More Smoke ... as Atlas Frowns

John Derbyshire at NRO received an e-mail from a friend in the "hedge fund" business, the contents of which tie in directly to an earlier post here today. John's post is entitled, "Atlas Frowned," and it's definitely worth reading in full, but I couldn't resist posting a couple of excerpts:

This administration has made it quite clear that they can't be relied upon to honor contracts or legal precedents and if I can't know what the rules are before the game starts then I'm not going to play. Hedge funds aren't like the banks … we haven't failed. We aren't beholden to the taxpayer to make our way. We have contractual and fiduciary obligation which we will honor. People pay us to make them money not to meet a political goal.

[SNIP]

... Geithner and Obama have been saying that they plan on balancing the budget once the crisis is past. The press may believe that twaddle about how he'll do it by "making things more efficient," but we in the hedge fund industry aren't so stupid. We've looked at the numbers and know what he's planning to do. I know dozens of people who are already putting the legal structures in place to move their companies and themselves offshore and away from the grip of the tax man. These are some of the smartest most dynamic people in the world and they'll have no trouble staying ahead of the kids from the short bus over at the IRS.

So unless Obama wants to run out of "other people's money" a lot sooner than he expected, he had better keep some people around to pay the bills. And if he keeps demonizing the productive and saying that it's their responsibility to let him spend their money on the unproductive, then we'll all be gone. I'll be working my 14 hour days is Bahrain or Singapore, and Obama can go suck eggs.

You could call this "Going Galt 2009."

Don't let your antipathy toward hedge funds blind you to the very real damage that is taking place in our economic structures. Confidence is paramount, and it is teetering.