If you want to get an idea of how crazy the Wall Street Journal editorial board is, read Friday’s oped by their senior economist, Stephen Moore. The title itself says a lot: ‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years.”
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
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In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal — stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in “the public good.” The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.
The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in “the public interest.”
Eerily similar? This flawed, unnuanced comparison illustrates the pathology of both the Cato Institute and the Journal!
