I have two related questions for you:

1. "How is a market that is under the private (profiting) auspices of a centralized controlled currency based on fractional reserve lending a truly "free" market, capable of true market adjustment?"

2. "How can a market EVER be truly free without the freedom of currency and exchange from a centralized banking model?"

Perhaps Miss Rand appreciated the irony.

The money supply is centrally controlled by the government, and the Fed is effectively a government central bank. There's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government creations, pushing lending standards down. There's the CRA channeling money to risky borrowers. There's the SEC and any and all laws passed regarding finance, and any and all regulatory rules at all overseeing agencies. I wonder how many feet high those regulations would be if you piled them up? There's antitrust. There is taxation. And on and on. That's not freedom. So, the idea has not been tried.

What has been tried, is ignoring markets and trying to lend to risky borrowers anyway. The government caused this current crisis by encouraging low credit standards and making too much credit available.

I have no reason to doubt that you sincerely believe that the Bush years were a "free-for-all" and represent a period of significant regulatory reduction. This is certainly the picture that the politicians and the press have gone to great lengths to convey. However, nothing could be further from the truth. While some specific regulations were rescinded under Bush, there were many, many more new regulations created to replace them. Overall, businesses were far more constrained by the end of the Bush administration than at the beginning. Bush significantly increased the national debt, and expanded the intrusion of government into an ever increasing number of areas. He supported all of the disastrous actions taken with regards to the FED, FDIC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. which were responsible for the housing bubble and the start of the economic collapse. He supported the trillion dollar FED bailout. And here were many shady public/private business dealings of a quasi-fascist nature. None of this qualifies as anything remotely approaching capitalism.

And now with Obama doing all of these things, only on an unimaginably larger scale, what is there to be be proud of? For the life of me, I cannot understand how people get it in their mind that Bush represented capitalism and demonstrated its failure. Just like his father and Clinton, and Carter, before him, Bush was a weenie, inconsistent socialist who didn't have the guts to go all the way with his policies. But the distance that he and his predecessors did travel has been a continual series of disasters. Now Obama, a proud socialist, stands defiantly in the open and works to fully implement everything that Bush only approached half-heartedly, and if left unchecked, is poised to plunge this country into a true disaster from which, ultimately, we might not be able to recover.

You are correct in saying that no president in the 20th century has promoted true capitalism and our constitutional rights. It is about time that we get one that actually understood these concepts and reigned in government, freeing people to once again rebuild our tattered economy and restore liberty to all.

You seem to be familiar with some of Rand's works. If you understood anything that you read, then you must know that if she had lived to see it, Rand would have vilified Greenspan as a traitor for taking the job at the FED and would have classified his actions as some of the worst examples of government abuse. Greenspan was the Dr. Stadler in our current sorry cast of characters. Also, how do you account for the fact that the events in Atlas Shrugged, written over 50 years ago, are playing out almost verbatim, today? There must be some fundamental principles in operation that makes that kind of forecasting of the future possible!

As for me, I won't be taking an opinion poll of my friends, whether employed or unemployed, to determine my conclusions on what is transpiring in the world today. I prefer to look at the facts and integrate them into a picture that can be comprehended and understood in terms of basic principles. And I find time and again that the trouble we find ourselves facing today is easily explained by government meddling in the economy - and not by some non-existent pipe-dream that we tried capitalism and that it was proven a failure.

Regards,
--
C. Jeffery Small

TRB: I respect your views and certainly your understanding of Rand's ideology trumps mine, however, I disagree with your assertion that there was more regulation as opposed to less. I'd like to point out two key pieces of legislation and one non-enforcement of the Fed's mandate hat were proximate causes of the condition we currently find ourselves in. Ironically, all three of these items were high lobbied-for and sought after by he very banks that used them to commit fiscal suicide:

Thanks for reading.

Is it possible that you actually believe that an experiment in individual and economic freedom was conducted over the last decade, or is this just some form of ironic word play at the reader's expense? If the former, and you truly think that the Bush years were a model of Capitalism and an administration that truly promoted individual rights as outlined in the US Constitution, then there isn't anything that I or anyone else could say that could get through to you.

Regards,
--
C. Jeffery Small
http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/

TRB: To my knowledge, no president has ever truly offered "model of Capitalism and an administration that truly promoted individual rights as outlined in the US Constitution" in its purest sense, but I gotta tell you sir, the last 10 to 12 years were as close to a free-for-all as you're going to get in terms of lax restriction and the elites were given just enough rope to hang themselves. Everything they were in charge of fell apart. Don't believe me? Ask 2 out of the 10 people you know who are unemployed.

thx for reading