One of the many parallels between the famous book and current events popped up recently — the subprime freeze of today and the frozen railroad bonds in the book.
"Paulson defends ‘freeze’ plan
In a speech Monday, the Treasury Secretary said the subprime crisis raises the ‘potential of a market failure.’
January 8 2008: 10:42 AM EST
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson used a speech Monday to defend a plan brokered by the Bush administration to “freeze” mortgage rates for some subprime borrowers and also to call on Congress to pass legislation to head off a housing crisis.
“Over the next two years, we … face an unprecedented wave of 1.8 million subprime mortgage resets, raising the potential of a market failure,” Paulson said."
Compare that with:
“In “Atlas Shrugged” does anyone remember the scene where the railroads were going bankrupt, and they convinced the government to decree a 5-year moratorium on railroad bonds paying out? And then there was the passage about how different investors with the right pull and influence could get their bonds “unfrozen” and an entire cottage industry sprung up around the “unfreezers” buying up the worthless bonds for a significant discount? I’m trying to find it in my copy of the book but it is a rather massive book and I didn’t bookmark the page.”
http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=18758
Consciously for a few, subconsciously for most, thinking people are simply not willing to produce a bonanza for the unthinking, uncaring mob any longer. Governments can institute such insanities as the Prescription Drug plan, for example, but what if no one pays? So they print more and more pieces of paper to attempt to trick producers to pay for it all…
I can see the end of all this, with some seedy little bureaucrat holding a rifle on some poor semi-literate farmer commanding him to think and grow crops. Sad.