The intellectual betrayal of an age

Seen in a blog comment:

There once was an Alan Greenspan

Who sat at the feet of Miss Rand
Her ideas seemed fine
For just the right time
But till then honest banking be damned

Greenspan's intellectual betrayal -- of individual rights, of capitalism, and of Ayn Rand -- is of epic scope, even if this doesn't turn into Great Depression 2 (or something worse). He thought he could manage world markets better than they could manage themselves. He sought to personally maximize our wealth more practically than by the gold standard he had praised in his youth. He didn't want to destroy -- he wanted to control.

But his control proved maximally destructive.

The epitaph of Greenspan's life will be that after learning of the logical necessity for free minds and free markets from the greatest genius since Aristotle, he then chose a career in economic coercion which ultimately brought financial calamity crashing down around six billion people.

He now says: "I still do not fully understand what happened."

I wonder if rather he understands too well: that this is the finale of decades of cheating on the principles he had once known in order to get away with a life of power-lust.