cat Lady
@NonyNony:
I agree, but I’m getting the sense that more and more not insane people are starting to figure out who broke the country.
They may not understand credit default swaps and CDOs, but they understand Madoff and Stanford. Throw in the arrogance of Thain and Pandit and Lewis, and especially AIG. Having names and faces attached to this crisis is what’s changing the game for Joe Six Pack. Every time one of these asshole’s names appears in the news with their whining about their bonus and their jets and their wastebaskets, the more and more J6P gets it. Back in the late fall, before the election, there was way more talk about the CRA and illegal immigration being the cause. Not as much anymore.
Comrade Jake
I’d say that’s certainly the key to David Gregory.
erlking
NonyNony, FTW.
Dennis-SGMM
Baum’s piece points up the problem of reading just one book in your whole life: you might read the wrong one. The lack of real world examples to support Baum’s premise necessitated her referencing a third-rate fantasy by a second-rate novelist.
ed
Anyone who is actively preventing these Randian heroes from going Galt, please cease and desist forthwith. Thanks in advance.
The Other Steve
Wait, more Creeping Geekism…
United Nations Hosts Battlestar Gallactica
Honestly, I haven’t seen BSG yet… So I don’t know what that means, but it sounds kickass. :-)
Libby
Our legacy media is overrun with idiots and ideologues. I doubt most of the wingnuts citing the book have ever read it. Going Galt is just a catchy phrase they like that shorthands we hate paying taxes to help poor folks.
Completely off topic, I just checked my standings in the basketball pool and see I’m getting killed by the bonus points thingy that I don’t understand at all. (And I never will, so you don’t to have to explain it.) Bummer.
Comrade Darkness
It’s really critical to separate out the difference between paying someone a lot of money because their skills are rare and they are worth it, and the situation we have now.
The problem is the incentives are screwed up. Note to the American Aristocracy: if you don’t want sh*t to come down on you periodically when you royally f*ck up (especially if it affects everyone except yourselves) you have to have a system of reward and punishment that looks exactly like everyone elses. For example: if a machine operator messes up a week’s worth of parts, he gets fired or a reprimand, and certainly not a raise. So, if you’re the CEO and you drive your company into the ground you don’t get ridiculous compensation. See how straightforward that is? And amazingly, the hoi poi will not be rabble rousing for your head because it will all be fair.
Libby, you should have flipped a coin, like I did. Less emotional investment.
John H. Farr
Works for me. Actually, though, I think your characterization is MUCH too kind…
Dennis-SGMM
@ed:
I thought that the point of going Galt was to do so when you’d be missed. To have the CEO’s mentioned by Baum go Galt now would be like having Hank Reardon go Galt when it’s discovered that Miracle Metal turns into Limburger Cheese a year after it’s poured.
schrodinger's cat
Slightly off-topic, has any one read Brooks’s column in NYT today? Apparently Obama has A. D. D because he wants to tackle health care, energy reform and other important issues they are like dust bunnies it seems. Why does NY Times give a forum to such idiots? I hope he goes Galt and we are spared from these pearls of wisdom, that he so loves to dispense, week after week and while he is at it, he can take Friedman with him too.
biff300
On a related note, Josh Marshall at TPM, and Nate Silver at Fivethirtyeight have weighed in on the side of the poor people scraping by on $250K/yr who stand to lose a well-deserved bonus. Nice to see how fast the Young Turks can jump to defend the Old Guard.
I’m starting to hope that we get to see some of that class warfare the assholes are always bitching about….
PK
I never read Ann Rand, but I saw a few people reading Atlas Shrugged in high school. I had no idea that wing nuts base their economic philosophy around a work of fiction.
Harold Robbins was also popular when I was younger. I wonder how many people based their love lives around his novels.
Snail
NonyNony’s exegesis of Atlas Shrugged is just about the most clear and concise I’ve seen.
guest
@schrodinger’s cat:
just a matter of time before oil goes back up like crazy. then these same people will be clambering "why didn’t obama work harder to wean us off oil??????" like he could do so in 2 months flat.
atrios really nailed them when he called when whinny ass titty babies.
sure, bush was 8 years of lost progress, but so were the clinton years. a lot of stuff being planned now should have been done in the 90s. was the glorified trailer park clinton calls a library really worth selling out to the saudis for?
Libby
@Comrade Darkness: Heh. My supersecret methodology is very similar to coin flipping, except I don’t bother to use a coin.
No matter, I don’t think I’m out of the running yet. Leading in the early rounds isn’t everything. Besides everybody in the top ten picked the wrong team to win…
ed
I thought that the point of going Galt was to do so when you’d be missed. To have the CEO’s mentioned by Baum go Galt now would be like having Hank Reardon go Galt when it’s discovered that Miracle Metal turns into Limburger Cheese a year after it’s poured.
And I thought the point of going Galt was these assholes going so far away that I’d never have to hear from or about them ever again. Ever.
VOR
Isn’t George W. Bush the perfect example of what you are saying here? He was worshipped by these elites. Yet his business career was a series of failures, followed by bailouts, with seemingly no consequences. Eventually he made it into the Texas Rangers, primarily due to his name and connections.
jrg
Trading beans is the highest calling a person can follow. Teachers, firemen, doctors and farmers should all be thankful that someone has the guts and intelligence to spend their days trading beans… Otherwise the lazy, freeloading teachers, firemen, doctors and farmers would have to get off their asses and trade their own beans. Fat chance we’ll see those commies putting forth any effort pursuing the critically important endeavor that is trading beans.
Not just anyone can trade beans, so we should all just STFU and give the bean traders the free tax dollars they deserve.
Ed Drone
Just wait — as the SIP (Supposedly Intelligent People) catch on to the fact that the world has made their irrelevance more obvious, you can count on them to turn the ire of the crowd from the financial ‘geniuses’ that caused the problem to the ‘illegal aliens’ who didn’t. Just wait.
Ed
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
My favorite Ayn Rand essay is the one where she praises a child-raping murderer named William Hickman.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Why does Blockquote never work beyond the first paragraph?
NonyNony
@ed:
No one screaming about "Going Galt" is going anywhere. We could only be so lucky.
For starters, none of them are in professions that anyone would actually miss. Most of them are corporate cogs. Sure their individual company might miss them until they can get someone trained to fill their position, but unless their company is managed by complete morons they’re not irreplaceable by any means. (And some of them are academics – and truly idiotic if they they THEY’RE irreplaceable. Let them Go Galt – there will be 50 or more people scrambling to take their spot as soon as they leave.)
What’s truly hilarious to me is that the folks who scream about "Going Galt" also seem to be the ones who scream "lazy bums" when any part of the labor force goes on strike. And amusingly, the country would be impacted much, much more measurably by labor strikes than by any "Randian Supermen" deciding to "Go Galt." Airline pilots and truck drivers alone could shut down most of the nation’s commerce within days if they decided to strike. Launching a general strike as an economic protest would be far, far more effective than any "Go Galt" movement, yet the Randians would be the first in line to scream at anyone attempting it.
guest
one of the "intelligentsia" spouting galtian rhetoric was former SNL has-been, victoria jackson, who whined obama dried up her motivation, because he’ll punish her for being successful. keith made a mockery of that piece of ridiculousness. coincidentally, i ran across another story which quoted victoria suggesting obama was the anti-christ.
sometimes i’m amazed this country managed to elect obama. it’s a freaking miracle.
Elie
It is precisely this group that Obama and his administration have to use, manipulate and perhaps directly coerce to ultimately press the changes needed to our economic and other related system/s. Easy? No. They are everywhere and want to retain their power and priviledge of course – even though their paradigm has been shaken, it is not dismantled and they have to be dealt with. There was no guillotine that lopped heads off and dispensed with their roles and existence so they are still maximally disruptive players.
I believe that this is the key challenge that we and Obama face in resolving the financial crisis and in righting the direction of this country’s policies towards healthcare and education to name two key impacts. But its way bigger than that and the MSM is broadcasting the old paradigm as though nothing has happened and they are still in charge.
And people, including some on the left, want this to have been all fixed and straightened out by now. You can see how much effect firing Geithner would have on this — not much. Its a big, big battle that in most ways is just setting up and nowhere near resolving. It needs doing though and I am very optimistic that long term, it will happen.
Comrade Dread
Sociopaths, Narcissists, and megalomaniacs always believe themselves to be irreplaceable and fail to see that the world does not conform to the warped fantasy world they’ve spun in their head.
Given that the ‘elites’ created this shitstorm and don’t seem to understand it that well, I don’t really see how a bunch of first-year Econ students could do much worse.
NonyNony
@guest:
I’m far less worried about poor, insane Victoria Jackson (oh how she has fallen since her glory days in UHF), and more worried about the fact that Alan Greenspan was a loyal acolyte in the Church of Rand and he’s still considered to be a voice of respectability by the chattering classes in D.C. and still has influence. (Probably at least partly because they like to go to Andrea Mitchell’s cocktail parties and would be uninvited if they dissed Mr. Andrea Mitchell in public.)
If Randian worship were restricted to the likes of nutty celebrities like Victoria Jackson, I’d give it the same level of concern that I give to Scientology. Unfortunately, Rand’s cultists actually infest places where they can do damage to the economy with their religious beliefs.
guest
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
scruffy, i joked earlier on another board the appeal of ayn rand to closet criminals or unindicted co-conspirators. people who instead of making an honest living want to steal it and not have to pay any taxes on it.
i didn’t know about this aspect. sheesh.
another thing, i wish someone would point out to wackjobs like hannity and michelle malkin, who are hyping going galt, that ayn rand was pro-choice.
CalD
I want to put this in my file of memorable quotes. How should I attribute it? Just DougJ @ Balloon Juice?
guest
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
makes you wonder what happened in ayn’s life that she would praise such a man.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@guest:
I’m not sure. Was she just another Raskolnikov-type who gorged on stupid ideas, or was she genuinely traumatized on some profound level? I don’t know enough about her to answer that.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@The Other Steve:
That is awesome. I also liked Moore’s description of Tigh’s ode to suicide bombing being all the more disturbing because Tigh is perfectly rational and sane about it (and sounds exactly like Red Green). That one scene should be required viewing for all the Glenn Becks of the world. Jacob at TV Without Pity recaps it as follows:
BSG does have its weak moments (too many "As The Battlestar Turns" episodes for my taste), but when it’s good it is literally the best television out there.
jcricket
So I had a long conversation with a rich friend yesterday and realized just how true this is amongst even "moderate" folks. He was seriously arguing to me that he isn’t rich (I’m rich, and my wife and I earn less than 1/2 of what he and his wife earn).
I tried to explain that if you earn more than 99% of Americans, you are rich (he and his wife are definitely in that top 1% area). His argument was the typical, "I don’t feel rich because I can’t tell my boss to fuck off" (and presumably go retire to Aruba). I think the media, pretty much all the Republicans, and all the "centrist" Democrats are operating under the same assumption.
This may not seem like a big deal, but when these people control what gets debated, it warps the policy/tax/economic debate. Policies that would benefit 95% of people (and probably not even dent the top 5%) are seen as hurting a much bigger percentage of people than they really would.
The best hope we have is for people like Obama to keep connecting directly with the 95%, and getting them to ignore the media and the centrists, and truly vote their economic interests. We’d get nationalized healthcare, a higher rate/benefits for social security, better regulations controlling big companies, more worker protections, more individual rights, etc.
Fundamentally, I think that policies that put more discretionary income in the hands of 90-95% of people will actually trickle up into the executive class (more spending = more revenue = more profits = higher EPS = more money for rich people who own stock). So frankly, it’s in everyone’s economic interest to have fewer poor people, more secure middle class, and more class mobility.
Walker
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
You have to put the paragraphs in explicit paragraph tags to get it to work.
Edit: Damn blog does not recognize & lt ;
Comrade javafascist
I would like to apologize to Carol Baum for thinking she was a complete moron after reading this about Citi: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/03/banks-sell-some-reos-in-bulk-below.html
Clearly we do need captains of industry willing to lose 100K on a single deal. Go Pandit Go!
Walker
@jcricket:
This is just it. Most of the rich people equate rich with
1. Living entirely as a rentier, and
2. Having enough income from those rents to support their current lifestyle based on wage-based income
2 makes their definition of rich a moving target. It will never be satisfied.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Walker:
I tried blockquoting both paragraphs. Is that what you mean?
Sorry for being an idiot about this.
guest
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
maybe it doesn’t recognize line breaks. maybe it requires you to blockquote each paragraph, one at a time.
Walker
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Because I cannot do & lt ;, replace the square brackets [] in the following example with angle brackets (e.g. less-than, greater-than):
[blockquote]
[p]
First paragraph
[/p]
[p]
Second paragraph
[/p]
[/blockquote]
Your problem is that you are doing this:
[blockquote]
First paragraph
Second paragraph
[/blockquote]
Emma Anne
@The Other Steve:
you scared me for a minute. But this:
–Two years running, no one has cracked any of the
machines until they were allowed to sit down at the
computer.–
reassures me. If someone can sit down at my computer, messing up Safari is the least of my fears.
Brian J
Maybe I’ve missed something, but has either of these guys put forth even the vaguest idea of how these companies are going to return to stability and profitability, even if it’s in a few years? I’m not thrilled with the amount of money being used for the bail outs, but I (a) accept that it may be necessary and (b) that it may be expensive. Still, the idea that we should hand them the money and never ask any questions is, frankly, bullshit.
guest
@jcricket:
discretionary income in the hands of 90-95% of people will actually trickle up into the executive class
this is why i don’t understand the hostility to pay workers more. it’s even taught in business school, to cut the cost of labor. but if workers get paid more, they would be able to buy more, improving the lot of the overclass. it’s win/win.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Walker:
Yeah, that’s what I was doing wrong. I think I’ve got it now. Thanks for the help!
passerby
@Jason F:
I also am wondering why this is happening. Who all started this?
"Obsessed ideologue" can also be applied to fundamentalist christians, muslim extremists or any ideology for that matter. The tendency for adherents to these ideologies to superimpose their beliefs on society at large is the problem here. We are not a theocracy.
In an actual sense, ideologies exist for the purpose of self examination and self discovery, not to supplant the Constitution and laws of the land. It’s for personal use, not public use.
The threat of creeping "Galtism" is no different than those practicing Scientologists or Christians or Buddhists desiring to superimpose their ideology on everyone else. A flagrant misuse of philosophy. (In fact, an Objectionist view does not seek to do that. Each of us is free to pick and choose a la live and let live in a mind-your-own-business way.)
An ideology should serve to spark an inner dialog and to aid in bringing personal clarity, but, we’re so accustomed to being polarized that we will throw the baby out with the bathwater without batting an eye.
Plus, it’s a convenient way to mock, ridicule and/or demonize a swath of society who’s views differ from our own.
Walker
@Emma Anne:
That is one the major things that train you for in secure workplaces. I had a friend who worked at a telcom company that went through a security review by a Tiger team (they were paid to try and hack into the systems). One team member was camped out in my friends division, looking for an oportunity. My friend went to the bathroom without locking his screen;
the team member sat down at his computer and installed a keylogger before he came back.
Browser, shmowser.
Michael
The stuff that revolutions are made of comes down to tone-deafness among those just shy of the apex of the pinnacle of society. They tend to believe their own bullshit, and are genuinely puzzeld as they’re hauled off the the guillotine (or noose, or firing squad).
Thus, even if a monarch or ruling class is actually working to ease the societal stress by smoothing out inequalities, those closest will work against it. Sometimes by direct action, sometimes by bad advice. Sometimes, by whipping up the fervor of counter-revolutionaries.
Emma Anne
@Walker:
That sounds like a really fun job on that Tiger team.
pharniel
so again, i don’t get this.
Free market (and, y’know, evolution) tells me that if someone leaves a niche empty and undefended that someone will come along and take that niche.
randyan objectivism (in addition to exalting sociopaths) tells me that certian people are irreplaceable.
it’s like big brother doublethink all over again.
Michael
I vote Raskolnikov.
When it comes down to it, she was a gin drunk party whore who dabbled in psychology because it made her seem deep and gave her something to talk about at Manhattan parties.
schrodinger's cat
Who is Raskolnikov, sorry I don’t get the reference.
guest
@Michael:
you mean ayn rand was a little raskol?
(ducks)
Dennis-SGMM
@PK:
I heard that some people even base their religion on them.
Steeplejack
@schrodinger’s cat:
Raskolnikov is the murderer protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Thinks he’s an übermensch, but, as it turns out, not so much.
(Sorry if I should have put a "spoiler alert" on that.)
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Steeplejack:
Yep. He killed to show he was a "superior" person. Found out it was a bit tougher than that.
You could also reference the "Leopold & Loeb" murder, I guess. The one that inspired the film "Rope." Not sure what Rand thought of them, but they were probably heroes in the Hickman model.
schrodinger's cat
@Steeplejack:
Thanks, don’t worry about the spoiler alert, if Crime and Punishment is as long as War and Peace then there is no chance that I will ever finish reading it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@schrodinger’s cat:
About 500 pages shorter, and a more interesting psychological profile. But incredibly depressing. On the plus side, Dostoyevsky doesn’t indulge in Tolstoy’s penchant for 50-page essay sidebars on philosophical abstractions.
...now I try to be amused
Not that many people have the enlightened self-interest to see that.
harlana pepper
Damn, Scruffy, Rand was one fucked-up chickie. Why anyone would read much less recommend her is beyond me. Closest I got to her was watching The Fountainhead. Pat Neal was fah-bulous in it and as a big fan it was fun to see her play such a gorgeous, glamorous role (she enjoyed it also, it was her favorite role), but the overall story and preachiness turned me off, hence, I never checked out the book or anything else by her (Rand).
Buggy Ding Dong
What’s funny is that it is in business where this is most often implied. As if our nation did not have a glut of robots with MBAs waiting in the wings.
It reminds me of the old Bill Cosby line: I’ll kill you and then make another one who looks just like you.
There is a veritable army of replacements waiting to fill in for these losers.
Can you imagine if this attitude suddely came into vogue in collegiate or professional sports, in which there really IS a more limited pool of replacements? "Yes, Coach Jones went 1-15 last year, but we really need his brilliance to get us out of this mess."
gwangung
And the criteria for seeing who’s better is a LOT more clear cut?
scottp
There are three ideas I find helpful in rationalizing how these people end up where they are, and why no amount of evidence can shake their beliefs about themselves. They’ve been around quite a long time, but I have yet to find a better shorthand way of understanding these idiots.
First, the Peter Principle along with my own personal observations that once you rise above middle management, skill at internal company politics has more to do with continued success than any solid skill in a specific profession. I think it’s the political aspects that lead to behavior that seems so egregiously corrupt to outside observers. Last, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (PDF) goes a long way towards explaining why no amount of reality will change their opinions of themselves.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@harlana pepper:
I know. I wish her Hickman fetish got more coverage than it does.
Kewalo
I don’t think we should delude ourselves that the Randians don’t have have some influence on the right.
In Jan. the WSJ featured an editorial by a "senior economics writer" for the WSJ, Stephen Moore.
"’Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
And then just recently the WSJ carried an editorial by Yaron Brook, president and executive director, of the Ayn Rand Institute.
I actually have read "Atlas Shrugged" twice. Once in my 20’s and I was totally enthralled. Again in my 40’s where I had a good laugh at my 20 something self. It’s just astounded me that her "philosophy" from such a bad, bad book is believed by anyone over 30. It really goes to show we need to get the economy back in the hands of adults, because these idiots actually believe in magic (invisible hand anyone?) and damn near brought down the economy because of it.