THE CINDERS OF AYN RAND - econoparody from versusplus.com on the Greenspan legacy & today's GOP

[elricmlbone]

Too bad Greenspan didn't really practice laissez-faire instead he went ahead with big government-Fed practices, contrary to what this song says. I get it, government screws up and the answer is "blame capitalism". Greenspan repudiated everything he wrote and supported when he was in the Ayn Rand group when he became the Fed Chairman.

[mwtardif]

Capitalism was slaughtered over a century ago, and yet people believe they are fighting against capitalism and its effects but dont realize they are in fact fighting socialism with socialism. THe main cause of the last recession (and every other recession since 1900 - including the great depression) has been the federal government. States rights are dead, capitalism is dead, it will not be long before people realize they no longer have capitalism as a scapegoat...as our producers lie dead

[greenmanev]

@mwtardif You're an IDIOT!

[greenmanev]

@mwtardif

You cannot slaughter something that NEVER existed?

[ftsmallwood]

Government control of money by a Federal Reserve is a complete rejection of the free market, but why let facts get in the way of your riff?

[ftsmallwood]

President Clinton re-appointed Alan Greenspan to Chairman of the Federal Reserve. How does that fit your storyline? Libertarians hate Alan Greenspan's tenure at the Fed. His policies while Chairman of the Fed were a complete rejection of his own and Ayn Rand's economic theories, that were espoused by them many years ago. If you took the time to read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, you would know that Ayn Rand would have despised Greenpan's policies as Chairman of Federal Reserve.

[g4macdad]

@ftsmallwood

Because Alan Greenspan had to contend with REALITY, something that, "Anarcho-Caitalism" has always had problems with.

*

Sounds GREAT, looks good on PAPER, but just like CLASSIC "Conservatism" (ala Barry Goldwater), It is PURE FANTASY.

[Guncriminal]

Fail.

Rand, like the Austrian school of economics, was against centralised banking.

[MrObjectivist]

the author of this song has no idea. Ayn Rand would condemn Greenspan and she considered The Federal Reserve one of the greatest abominations ever created - A TREMENDOUS threat to laissez faire capitalism. Rand believed that gold standard and economic freedom were inseparable.

[bulbheadmyass]

Awesome song. Laughed the whole way through, though perhaps crying would have been more appropriate,

[SaviorOfLogic]

So because private banks own something, it's a free market, hmm, you know what, I agree, which is why I'm going to print off a fwe million and live like a king. Wai, I'll get arrested, but that's what the Fed does, this is so unfair, I thought you siad it was a fre market?

Oh, right, it's not, you're just an idiot.

[SaviorOfLogic]

Yeah, we are in such a free mmarket, which is why the banks are being bailed out, massive regulations are imposed on everything and our civil liberties are continuosly being eroded (liberty is necessary for a free market). Also, how can the fed be a free market? A state controlled central bank (like here in Britain) is statist enough, but owned by unelected individuals? That's tyranny!

[ciplexian]

The reason the Fed allowed the bubble to happen was that Greenspan was a Rand disciple who thought the market could do not wrong.

Fed Chairman (1951-1970) William McChesney Martin said the Fed's job was to "take away the punch bowl just as the party was getting good." Greenspan didn't do that because of his free market ideology.

He was also a follower of Milton Friedman and monetarism, which held nothing could possibly go wrong as long as the money supply was growing at a constant rate.

[SaviorOfLogic]

You are telling me that a free market advocate was leader of the Federal Reserve? Aside from the fact that he spiked the punchbowl (lowered interest rates), a FM advocate controlling the FR makes about as much sense as the leader of the police being a criminal or a politician being an anarchist. He was not a FM advocate and rejected that priniciple when (if not before) he took over the FR. They print money for god's sake! A true FM advocate would have closed it.

[TheKuffarKid]

Wrong on all accounts

[kolegamikolaja]

It's not a private bank. Read the bill and you'll find out

[KSB26]

"I hate to break it to you guys but the Federal Reserve IS free market. It has nothing to do with the state;it is a private bank."

Free? Try opening your own bank and issuing your own currency and see what happens.

I know of one person who ran a "black market" (Read: not sanctioned by the state) bank in the 1980's. It ended with FBI goons jamming a sub-machinegun under his nose as they confiscated all of his deposits as "evidence of fraud."

People have a really weird definition of freedom.

[nelsonj747]

Greenspan was NOT a free-Marketeer at ALL. He was the head of the Federal Reserve, the apitome of "government" manipulation as well as presiding over the hyper-printing of FIAT money.

[82abnoff]

I was an 'Institutional Investor'. Look at the money market run in Sep. $550 Bil in one hour. The Fed could not help.

That inflation will get your attention.

[Eng8492]

Sorry to disappoint you, but Greenspan is Francisco. You didn't know this?

[TaylorThaHick]

Greenspan was a libertarian in his callow youth - then he became a statist. How do I know? He bought into the whole socialist system the central bank, central control, rather than letting markets determine what interest rates should be.

Greenspan has not been an objectivist for 30 years, if he ever was. Greenspan sacrificed his objectivist principles for power.

[moorecat2007]

Wow, what a stretch!

Rand philosophy had nothing to do with this crisis (except it might have not happened if people in charge had not actively participated in suppression of Ayn Rand philosophy, like in this video).

Indeed, the best hope for a free world would be to quit worship of value destruction and if ordinary people QUIT letting others interpret reality.

[stevemcgee99]

So, Greenspan wrote in support of a gold standard in the Objectivist Newletter, and then went on to be a famous Chicago School monetarist and worked at the Fed.

It's like a hippie who 'sells out' and becomes a sales manager for toxic soap products.

The Federal Reserve is a central bank, which is highly recommended as a foundation for communism by Marx.

Not at all connected to what Rand, or even 'early' Greenspan, advocated.

Anger is good, humor is even better. But get the facts straight.

[brewerscrew]

Clever way to say that greenspan supported the free market. You made the first mistake in communication though, you speak to your audience. The people that watch this are fimiliar with keynesian vs austrian economics and as such know that greenspan did not support Ayn Rand theory in the Federal Reserve.

[zerctvh]

If you read Atlas shrugged , you completely missed the point . You would have been better off eating it or better yet wipe your ass with it . At least you would have gotten something from it .

[Guncriminal]

The only thing Greenspan would have got from Ayn Rand had she still been alive would have been a kick in the nuts.

[isthisnaemtaken]

I Love Rand, but this was so cleaver!

[Zerofire18]

The song would have been better if in the refrain anologous to "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" you kept "of Ayn Rand" together as one word like in "Wonderland" other wise it seems retarded and sounds off. Just a suggestion.

[Egoist1957]

This person clearly has a complete misunderstanding of Ayn Rand, Mr. Greenspan, and economics. You do realize that we use a fiat currency? Ayn Rand not only supported a 100% gold standard, but she also wanted it privatized! When Greenspan choose to associate himself with any organization as evil and anti-Rand as the Federal Reserve, he severed any and all connections to objectivism and capitalism. Please, don't insult us and Ayn Rand by associated Objectivism and Greenspan.

[PerfektBlue]

1 ) Gold currency is the mother fucking monetary apocalypse you will have deflation and hyper inflation

2) Learn something from real economics not some fiction writing losers like ayn rand.

3)Explain how a gold currency supposed to stop inflation in scientific words not evil and all the subjective crap

4) Your bullshit gets refuted by the fact that in the past in the gold currency era inflation and deflation existed

[LaissezFaireCapital]

If anyone is sincerely interested in the exact truth of the relationship between 'the undertaker' and Miss Rand: Dr. Peikoff, in a recent podcast has given a first hand account and analysis of what happened between them. ie) MidasMulligan morphs into a WesleyMouch.

On his website podcast39 Dr.Peikoff explains it as a moral-practical Dis-Integration. Which Dr.Peikoff resolves but Greenspan does not. Very tragic to witness such a mInd-meltdown.

Nice try Mr.versusplus, but mis-integrated.

$LFC$

[GamblerJustice]

Ayn Rand did not support the Federal Reserve.

Yes - Greenspan (and the Federal Reserve) should be the ones to take the blame, but it is not because of capitalism that they have failed.

The Federal Reserve represents the very opposite to a free market, that is, government intervention.

[DaryllDickens]

Free markets are not the problem here. Government/Fed manipulated markets ARE. This video is dumb.

[nickalistower]

Hey 'circpros',

There is no 'Rand version of free market dogma'. For a quick five page read of her lucent and sensible economic views, read chapter 15 "Government Financing in a Free Society", in her book, 'Virtue of Selfishness', which is available at any major book store (and possibly in your public library).

Hey 'cpgone',

Stop spewing your irrational smears against Ayn Rand. She wasn't a child hater. She was most definitely a nonbeliever in the murderous god of western theology.

[circpros]

Pure sophistry.....

The Rand version of free market dogma is no more responsible for the current crisis than fleas on hound dogs....

Fractional reserves are the bad guy here. Even a high school drop out - sufficiently motivated - can figure this one out. When a bank can have 10k in reserve and loan 80k based on that, it only requires a 12.5% debt contraction to make the underlying institution insolvent.

And Rand was not an apologists for the central bankers.

Low brow propaganda.

[mongobobo]

actually US banks were levered more like 30 to 1 in many instances.

Citi for example.

[sickmint79]

free market takes a lot of heat for things that were obviously caused by intervention in it (ie. the fed)

[cpgone]

5 stars.BRAVO.

The fiction writer,child hating,godless AR finally gets knocked off her pedestal.Oh yeah, Greenspan ,Cox ,Frank and Dodd caused all this mess.

[Raditz86]

pretty intresting... 4/5