Newsweek: Ayn Rand caused America’s Crisis?

Barret Sheridan (Newsweek) | 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 views are embodied in her best-selling novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Indeed, Greenspan himself was a friend of Rand’s, and a devotee of her extreme free-market philosophy…[Read Full Article]

Ayn Rand Center: Drop the SEC Investigation Against Cuban

ARC, Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights | Billionaire Mark Cuban is under investigation for “insider trading” by the SEC.

“This case is a travesty,” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Cuban is accused of selling his stock in Mamma.com after the CEO told Cuban that the company would be making a new stock offering that Cuban thought was a bad idea. But there is nothing wrong with this whatsoever–unless Cuban had a contractual obligation or fiduciary duty not to act on the information. And if Cuban violated a contract, which there is no evidence of, then that is the injured party’s–the company’s–job to pursue, not the SEC’s. In all likelihood, if there is anyone who violated a contractual obligation, it is the CEO who divulged confidential, unsolicited information–not the famous billionaire recipient who just happens to make a juicy target for SEC bureaucrats thirsting for another high-profile case to justify their regulatory power.

“The question of ‘insider trading’–when employees and investors of a company can act on certain information–should be left entirely up to private contract, such as restrictions on CEOs shorting their own stock. The criminalization of ‘insider trading’ has authorized the SEC to terrorize those whose only sin was to be a savvy investor. The Mark Cubans of the world deserve to be left free to make investment decisions under a government with clear laws against force, fraud, and breach of contract–not to spend years of their lives enduring witch hunts and prisons.”>>>>Read the Full Article

Should Congress Make Talk Radio Fair?

ALPINE, UT | 11 March 2008 | For the last several years it has becoming increasingly clear that many of the elected officials in Washington D.C. are not happy about what is happening in the marketplace, especially with talk radio. After years of failed attempts to find “more suitable” talkers to fill the airwaves (most shows have simply gone broke and were unable to entice programmers to continue) lawmakers are Read more