Pika wrongly accused
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- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM ECONOMIST.COM -
Dear BR,
BR (bradicals@gmail.com) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.
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Was Ayn Rand a Mayan? or was she Nostradamus?
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ATLAS FELT A SENSE OF DEJA VU
Feb 26th 2009
The economic bust has caused a boom for at least one author
BOOKS do not sell themselves: that is what films are for. "The Reader",
the book that inspired the Oscar-winning film, has shot up the
bestseller lists. Another recent publishing success, however, has had
more help from Washington, DC, than Hollywood. That book is Ayn Rand's
"Atlas Shrugged".
Reviled in some circles and mocked in others, Rand's 1957 novel of
embattled capitalism is a favourite of libertarians and college
students. Lately, though, its appeal has been growing. According to
data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks bestseller rankings on Amazon, an
online retailer, the book's 30-day average Amazon rank was 127 on
February 21st, well above its average over the past two years of 542.
On January 13th the book's ranking was 33, briefly besting President
Barack Obama's popular tome, "The Audacity of Hope".
Tellingly, the spikes in the novel's sales coincide with the news (see
chart). The first jump, in September 2007, followed dramatic
interest-rate cuts by central banks, and the Bank of England's bail-out
of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender. The October 2007 rise
happened two days after the Bush Administration announced an initiative
to coax banks to assist subprime borrowers. A year later, sales of the
book rose after America's Treasury said that it would use a big chunk
of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Programme to buy stakes in
nine large banks. Debate over Mr Obama's stimulus plan in January gave
the book another lift. And sales leapt once again when the stimulus
plan passed and Mr Obama announced a new mortgage-modification plan.
Whenever governments intervene in the market, in short, readers rush to
buy Rand's book. Why? The reason is explained by the name of a recently
formed group on Facebook, the world's biggest social-networking site:
"Read the news today? It's like 'Atlas Shrugged' is happening in real
life". The group, and an expanding chorus of fretful bloggers, reckon
that life is imitating art.
Some were reminded of Rand's gifted physicist, Robert Stadler, cravenly
disavowing his faith in reason for political favour, when Alan
Greenspan, an acolyte of Rand's, testified before a congressional
committee last October that he had found a "flaw in the model" of
securitisation. And with pirates hijacking cargo ships, politicians
castigating corporate chieftains, riots in Europe and slowing
international trade--all of which are depicted in the book--this
melancholy meme has plenty of fodder.
Even if Washington does not keep the book's sales booming, Hollywood
might. A film version is rumoured to be in the works for release in
2011. But by then, a film may feel superfluous to Rand's most loyal
fans; events unfolding around them will have been dramatisation enough.
See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13185404&source=hptextfeature
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