Alex Epstein has a piece he wrote at Telegraph.co.uk called "Shunning Capitalism Created the Market Tumult". (Read). Ayn Rand was an unflinching defender of free markets and below is Mr. Epstein's analysis of where the blame lies - and it's not with capitalism which is truly the "unknown ideal". Americans must defend the free markets and get government OUT of our lives.
"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism," she wrote in The Voice of Reason, "consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."...
Culprit number one is the Federal Reserve, charged with what Mason calls "running the real economy" - the illegitimate job of centrally determining how much money exists and how high interest rates are. It was the Fed that flooded the market with cheap money that went begging for a bubble to invest in.
Then there are the policies of government deposit insurance and "too big to fail," which encourage large banks to take short-term risks that taxpayers will be forced to bail them out of. And that's not even to mention the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
Time after time, the American government gave special handouts to some Americans in the name of "promoting homeownership" or "financial stability," while forcing others to foot the bill.
This was manifestly the opposite of Miss Rand's view that men should deal with one another to mutual benefit via trade.
What was needed in the past and is still needed today is a political system solely dedicated to protecting the individual rights to life, liberty, and property against force and fraud...
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