New Moneyman

To the Editors:

I am not a Wall Street broker or an economist or even very business minded, but I enthusiastically applaud Alan Greenspan's appointment to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve ((ECONOMY & BUSINESS, June 15)). As a liberty-loving person, I must disagree with your characterizing Greenspan's statement the "welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of society" as an extreme economic view. I am praying that Greenspan has the continued courage and character necessary to resist tinkering with the lifeblood of the free market.

Tom Isenberg

Pittsburgh

Saying the new Federal Reserve Board chairman will be "entrusted with the fate of the dollar, the course of U.S. interest rates" is not quite fair. We all share in those responsibilities. The American worker who fails to give a full day's value for his pay adds to inflation; every one of us who fails to save regularly a portion of income helps to increase interest rates; every person who lives beyond his means adds to inflation and increases interest rates. The same holds true with our Government's handling of money.

Naomi Higginbotham

Phoenix

The characterization of Ayn Rand as a "pop philosopher who was neither a rigorous nor original thinker" is not accurate. Rand is the only one to build a complete philosophy -- objectivism -- on the base of reality, reason and individual rights. This is the "morality" of capitalism that Alan Greenspan mentions and why Rand is the "most important of Greenspan's early gurus." She showed that capitalism is the implementation of her philosophy in the areas of politics and economics.

Stephen Dourson

Dayton