I caught the first segment of Jim Cramer last night in which Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) was the guest (via phone) to discuss this insane economic clusterfuck which the Bush Republicans and the Rand Free Market Anarchists have created for us. I learned three things during this segment of television:
1) Governor Spitzer is a very smart man.
2) Governor Spitzer spoke at great length and speed about things I'll never understand.
3) Spitzer and Cramer ripped both the president and Ayn Rand at the end of the conversation. I enjoyed and understood this part.
I'll never fully grasp the intricacies of this crap. But I do understand enough about the economic philosophies that caused it. Cramer and Spitzer (and Thom Hartmann and Atrios and all the rest) are doing their damndest to expose and repair the filthy, destructive contrails of the administration's laissez faire economic policies, but I'm afraid that Ayn Rand is alive and well and running wild like a psycho-bomb through the American economy.
Rand's free market capitalism, by its very nature, functions outside the realms of democratic accountability and so my basic worry comes down to this: can anyone contain the madness? Can anyone bottle this thing up again? And whoever tries it -- whoever tries to re-impose regulations on these bond insurers, banks, lenders and corporations -- what dastardly, vicious, well-financed opposing forces will they confront?
Happy weekend!