You’d think that our fiscal meltdown would have shown the flaw in Rand’s philosophy. She thought we could derive morals from the markets. But we derived immorality from the markets.

She wrote about Nietzschean superheroes who made things. She died before capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off something you didn’t own or that existed only on paper.

The sexy Manichean ’toons in the novels of the goddess of capitalism don’t behave unethically. When they blow up things, it’s because they will not be sacrificial victims to evil second-raters.

Greed had a less ennobling effect on real genius capitalists. Instead of fighting the looters, they joined the looters.