ARI News

Out Now: In Pursuit of Wealth: The Moral Case for Finance

Financiers don’t create the products that enrich our lives — they help grow the businesses that create the products that enrich our lives. Yet many people believe on some level that finance is immoral. Maybe not totally. Maybe it has some redeeming features. But at best it is regarded as a necessary evil. If our economic well-being depends on a vibrant and innovative financial industry, why does no one speak up to defend finance?
Government And Business

The Myth of Banking Deregulation

Myth: Finance was deregulated during the 1980s and 1990s, laying the groundwork for the 2008 financial crisis. Reality: Although some financial regulations were rolled back during the late 20th century, the overall trend was toward increased government control.
Government And Business

The Great Depression and the Role of Government Intervention

The Myth: An unregulated free market and unrestricted Wall Street greed caused the Great Depression and only the interventionist policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt got us out. The Reality: The Great Depression was caused by government intervention, above all a financial system controlled by America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve — and the interventionist policies of Hoover and FDR only made things worse.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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