• In lieu of any real leadership, let’s ask Franklin D. Roosevelt 
Heidi N. Moore, Wall Street Journal - Deal Journal Capitalism  In a year when many people are wondering what happened to the free-market principles of Ayn Rand and her protege, Alan Greenspan, Deal Journal went looking in the other direction. We read through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats, in which he soothed people during the Great Depression over the radio. What should you do in a financial crisis? What might a good leader say to help you through it? FDR provides the intellectual comfort food that our current politicians can’t.     Share on Facebook

• Financial tsunami: The end of the world as we knew it 
F. William Engdahl, Market Oracle Capitalism  As the details of the present crisis reveal, there are huge ideological fault lines making for chaos and a potential meltdown of the Laissez Faire financial system. That present system, which was built on the back of Wall Street financial and banking deregulation since 1987 when Alan Greenspan, a devout follower and close friend of radical individualist Ayn Rand, became Wall Street's man at the Federal Reserve for almost 19 years, is over now with the failure of the Henry Paulson $700 billion bailout scheme. Governments worldwide now face no alternative but to begin the painful process of putting the financial genie back in the bottle and re-regulating an out-of-control financial system.     Share on Facebook

• • Some lessons from last week’s epochal financial meltdown/bailout 
John Hazlehurst, Colorado Springs Business Journal Capitalism  [Alan] Greenspan, once a youthful disciple of Ayn Rand, took the position that private risk-taking shouldn't worry regulators, as long as the government didn't bail them out. Like Rand, he took a naively utopian view of financial markets, viewing them as engines of innovation governed by the "invisible hand" of the market. He was wrong. The invisible hand was switching the cups in a shell game, and we're the suckers - paying a trillion or so to bail out the scammers.     Share on Facebook

• • “If real life took place in 140 chars”: how Twitter has taught me to value your time 
Jared Goralnick, Technotheory Rand was asked to explain her philosophy while standing on one leg. She’d written numerous books on the subject, some thousands of pages long, but she stood on one leg (and she was pretty old at the time) and explained it in ten words. Her response (which was a list of four points) is oft quoted, and is even used as the headings in her wikipedia entry. At her most concise, she was most memorable and understood.     Share on Facebook

• Would-be voters on the clock 
Collin Smith, Craig Daily Press (CO) There [...] are 16 different presidential candidates, including those from such little known parties as HeartQuake ’08 and the Objectivists, whose platform is based on the philosophy of author Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• America, it’s time to play Monopoly! 
Jerry Mazza, Online Journal On the purchase of Wachovia by Citigroup.Robert K. Steel (great Ayn Rand name), the president and CEO of Wachovia and a former top honcho at both Goldman Sachs and later the Treasury, landed in New York to handle the deal personally.     Share on Facebook

• Libertarian populism 
Robert Stacy McCain, American Spectator Capitalism  Many of those denouncing the bailout did so in libertarian terms that would have warmed Ayn Rand's heart. "Privatizing profits and socializing losses on a scale we have never seen before in our lifetimes," Michelle Malkin said in reaction to the Sept. 19 press conference where Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the plan. "The fundamentals of capitalism have been sabotaged."     Share on Facebook

• Go for the gold 
Martin Owens, American Spectator Letter to the editor.I agree that government meddling in the markets is a root cause of the current mess, but is it only the fault of the freako left? [....] The brokers knew perfectly well how many of the "buyers" were bad risks-so did the buyers. So did the guys who bundled these time bombs and turned them into "derivatives" that nobody understood. Ah, but THEY did! They understood that they would be in court for prejudice if they didn't sell, and in court for fraud if they did. The only safe path was a product that nobody really understood -- that is, being able to prove they didn't know what they were doing in the first place. The CFO version of the Nuremberg defense -- shades of Ayn Rand!     Share on Facebook

• • Loose money and the roots of the crisis 
Judy Shelton, Wall Street Journal Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  Capitalism  "There are numbers of us, myself included, who strongly believe that we did very well in the 1870 to 1914 period with an international gold standard." It would be easy to dismiss this statement as a quaint relic from [Alan] Greenspan's earlier days as an Ayn Rand acolyte; his article on "Gold and Economic Freedom" appears in her 1966 compendium "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal." But Mr. Greenspan said it, rather emphatically, last October on the Fox Business Network. He was responding to the interviewer's question: "Why do we need a central bank?"     Share on Facebook

• • • Focus on non-emotional decision-making 
Darin St. George, Taunton Daily Gazette (MA) Atlas Shrugged  I read one book, over and over again. It is a "philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller," and it is amongst the most influential books in history (some say right behind The Bible). The book is "Atlas Shrugged" - no, it is not a weightlifting manual, as my friend Paul thought - and it is a book that will flat-out change your life if you take the time to understand it.     Share on Facebook

• Wisdom and courage 
Geet Wilders, EuropeNews Speech by Geert Wilders, chairman of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course.     Share on Facebook

• The end of the Reagan Revolution 
Steven Guess, The Guardian - Comment Is Free (London) Capitalism  Corporate executives should not have the right to risk the entire American economy – indeed the global economy – as part of their portfolio management, regardless of Ayn Rand's philosophical musings.     Share on Facebook

• • Socialism is a bankrupt mindset and a criminal act 
Ron Ewart, Canada Free Press Many writers and intellectuals have weighed in on the definition of socialism, author and writer Ayn Rand among them. Here are a few significant descriptions from these intellectuals and Ms. Rand, of what socialism is and does.     Share on Facebook

• • Have You Seen ... ? 
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times (London) The Fountainhead  Review of the book Have You Seen ... ? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, by David Thomson.[Thomson’s] brilliant piece on The Fountainhead tells us this wasn’t just King Vidor’s movie. In important, sometimes conflicting ways it owed its power as a kind of pop Götterdämmerung to Gary Cooper, and to author Ayn Rand (who championed Cooper’s granitic charisma over Humphrey Bogart to play the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired hero), and even Patricia Neal as the film’s starved, neurotic, gleaming-mad siren. Reachers and overreachers are adored in this book. Michael Cimino, whose grandiosity of vision once included a plan to remake The Fountainhead, is given credit for Heaven’s Gate, though its cost and ambition destroyed a studio.     Share on Facebook

• A tradition continues 
Laurel Wemett, Daily Messenger (Rochester, NY) Earlier this month, Anne Mancilla opened Explore! The Book Store on Main Street in a shop that has been a bookstore for more than 100 years. [....] In the center of the long narrow store, A-frame shelves now display a selection of new fiction and non-fiction titles. There are biographies on personalities from Michael Phelps to Tim Russert. A few shelves carry books recommended by Mancilla’s family and friends, including classic titles by Ayn Rand and contemporary fare such as Leif Enger’s “Peace Like A River” and John Grogan’s “Marley and Me.”     Share on Facebook

• • The week in books 
John Dugdale, The Guardian (London) Anthem  Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, faces an election in a fortnight's time with the inestimable advantage of regular advice from his compatriot Yann Martel, whose Life of Pi won the 2002 Booker prize. This advice is unsought, however, and takes an unusual form: every two weeks Martel sends Harper "a book that has been known to expand stillness", accompanied by his own thoughts on it. Ayn Rand's Anthem, the 37th and latest book to be chosen by Martel, is an Orwell-like dystopia attacking Soviet collectivism and has a hero called Equality 7-2521. It's a puzzling choice as ideal campaign reading for many reasons, among them Martel's outspoken hostility to the work he's recommending (Rand's "uber-Nietzschean cult of the heroic individual" horrifies him).     Share on Facebook

• A halfhearted fare-thee-well to a middling design 
Philip Kennicott, Washington Post For some reason, my life has intersected with the work of Edward Durrell Stone, the architect who broke with orthodox modernism in the 1950s and created such landmarks as Washington's Kennedy Center. Stone designed the Unitarian church my family attended in Schenectady -- with its cool, sunken circular main hall, like a giant conversation pit for talking with God. Alas, the flock was a little too handsy and dope-smoking for my Ayn Randian parents.     Share on Facebook

• Even the planets are warning us against this Wall Street bailout! 
David Franke, LewRockwell.com We’re obviously experiencing a transition to a new era, something even bigger than a New World Order, and all the media could talk about were boring things like "subprime mortgages," "derivatives," "swap agreements," "forward rate agreements," "Turbo warrants," and "the undertaker" (Ayn Rand’s amazingly apropos reference, I gathered, to Alan Greenspan).     Share on Facebook

• Socialism afoot 
Patrick Morris, Lansing State Journal (Lansing, MI) Atlas Shrugged  Letter to the editor.In the last two weeks, the United States has taken a large step in the direction of being a people's state. [....] "The Cattle," known also as Americans, have swallowed their medicine and will smile as long as they can still use credit cards and watch cable television. The Cattle should be reading books. I'd start with "1984" and "Atlas Shrugged." You'll get a good look at the world you are leaving your children.     Share on Facebook

• Charity appears at the corner of Main and Wall 
Donald Luzzatto, Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA) Generosity is easy when the object is people who struggle through no fault of their own. It’s more difficult when it compensates for bad judgment. It’s downright hard when the need is on Wall Street, and nearly impossible when it lives in some dank basement decorated with posters of Ayn Rand, Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist. But that’s what a functioning society does. It protects all those who need protection, provides help to all those who need it, using government institutions as an instrument.     Share on Facebook