Stock Investors Have Gone John Galt

Obama does not care a fig for whether the stock market goes up or down. So he says. From his actions and given his hatred for the "investor class", one has to conclude that he actually likes seeing the stock market going down.

Clearly stock investors are leaving the stock market. They are buying gold and in some cases they are betting that the Obama pessimism will carry the market still lower. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor's Stock Index reached 12-year lows. The Dow closed at 6,594.44 and the S&P finished the day at 682.55, which is the lowest it has closed at since 19 Sep 96. The Nasdaq composite fell to 1,299.59, barely above its low in the last bear market on 12 Mar 03.

Many people soon to retire on the leading edge of the Baby Boomers generation are now without adequate income for their retirement since stocks now are worth only 50.2% of their 52-week high of 13,136.69. Obama does not care. Actually, Obama does not want anyone to have any more retirement income than that provided by Social Security. Obama is a very happy man.

So, investors see no reason to have confidence in the future of the American economy. They are showing this by "Going John Galt" in droves. There is no joy in Mudville, nor anywhere in America today. The Federal government does not protect property and it does not protect contracts. The failure to protect contracts is explicit in the abrogation of home mortgage contracts. The failure to protect property is explicit in talk establishing the means to take over a number of financial companies after years of pushing them to finance sub-prime mortgages and lending generally and saddling them with short-sighted mark-to-market rules under the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law. Yes, many of these institutions bear substantial blame, but so does the government which now wants us to believe that it can manage many of these companies better than their management can.

For all the faults many of those companies managers can be held to account for, there is every reason to believe that government bureaucrats will be far, far less capable. Most of those bureaucrats are in government agencies either because they could not make it in private enterprise or because they hate the profit motive. In either case, the bureaucrat is hardly likely to do well in managing a company of the private sector. Indeed, it would be unseemly for a bureaucrat to actively seek to increase a company's profit in competition with other companies. There is a strong conflict of interest between his public duties and such a role.

Such a strong conflict of interest also exists between the government-employed educator and the operation of schools. This has not kept the government from almost monopolizing the schooling of America's children and it has emboldened them to substitute propaganda for larger government for a critical assessment of the moral scope of government power. One of the primary reasons children need an education is so they will be able to hold their own against the will of government to always expand its powers. It takes knowledge and intellectual confidence for the individual to stand firm against the demands of those wielding power through government. Government is the chief enemy of freedom and freedom always hangs in a delicate and precarious balance due to the threats of government. Only when many citizens are able to think for themselves and are cognizant of history and economics can they hold government in check.

Our government-run schools have seen to it that our children cannot see the threat of government, that they believe an additional government program is the answer to every problem, that they avoid conflict and hurt feelings at all costs, and that they are ignorant of the essential lessons of history. Government schools have long been designing our children to become patsies before the onslaught of evermore intrusive government. Our children are designed to become the feudal serfs of society. This is the only class of people that Obama likes. Our schools cannot hope to do the job of education due to the fundamental conflict of interest that a government has with respect education and the expansion of its own powers.

Similar conflicts of interest exist with all of the many functions which governments take on to expand their power. Recognition of this motivated the Framer's of the Constitution to strictly limit the powers of government. Government is always primarily about the use of force, not primarily about helping the people. Government is always dangerous. But government always poses as the solution to every problem. It poses as the solution to the problems in the economy, but in reality it is the biggest problem by far in the economy. Let us "go John Galt" on government!

Going John Galt

Lately a new phrase of protest against the socialist remake of the United States of America led by the left wing of the resurgent Democrat Party is erupting from many Americans. They are saying either that they are "Going John Galt" or that it is clear that investors, employers, and small businessmen are "Going John Galt."

Well, it is now 7 AM and I am about to shut down my work in my laboratory after having worked all night on a report on the XPS, FTIR, and microscopy analysis of a building material. With the clearly accelerated attack of the socialists and the anti-science and anti-business elements running amok in Washington with the sole aim of brutally suppressing our individual sovereignty, I am wondering why on earth I am not already "Going John Galt."

Of course, I have reigned in some equipment spending plans and I am seriously thinking about the need to pare the number of my employees. To some degree that is "Going John Galt." And at times I am so angry that it is impairing my ability to focus on science and technology. I really do find that what I really want to do is fight back and do my best to throw the vermin back who are trying to destroy my future, that of my business, and that of my family and friends. It is only when I am on the barricade opposing this horde of barbarians that I feel as though I am being a man. A man must act to protect, preserve, and defend his values and he must assert his right to develop and manage his own life. To do less is to be a lower life form.

As I told my oldest daughter when she asked a couple of weeks ago if I hoped Barack Obama would fail, yes I hope he will fail. He is wrong, he is the very heart of evil. The principal issue of our day, indeed of every man's day who ever existed, is whether or not the individual will reign sovereign or whether hordes of barbarians and mobs of thugs will reign sovereign. We have given the Federal government to the barbarians and the thugs, with my college-indoctrinated daughter's help. Good men must oppose them mightily and we must hope that they will fail. We know from history that they will not succeed in what they are pretending is their intentions.

However, it has become very clear that their real intention is to have total power over all Americans and they clearly understand that that means that they must reduce us all to poverty. That is exactly their intent. They have already deprived most of us of 44% of our retirement savings, that being how far south the stock market has gone since it became clear that Obama was likely to win the Presidential election. They will deprive us of 82% of our energy use, deprive us of the choice to have medical care, deprive us of meat, corn, and other food, and they clearly will have to greatly reduce the population to meet their goals of reducing man's impact on the Almighty Planet. Obama must be a secret admirer of Pol Pot.

If they do "succeed", then very many of us will "Go John Galt." That will then bring the barbarians and thugs to their knees as the less committed fellow travelers realize what the choices really are. Then we who have "Gone John Galt" will trace a dollar sign over the horizon and begin a civilization which finally understands that only when the individual reigns supreme is freedom secure and only then does man have the right to use his own mind and to act to achieve the values his mind has identified as most important to him. Meanwhile, I damn the barbarians and I hope all the thugs fail miserably, since it would be much better if we are not forced to "Go John Galt." But, it looks as though this is going to be a closely run affair. This may well be the equivalent of Hitler winning WWII or Joe Stalin winning the Cold War. This war is going to be very brutal. Fortunately, Ayn Rand left us well-armed for this brutal fight with the barbarians and thugs.