Donald's Blog

  This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there.

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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever, and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc. to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.

 

April 12, 2010

Quote of the Day

Historian Barbara Tuchman, as quoted in Richard M. Sudhalter's Lost Chords:

In order to identify with the period, [it is] essential to eliminate hindsight. I try not to refer to anything not known at the time. According to Emerson's rule, every scripture is entitled to be read in the light of the circumstances that brought it forth. To understand the choices open to people of another time, one must limit oneself to what they knew: see that past in its own clothes, as it were, not in ours.

 

April 12, 2010

But Ayn Rand is Happy

In yesterday's New York Times, Frank Rich disapproved of Alan Greenspan's testimony last week on Capitol Hill. Greenspan was Fed chairman for 18 years and everybody thought he was a genius until the latest bubble burst, and now Greenspan appears to be hiding in the bushes along with everybody else, saying that nobody saw the bust coming. But that's not true, says Frank Rich.

In last Sunday’s Times, one of those who predicted the bubble’s burst — Michael Burry, an investor chronicled in The Big Short by Michael Lewis — told in detail of how Greenspan and others in power “either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted” the reckless boom and the ensuing bust. But Greenspan is nothing if not a representative leader of his time. We live in a culture where accountability and responsibility are forgotten values. When “mistakes are made” they are always made by someone else.
Ah, but mistakes were not made, Frank. Greenspan was an acolyte of uber-capitalist Ayn Rand, one of the great crackpots of the 20th century, and that group were opposed to any sort of regulation or constraint at all. One could speculate that Greenspan knew exactly what he was doing as he helped the pols drive the country into the ditch.