The Objective Standard Blog

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Set the Market Free: The Cure for the Financial Crisis

Posted by ARC Media at 2:50 pm

What: A talk arguing that the financial crisis was caused by the government and can be cured only by the free market. A Q&A will follow

Who: Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Where: Mary Graydon Center Building, Room 3. 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20016

When: Wednesday, January 28, 2009, at 7 pm

Admission: FREE and open to students and the public

Description: Virtually everyone today regards the financial crisis as a failure of the free market. In this talk, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, will argue that in fact it is the un-free market that has failed. It was not capitalism that held interest rates below the rate of inflation, spurring massive amounts of borrowing and a housing boom. It was not capitalism that gave us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which promoted subprime lending and helped fuel the boom. It was not capitalism that gave us deposit insurance and the "too big to fail" doctrine, which encouraged risky financial practices. These, and many anti-capitalist measures like them, Dr. Brook will argue, laid the groundwork for the financial crisis. The only cure, according to Dr. Brook, is to set the market free. But to do that, Americans must embrace capitalism as a moral system–one that should be defended without guilt.

Bio: Dr. Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights and a contributing editor of "The Objective Standard." A former finance professor, he has been published in academic as well as popular publications, and his opinion-editorials appear in major newspapers. He is frequently interviewed on national TV and radio. Dr. Brook lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

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