Mr Summers strongly denied one potential self-interested motive for a weaker dollar: to help the American stockmarket by improving the prospects of leading multinationals such as Intel, McDonald's, and Gillette, whose dollar profits from Europe have suffered from the weak euro.

ECONOMIST: Gambling with the mighty greenback | The

Yet Petterson is novelistically acute about human motive and self-deception.

NEWYORKER: Late and Soon

Rand also noted that only an ethic of rational selfishness can justify the pursuit of profit that is the basis of capitalism -- and that so long as self-interest is tainted by moral suspicion, the profit motive will continue to take the rap for every imaginable (or imagined) social ill and economic disaster.

WSJ: Is Rand Relevant?