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A spree of gloating malice

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intellectualammo

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Upon reading Rands intro to her play, Night of January the 16th, I came across some things she said that I have questions on.

"It was not his shady methods, his ruthlessness, hid dishonesty that were being denounced, but his ambition. His ability, his self-confidence, the glamorous aura of his life and name were featured, exaggerated, overstressed, to serve as fodder for the hordes of envious mediocrity rejoicing in his downfall. It was a spree of gloating malice."

"At the time of Kruegers death, it was not the political aspects of his story that interested me, but the nature of those public denunciations. It was not a crook that they were denouncing, but greatness as such; it was greatness as such that I wanted to defend."

Krueger "seeking a world monopoly for his match industry, he began to give large loan to various European governments in exchange for a monopoly status in their countries."

So his greatness, was in part due to legitimate means before, but as Rand just described, later he was establishing coercive monopolies in countries.

Doesn't that, to the extent of that, invalidate his greatness some?

So this spree of gloating malice, I could see that only if they were denouncing his greatness due to a productive monopoly, but not in regard to a coercive monopoly.

If you can, show me in articles or commentaries of the time on this spree of gloating malice she speaks of, so I can judge better on what she was talking about, or even if that was what they were denouncing his greatness, greatness not something else.

Edited by intellectualammo
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Why don’t you do a little research yourself and share your results with us? In a few minutes on the web, I learned that the New York Times coverage of Kreuger, upon his death and aftermath, was pretty sympathetic to him. There is some other record of the press back then in a 2007 piece. You can find the date of the suicide. Go to your library and look at the microfilm of newspapers and magazines from that time to a few weeks later. Let us know what you learn.

Believe me, people at these Objectivist-type posting sites appreciate receiving new, researched information.

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Ayn Rand was a human being and had therefore to evolve until she found balance in a very hard to defend philosophy called Objectivism. Before achieving that seemingly impossible task (that of enunciating the ethics of rational egoism, neither altruism or predatory egosim), she was persuaded a bit by Nietzsche. But her world view was always the same: in this play she points out that there are millions of common criminals, but that the act of punishing one exceeds the rational system of societal preservation and becomes a procession in which a hated idol is burnt for the sake of calming the sadistic and frustrated spirits of the majority.

Monopolies in Europe at that time were akin to monopolies in Africa now ( or anytime it seems) when held by a foreign company. It was not assumed at that time that Europe could have a free market anymore than Asia.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Match King: Ivar Krueger by Frank Partnoy (2009)



 

 

Ivar’s plan was to limit competition and increase profits by securing a monopoly on match sales throughout the world, mimicking the nineteenth-century oil, sugar, and steel trusts. Then … raise prices, without losing sales. According to Ivar’s plan, now that the world war [WW1] was over, he would make a fortune from the peace.


 

 

Americans would lend money, through Ivar, to foreign governments, and in return everyone would make unimaginable profits from match monopolies.


 

 

When a government gave Ivar a monopoly, it would receive both a loan and a share of monopoly profits from the sales of matches.


 

The Match Palace that Ivar had built:

 

 

The boardroom … panels depicted Prometheus on a winged horse, rushing down through a rainbow to bring fire to the men trapped in darkness below. The unmistakable impression was that the deity represented Ivar, bringing matches, and profits from matches, to the people.


 

 

A close analysis of the available evidence suggests that the truth about Ivar Krueger is somewhere between his stellar reputation before March 12, 1932 and his abysmal reputation after that date. Yes, he committed forgeries and issued false financial statements. Yes, he abused innovative financial techniques to secure control of large publicly traded companies, and then manipulated accounting results so that he would not be beholden to investors he regarded as fickle. But he also legitimately created substantial wealth, revived much of those profits as large cash dividends. The bulk of those payments went to Ivar’s investors, not to Ivar.

 

If this revised review is correct, Ivar’s role in history is more complicated than previously thought. He was not merely the greatest financial fraudster of the century. He was a builder, as well as a destroyer. He was a victim, as well as a perpetrator. He was a hero, as well as a villain.


 

 

Death ruled a suicide, but there are theories of him being murdered, or that it wasn’t even his body, and he escaped. This is probably where Rand gets the murder or suicide, or still alive/escape idea for Bjorn. Also there was a Karin Bokman, his secretary, of which I think Rand uses as her Karen in her play, she probably was a model and she just took some liberties with them as being lovers, which may or may not have happened IRL, some think perhaps.
 

For me, so much of his “success” was due to the establishment of those coercive monopolies in other countries. He had a Durant, banker, raise money for the loans he would give governments in exchange for monopoly status, and raised prices to profit off of that and on interest from the loans and pay American investor with some of that.

 

Greatness?
 

In the book, during the two weeks after his death, the
 

 

public sentiment about Ivar flipped. Journalists drew hasty conclusions about him based on preliminary assessments of available evidence. The abruptly revised view, that the Match King had perpetrated the greatest financial fraud in history, quickly became cemented in the public mind. The world now saw an epic betrayal: a villian, not a hero; a scemer, not a planner; a destroyer, not a builder. Ivar became the Judas of the financial markets.

 

Does it say they were denouncing greatness? No.
 

This describes what really did it:
 

 

Instead, the nails in Ivar’s coffin were the Italian treasury bills. Those forged bills crystallized the public’s view of Ivar in a way that explanations of intermingled accounts, offshore subsidiaries, and off balance sheet liability never would.

 

 

The forged Italian treasury bills galvanized opinion against Ivar. The media replayed the investigation over and over.

 

 

Millions of investors saw for themselves that Ivar was a crook, just like Charles Ponzi. The only difference between the two men was scale: Ivar had fifty times more money and lasted ten times as long.


 

Then comes this:
 

 

With the public clamoring for Congress to act, legislators first took aim at the New York Stock Exchange, particularly its willingness to list unaudited companies.


 

 

The Exchange tried to fend off legislation by voluntarily requiring newly listed companies to agree to future audits; when that wasn’t enough, it agreed to require audits before granting listings. But neither more satisfied the public, or Congress. The era of laissez-faire self-regulation was over.


 

But, those investors and banks and those involved, could have self-regulated things, by demanding more information or they just would not deal with Ivar. The author repeatedly questions why no one did. So their default on or choice not to should not lead to legislation. They didn’t want information or didn’t think about it at the time. That’s on them, they should know what they are getting themselves into with risk and so forth. Anyways, my main reason for reading this was to begin to see the story of Ivar and then what the publics reaction with him was at the time. I can now look even further into the latter, having only begum to here. So far, I do not see a gloating spree of malice directed towards his greatness, as such.

Edited by intellectualammo
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