Saturday, March 07, 2009

Atlas Shrugged Tells Obama: Hands Off The Economy!

The Economist has an interesting article about the rise in sale of Ayn Rand's very famous book "Atlas Shrugged" about the disappearance of the creators, inventors and businessmen from society as Socialism takes of America. They go to a secret location where they forge a capitalist society based on individualism, self-reliance and mutual respect for their abilities. It was and is an astounding novel that lit my life up at the age of 18 as I found in its pages a new way of looking at my life and the possibilities that were open to me if government left people alone to follow their dreams of achievement. The book is full of philosophical ideas - altruism versus individualism; capitalism vs government control of the economy and the idea that a government's role is the commitment to protecting Americans and the homeland and NOT meddling in our lives.

...Tellingly, the spikes in the novel’s sales coincide with the news (see chart). The first jump, in September 2007, followed dramatic interest-rate cuts by central banks, and the Bank of England’s bail-out of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender. The October 2007 rise happened two days after the Bush Administration announced an initiative to coax banks to assist subprime borrowers. A year later, sales of the book rose after America’s Treasury said that it would use a big chunk of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Programme to buy stakes in nine large banks. Debate over Mr Obama’s stimulus plan in January gave the book another lift. And sales leapt once again when the stimulus plan passed and Mr Obama announced a new mortgage-modification plan.

Whenever governments intervene in the market, in short, readers rush to buy Rand’s book. Why? The reason is explained by the name of a recently formed group on Facebook, the world’s biggest social-networking site: “Read the news today? It’s like ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is happening in real life”. The group, and an expanding chorus of fretful bloggers, reckon that life is imitating art.

Some were reminded of Rand’s gifted physicist, Robert Stadler, cravenly disavowing his faith in reason for political favour, when Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Rand’s, testified before a congressional committee last October that he had found a “flaw in the model” of securitisation. And with pirates hijacking cargo ships, politicians castigating corporate chieftains, riots in Europe and slowing international trade—all of which are depicted in the book—this melancholy meme has plenty of fodder. (READ HERE)

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