Atlas Shrugged

I've gotta go back and re-read that book. OK, to be honest, I've got to read it for the first time. When I tried to read it in college, it had too many words. I hope my word tolerance is better now.

How ironic that the great inflator Alan Greenspan claimed to be a devotee of Ayn Rand. Does he recognize himself in this quote?

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'