• • • Halftime in America? More like sudden death 
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Altruism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Egoism  | Unfortunately, Smith’s original 1776 capitalist economic ideas have been turned upside down and enshrined in the extreme ideology of Ayn Rand, the patron saint of today’s Super Rich. In “The Fountainhead,” Ayn Rand hints at the inevitable destiny of capitalism. The leading character Howard Roark is the ultimate individualist, an idealistic architect and archetypal free-market capitalist. Enraged when some second-rate competitors compromise the integrity of his plans for a modern building, he seeks revenge, takes the law into his own hands, sneaks onto the construction site at night, dynamites the construction, destroying it. “The Fountainhead” is a perfect metaphor for today’s self-sabotaging capitalism.      View blog reactions

• • • Top hedge fund mixes Ayn Rand, behavioral psych 
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Alan Greenspan  |Altruism  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |The Fountainhead  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Egoism  |Image  | Ayn Rand, high priestess of capitalism, reincarnated in an American hedge fund? Deep in the collective conscience of the world’s leading hedge fund, the $122 billion Bridgewater? Yes, Rand’s spirit is alive, in the vision of the iconic Ray Dalio, the perfect capitalist, 55th on the 2010 Forbes 400 with $5 billion, a guy who could easily be cast as Howard Roark, the ultimate individualist in “The Fountainhead.” Here’s his secret: Why his flagship fund Pure Alpha II returned 44.8% in 2010.      View blog reactions

• • • Ayn Rand’s ‘Death of the Soul of Capitalism’ 
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Altruism  |Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Egoism  |Individualism  |Inaccurate  | “Atlas Shrugged” is Ayn Rand’s most popular work. A mysterious rebel leader John Galt saves America from economic ruin. But before we rise from the ashes, before the redemption, comes the blowup. And for that, let’s turn to my favorite, “The Fountainhead,” where Rand offers a subtle hint of capitalism’s eventual demise and self-inflicted death. In “The Fountainhead” Howard Roark is the ultimate individualist, an idealistic architect and archetypal free-market capitalist. Enraged when second-rate competitors compromise the integrity of his plans for a modern building, Roark seeks revenge, takes the law into his own hands and, in a terrorist act, sneaks onto the construction site in the dark of night and dynamites the building — kaboom — destroying it.      View blog reactions

• 2008 crash deja vu: We’ll relive it, and soon 
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Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | During the 18-month run-up from July 2007 to the 2008 crash, our leaders, Paulson and Bernanke, were misleading everyone: Paulson, “best economy seen in my professional life.” Bernanke, “the subprime loan crisis is contained.” And earlier Greenspan, a myopic Reaganomics-Ayn Rand clone who later recanted, said the problems were just some “regional froth.”      View blog reactions

• 10 Doomsday trends America can’t survive 
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Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | [Super-Rich Capitalists] want Americans to follow their rigid doctrine: In Milton Friedman’s 1962 “Capitalism and Freedom,” the bible of Reaganomics; In Ayn Rand’s manifestos that guided Alan Greenspan and now Paul Ryan; and in Steve Forbes post-meltdown apologia, “How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today’s Economy.”      View blog reactions

• Fed dictator Bernanke needs to be toppled 
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Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | Bernanke’s ruling ideology is the culmination of a 30-year economic war that has forged together Reaganomics for the super rich, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s toxic allegiance to Wall Street, the extreme Ayn Rand’s capitalist dogma, culminating in the toxic bailouts of Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, two Wall Street Trojan Horses corrupting government from within.      View blog reactions

• Kamikaze capitalism: GOP out to destroy 
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Alan Greenspan  |Capitalism  | Economist Milton Friedman’s Disaster Capitalism attacked Social Security. His free-market ideology created the new Reaganomics, Fed boss Alan Greenspan, philosopher Ayn Rand, even Bill Clinton, all were part of an ideological conspiracy that deregulated Wall Street, led to today’s $670 trillion derivative trading casino and a global shadow banking system, the root cause of the 2008 meltdown.      View blog reactions

• Sell bonds now, Fed’s QE2 is doomed to fail 
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Capitalism  | Odds are Obama will be replaced by an ultra-conservative president whose brain will be driven by the discredited ideologies of Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and Reaganomics … a political scenario guaranteed to trigger another, bigger economic meltdown that will push America into a long Japan-style recession.      View blog reactions

• Commodity ETFs: Toxic, deadly, evil 
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Capitalism  | Rolling Stone’s McKenzie Funk adds another brutal critique in “Will Global Warming, Overpopulation, Floods, Droughts and Food Riots Make This Man Rich?” Funk focuses on Phil Heilberg, a former AIG commodity trader who is one of the new “Capitalists of Chaos.” Heilberg is a self-proclaimed pure Ayn Rand capitalist hustling Africa, making “land grab” deals to control millions of acres and commodity rights in unstable nations.      View blog reactions

• • President Obama vs. Goldman’s Reaganomics 
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Capitalism  | For decades Rand was Greenspan's conservative guru: "When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism ... the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice because capitalism demands the best of every man -- his rationality -- and rewards him accordingly ... free ... to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him." Rand and her disciple Greenspan demanded total, unrestricted freedom for Wall Street.      View blog reactions

• • Obama’s ‘predictably irrational’ economic policies 
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Capitalism  | [Alan Greenspan] Ayn Rand-ishly facilitated the progressive dismantling of governmental restrictions on financial behavior.      View blog reactions

• • Financial innovation is Wall Street’s new ‘soul sickness’ 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  | Look closely and see clear signs of immoral, even criminal, misconduct fueling Wall Street's obsession with unregulated financial innovation. To fully understand why, you need to see financial innovation in the broader, historical context of the emerging new American capitalism. [....] 2. [Alan] Greenspan and Ayn Rand, author of 'The Fountainhead' and 'Atlas Shrugged'. Rand was Greenspan's guru and mentor. For decades they had a profound impact on American capitalism. Rand was dogmatic: "When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church." Why? "Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice because capitalism demands the best of every man -- his rationality -- and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him." Rand captured the conservative spirit of the emerging American capitalism, and through her disciple, both demanded total, unrestricted freedom for Wall Street.      View blog reactions

• Paul Krugman, meet Dr Sigmund Freud 
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Capitalism  | An imagined conversation.
[Freud:] There will always be economists and politicians who are not enamored with liberalism nor with behavioral economics. They believe passionately in free-market conservatism, in Friedman, Reaganomics and, yes, even in Ayn Rand.      View blog reactions

• Whodunit? 27 ‘villains’ planning ‘Doomsday 2011’ 
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Capitalism  | Another great villain: Alan Greenspan's obsession and blind faith in the free market capitalism cult of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman that kept interest rates low and set up the subprime meltdown.      View blog reactions

• Bernanke’s recession is here: 11 reasons it will last till 2011 
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Reading Fed-watcher William Fleckenstein's new book, "Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve," you get the feeling that for 18 years America's banking system was run like a "new age" hippy commune, by a Ayn Rand free spirit who believed "anything goes."      View blog reactions

• • Noah’s Ark, unicorns and the good recession 
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Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  | [Alan] Greenspan could have cooled the dot-com bubble, but he did just the opposite. Like a teenager on speed, he let it run wild. He was high on the ideology of the queen of free market individualism, Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and "The Fountainhead."      View blog reactions