Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

From Counterpunch.org:

Some great commentary on the perversion of Objectivism brought about by the folly of backers of Wall Street’s criminal, parasitic class…

Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

The high priestess of corporate deregulation and free markets, Ayn Rand, wrote a novella in the 1930s.  It was published in the U.S. in 1946 under the title, Anthem, by a corporate front group, a precursor to today’s astroturf groups.  Anthem is currently being pumped into high schools across the U.S. and Canada with financial inducements to both teachers and students by a corporate funded nonprofit that has the financial support of some of the largest hedge funds in the U.S.

The book presents a frightening dystopian world produced by the ever present Randian trademark – an out of control government.  People are known by numbers instead of names; individual rights have been eviscerated. To break the will of the individual, uttering the word “I” results in being burned alive in the  town square.  (Charming high school literature.)

What has happened today, however, proves that in a country dominated by powerful multinational corporations, Rand not only had the wrong target of big government in her cross hairs but the despotic enemy became the very deregulated market she helped design with acolytes like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and her corporate cronies.

The epicenter of the “free market” – Wall Street – which has had 70 years of corporate propaganda chipping away at its government restraints, is the modern day embodiment of every demon Rand feared in her copious journals and books.  Not only are Wall Street workers muzzled but they must profess written loyalty to their masters who characterize them as mere numbers rather than humans.

Employees for the major Wall Street firms must sign away their right to access the nation’s courts in any dispute with their employer.  A crony-run arbitration system that relies on “equity” rather than the rule of law replaces the taxpayer supported court system where the jury is randomly selected from a large pool. The U.S. Supreme Court has enshrined Wall Street’s ability to serve as judge and jury in multiple decisions. Congress has failed to get a bill out of committee to outlaw these kangaroo courts in two decades of documented abuse.

One of the largest Wall Street firms requires workers to sign that they have read and understood the following statement in order to remain employed at the firm.

To read the rest of this piece, courtesy of CounterPunch, click the following link:  Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.