A Crisis of Political Economy

The current state and the current banking sector require each other. They are so reciprocally intertwined that each is an extension of the other.

Remember this the next time somebody tells you, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert did, that “free market madmen” caused the current financial crisis that is threatening to undermine the global economy. There is no free market. There is no “laissez-faire capitalism.” The government has been deeply involved in setting the parameters for market relations for eons; in fact, genuine “laissez-faire capitalism” has never existed. Yes, trade may have been less regulated in the nineteenth century, but not even the so-called Gilded Age featured “unfettered” markets.

Ayn Rand: A Centennial Appreciation

Chris Matthew Sciabarra (chris.sciabarra@nyu.edu) is a visiting scholar in the department of politics at New York University and author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (1995). This essay is derived from a more comprehensive paper written for the forthcoming anthology, edited by Edward Younkins, Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Philosophical and Literary Masterpiece.
Born in Russia [...]