I used to know Rick Santelli...

...back in the '90s when he and I worked for the Sanwa Bank of Japan. Who is Rick Santelli? Sounds a little like "Who is Jon Gault?," that famous question from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the libertarian bible. Rick is a reporter for CNBC who is all over the news for his rant yesterday about Obama's new mortgage relief plan. If you haven't seen it you should watch it on You Tube.

As I said, I used to know Rick and aside from a few eccentricities (and who at the Merc didn't have at least a few?) he was a "good guy." He was very personable and well-respected for his spots on CNBC, which evolved into a full-time gig. Rick is a self-described "Ayn Randian," although I didn't know that about him at the time. Now I used to be a Libertarian myself--yes, that's with a capital "L." I was a dues-paying member of the Party and voted for Libertarians for about 20 years or so. I've read a great deal of Ayn Rand and others like her (much more than Rick Santelli, I'm sure) and I think she got much of it right. And yet...

While free markets have been criticized from the left and worshipped from the right, it has to be noted that the U. S. hasn't had free markets since at least the Civil War, if ever. So while free markets have become a straw man for the left, they have really only existed in the heads of people like Rick Santelli. For just one example, Rick gets a tax deduction for the interest on his mortgage. Therefore, the Federal government is taking sides in the "rent vs. buy" decision by incentivizing home buyers. If the market were truly "free," the State would be neutral on this question. There are thousands of examples like this. The truth is, the U. S. is not now, nor has it probably ever been, a free market economy. So let's move on. I like what Obama said in his Inaugural address about putting less emphasis on ideology and more on what works.