In all fairness, though, Rand was a strong believer in the gold standard and would not have endorsed the loose money policies that caused this whole mess. She believed in production, not financial manipulation.

To me it seems more like Greenspan had a change of heart. The expansion of credit and money supply under his term are not the ideals of Rand or Gold and Economic Freedom. Sure there was deregulation under Greenspan but was the motive capitalism or was it required to further his expansion of credit policy? Who else would hold the new debt if leverage wasn’t increased?

Can someone please expand for us younger folks on the link between today’s mess and Greenspan’s early ideals with Rand?

Got cha. Mum’s the word on that.

But Barry, to be honest, I appreciate intellectual consistency a tad more than your “whichever way the wind blows” position.

Please, either turn 180 and stop criticizing bail-outs or calling the Fed “Wall-Street’s Bitch” (your finest moment indeed), or stop blaming the free-market, laissez-faire, or whatever you want to call it for this current mess.

Funny how the ultimate centrist, statist and corporatist got to be painted as the spokesperson for Classical Liberalism. (Ol’ Easy Al)

I said I worried about the kinds of lessons people would take away from this meltdown about a year ago. But when guys like you start falling victim to the now popular “it was free-market ideology”, I really worry.

Judge these guys by their actions, not their rhetoric.

The Fountainhead has always been for me an artistic manifesto, specifically architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright was the model for Howard Roark. And the model for Howard Roark and Frank Lloyd Wright was Henry Hobson Richardson, who built the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall in North Easton, Massachusetts in 1885 to literally “grow out of the ledges” upon which it was seated.

see: Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.
http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=web&q=carroll+quigley+tradegy+%26+hope

while I appreciate the approach you are speaking of, there’s a whole other paradigm, then the one you’re referencing, at play..

Al would have been a good Fed Chairman if only there was somebody there to shoot him everyday of his life.

No Country for Old Men would have been a good choice too.

My statement refers to the Middle Path of Buddhism, which I realize does not fit the conventional view of politics, where the predominant attitude is, as John Adams said “In politics the middle way is none at all.”

But, I find the Middle Path works well in all aspects of life. IMO, rigid ideologies will all eventually fail, just as the walker in the woods whose right foot is dominant will invariably stray off course circling to the right. Only the walker whose steps are evenly balanced will reach his destination straight ahead.

I try to keep the balance this way: In the 1970s I felt we had strayed too far to the ideological left, so I voted for Reagan in 1980. In 2008, I believe we had veered too far to the right, causing the current financial crisis and serious recession; therefore, I voted for Obama. Thus, through this zigging and zagging over the long term we move down the middle path.

Obviously this is a very inefficient way to do it, but in a dualistic world, where people divide everything into “this way” and “that way” or “this side” and “that side”, and then feel they must choose one side over the other, it is unavoidable.