• • 'In our face' capitalism 
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Capitalism  | [T]he argument between what is today called “the free market” and “regulation and redistribution” in the safety net is a false one, borne of the Ayn Rand dogma that has taken over what passes for conservatism. Nobody paying attention since the Gilded Age thinks the two are exclusive, or doubts that regulation continues to exist but is largely gamed to benefit the regulated, and redistribution remains but is heavily redistributing income upward. The capitalism that made America a great world power is not what we see today at many of the highest levels of business. Instead, we see a Third World cronyism of highly concentrated industries, cartels and quasi-monopolies running the government for their benefit. That’s not American capitalism, which depended on regulation, progressive taxation, a dynamic and competitive field of many smaller players and an independent government to ensure the rule of law and fair play.      View blog reactions

• • Making peace with the sequester 
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We need to spend less on the military and corporate welfare, but make this transition in an orderly way so as not to shock the economy. But we’re not going to do that. We’re off into an Ayn Rand fantasy trip. If a few hundred thousand poor people get hurt, those are the breaks, right? American exceptionalism.      View blog reactions

• Professor Bernanke, meet Professor Gordon 
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Alan Greenspan  | Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn't speak in the Yoda-like riddles of his predecessor, the bubble-blowing Ayn Rand disciple saxophonist Alan Greenspan.      View blog reactions

• The 'on your own' delusion 
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Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no Ayn Rand law-of-the-jungle types caught in a calamity so big that it can only be solved by a “We Society,” not a “Me Society.” Hurricane Sandy has caused perhaps $20 billion in damage in the Northeast, including knocking out power to 14 million, bringing an unprecedented storm surge that flooded the New York subway and for a second day shutting down the world financial center.      View blog reactions

• Racing toward the fiscal cliff 
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Today's conservatives are really pushing forward a revolution, believe in it or not, without precedent in American history outside the imaginations of the likes of Ayn Rand. And as Mao said, "A revolution is not a dinner party."      View blog reactions

• • Did W. save the economy from total collapse? 
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Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | Mr. Bush presided over eight years of captured regulators and risky banking, especially made possible by the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. That was engineered by Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican Sen. Phil Gramm. There was the easy bubble money from Alan Greenspan, disciple of Ayn Rand (the “free market” did not police itself).      View blog reactions

• • ‘Industrial policy’? America already has one (that’s not working) 
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Capitalism  | Those who hold the superstition that an Ayn Rand “free market” is the cure to all ills -- despite its disastrous results in 2008, etc. -- meet every constructive idea to get the American economy out of the ditch with: “That’s industrial policy!” Industrial policy, you see, is always some failed commie central planning nightmare from the Soviet Union and eastern Europe circa 1980. And that’s been swept into the dust-bin of history.      View blog reactions

• Shooting ourselves in the foot and reloading on cutting tourism funds 
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Capitalism  | The decision by Olympia to completely eliminate the Washington State Tourism Office is the kind of purblind “austerity” that ensures more economic pain. It may not be as damaging as cutting funding for K-12 education and universities, but it makes the point with even less complexity, which we need in a world dominated by talk-radio screamers, Ayn Rand acolytes pushing to turn American into no-tax/no-regulation Somalia and armies of Internet trolls cutting and pasting talking points.      View blog reactions

• The president and the unions: The community organizer isn’t a labor organizer 
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Your weekends off, eight-hour work day, end of child labor, workplace safety and a host of other goods came thanks to unions, especially in the private sector. Not from the beneficence of moguls. Not from Ayn Rand’s fevered imagination. Not from “the free market.” But from the hard work and often the blood shed by union members over many decades.      View blog reactions

• Crisis committee: Rubin shows what comes out of the mouths of (very well paid) boobs 
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Along with Alan Greenspan, he of Ayn Rand and conservative market religion purity, Democrat [Robert Rubin is most responsible for the Great Recession.      View blog reactions

• While you were away: Economic issues that bite while we’re distracted by Tiger 
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The Great American Freak Show continues with all the media oxygen being sucked up by Tiger Woods and the estate of the late Michael Jackson. It's almost as if certain interests didn't want the American people paying attention to things that mattered. Financial reform, to be sure, can't compete with the Jersey Housewives. The proposal by Sen. Dodd, D-Financial Services, does include some kind of consumer protection agency -- a plus. But no new Glass-Steagall, no meaningful derivative oversight, etc. etc. And regulators must regulate, after all, rather than have their heads in Ayn Rand novels.      View blog reactions

• • What Washington state does about its budget deficit is a taxing mess 
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Americans face a future where even the basic government services they long took for granted are in doubt. This may be heaven for some acolytes of Ayn Rand. But she wrote fiction.      View blog reactions

• WTO protesters were right 
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Capitalism  | Alan Greenspan, an acolyte of Ayn Rand, personified the worship of the "free market" that remains our guiding ideology yet it is actually a market of bubbles, costly bursts, a casino on Wall Street and America deep in the hole.      View blog reactions

•Greenspan’s tenure at Fed leaves questionable legacy 
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As a young intellectual, Greenspan admired the radical individualist Ayn Rand.      View blog reactions