The Return

Well, that was remiss of me, not noticing the return of Bryan Appleyard to regular blogging after a significant break.

And he's in fine, cheery form. Here, for example, is his short take on Ayn Rand:

Now I have just been watching a film by a friend of mine which includes some startling material about Rand, all of which confirmed my dismal judgment of this ‘thinker’ as a dud novelist, a terrible philosopher and a political theorist of staggering and dangerous naivete. Hearing about her life with her circle of infatuated admirers, it suddenly came to me who she is. Ayn Rand, a Russian, is the reincarnation of another Russian – Madame Helena Blavatsky, the theosophical prophetess who wowed polite but gullible London society until her death in 1891. Blavatsky did, in fact, promise reincarnation, her last words were, ‘Keep the link unbroken! Do not let my last incarnation be a failure.’ The reincarnation was a roaring success: Rand was a chain smoker, like Blavatsky, and a total bozo, like Blavatsky.

A very good comparison, I think. And Rand gets a mention in passing later, when talking about Alan Greenspan's apparent recant of his recant, which I'll copy in full:

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and one of Ayn Rand’s innermost circle, writes a curious piece in the FT. The piece is curious, first, because Greenspan writes a little like F.R.Leavis – incredibly badly, clotted, pompous, circumlocutory in away that is designed simultaneously to advertise and conceal high intelligence. It is, secondly, curious because, it seems, Greenspan, having created the over-financialised system that made the crash inevitable, then having recanted, is now recanting his recantation. Leaving aside the details of the Dodd-Frank Act, Greenspan points out that nobody forecast the crash, quite the contrary, that there is no hard science of markets, and that, on the whole, global financial markets are good for growth. He points out that finance has seized a much larger share of all major economies and, finally, wonders whether this larger share ‘has been a necessary condition of growth in the past half century‘ and whether there is a necessary link between greater financial complexity and higher standards of living. This is obfuscation, as is the suave justification of bankers’ bonuses. In power, Greenspan got it wrong because of his Randian market superstition and, as many of the commenters say, that fact alone is enough to destroy his authority in these matters. Recent evidence suggests strongly that excessive financialisation of our economy increases risk and, in the long term, reduces growth. Doesn’t everybody know that?

So good to have him back.