Free Republic

The Coming Collapse: “We Can Buy Time, But We Can’t Change the Outcome” By Aaron Task | Daily Ticker – Fri, Sep 16, 2011 1:23 PM EDT The Ayn Rand Institute held its annual "Atlas Shrugged Revolution" dinner Thursday night in New York City. In attendance were a number of financial luminaries and hedge fund managers, including Peter Schiff of EuroPacific Capital, John Tamny of RealClearMarkets, Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management and Scott Schweighauser of Aurora Investment Management. The setting was the tony St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue but there was nothing pleasant about the primary message coming...

It's not easy being Alan Greenspan these days. As the former Federal Reserve chairman, he urged government regulators to take a light touch while banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers buried themselves—and the economy more generally—under a mountain of debt. Now that his reputation is plummeting faster than the stock market, he's been forced to admit a "flaw" in his hands-off ideology. Of course, things look entirely different to members of "free-market advocacy groups," as they like to be called. One such group is the Ayn Rand Institute, named after the matriarch of the movement, whose antigovernment and anti-regulation...

"Moral Cowardice Prevents Winning the War Thursday December 23, 2004 "IRVINE, CA--The blame for the murder of 19 Americans in Mosul yesterday lies not only with the insurgents who initiated the attack, but also with the Bush Administration's suicidal policies, said Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute. "The insurgency would have been crushed long ago, and yesterday's attack averted, were it not for America's altruistic policy of placing the lives of Iraqi civilians above its own self-defense. "America must destroy the insurgency if we are to implement a non-threatening government in Iraq," said Dr. Brook. "This can be done, but...

Admittedly, there is a lot about the Israeli side of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute to be critical of. For one, demolishing the homes of a terrorist's family isn't just or prudent. But it's hard to make sense of a perspective that sees everything Israel does as arch-evil, as is the case with those libertarians who religiously and robotically depict Israel as the devil incarnate. So, how about it? Is Israel always wrong? Is there nothing redeeming about a people that revived a desolate land and a long-dead biblical language just over 100 years ago? Can nothing good be said about the...