Heckuva Job Randies

by digby

Years ago I used to argue deep into the night online with a real life Randian objectivist who truly believed that capitalism was not an economic system but rather a moral system. And following that belief he naturally considered the captains of industry and the Big Money Boyz on Wall Street to be the most moral people of all. Wealth was the reward, you see, for proper moral behavior. (He also applied a bastardized darwinism to inherited wealth insisting that passing on wealth was the equivalent of passing on superior genes, thus exposing his true belief in aristocracy rather than capitalist meritocracy.) It was an interesting exchange and went on for many months, educating me about Randism, which I hadn’t honestly thought much about since I was about 17 years old until that time.

In the course of those somewhat juvenile arguments, I belatedly realized what it meant that the most important banker in the world, Alan Greenspan, was a card carrying Randian — and that everyone in the political class on all sides worshipped him. It wasn’t just a few lonely libertarian cranks and some clever conservative movement propagandists who thought this adolescent screed actually meant something. It had found its way into the corridors of power. It still seems ridiculous that a very silly novel could become a bible for the ruling class (or at least provide biblical justification) but it did.

I’ve written quite a bit about this over the years, drawing particular attention to the fact that the Randians who provide this pernicious comic book to high schoold kids by the millions and rich patrons who are endowing chairs at universities to spread the gospel. I was reminded of all that today when I saw Atrios’ link to this Balloon Juice post:

What I think is more insidious, though, than wingnut dentists’ cutting back their hours or Mrs. Instapundit cutting back on whatever it is that she normally does, is the widespread belief among elites that they and their colleagues are indispensable men. Like one of JMM’s readers, I fear that Geithner thinks that our economy would be decimated if we forcibly Galted the geniuses who ran our financial industry into the ground. I fear that when Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein gush about the greatness of David Brooks, it’s because they view themselves and each other as a d’Anconia-Danneskjöld-Galt punditocratic triumvirate that may yet save the world from unseriousness and blogofascism. I even fear that when Villagers praise Obama’s “political gifts”, they’re doing so for the same reason they praised George Bush’s cowboy gut instincts; that is, because they feel that the talents of leaders in Washington reflect upon its scribes. To put it simply, I fear that we are now ruled by incompetent egomaniacs who will never blow the whistle on each other, no matter how bad things get, because to do so would be to admit that none of them is indispensable or brilliant after all.
That’s exactly what they think.

The problem is that we are in a very bad situation now where these masters of the universe have created a problem even they don’t understand and which they don’t know how to solve. And their sycophants and toadies are left without a “moral” system to guide them.

Jane Hamsher is starting a campaign to demand that congress take action to ensure that at least we know where all this taxpayer money is going in the various bank bailouts. At the moment everything points to a massive looting by the real John Galts before they head to the hills while the rubes are distracted by nit-picking about “pork” in the budget. It would be nice to put all this in perspective so the American people actually know that the bulk of the money being spent by the government right now isn’t going for “useless” projects like volcano monitoring and rather being spent to further line the pockets of wealthy bankers who put us in this position in the first place.

In fact, more people should see just what those wealthy owners of America really think about our silly little processes:

Consider, for instance, this rant that Cohan [author of the new book “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess On Wall Street”] describes from bridge-playing Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne describing his feelings on Geithner’s decision to sell Bear Stearns:

Asked about Geithner’s comments and his decision regarding opening the discount window to Wall Street after Bear had been sold for $2 a share and not earlier, Jimmy Cayne became spitting angry. “The audacity of that p—k in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan,” he said. “Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting a h–d-on, saying, ‘Raise the bridge.’ This guy thinks he’s got a big d–k. He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend. I’m not a good enemy. I’m a very bad enemy. But certain things really—that bothered me plenty. It’s just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they’re a good credit? Who the f–k asked you? You’re not an elected officer. You’re a clerk. Believe me, you’re a clerk. I want to open up on this f—-r, that’s all I can tell you.”

That’s John Galt.

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