Atlas Shrugged sales briefly top Audacity of Hope

From The Economist:

According to data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks bestseller rankings on Amazon, an online retailer, the book�??s 30-day average Amazon rank was 127 on February 21st, well above its average over the past two years of 542. On January 13th the book�??s ranking was 33, briefly besting President Barack Obama�??s popular tome, �??The Audacity of Hope�?�.

Enough to give a guy some hope. The article continues:

Tellingly, the spikes in the novel�??s sales coincide with the news (see chart). The first jump, in September 2007, followed dramatic interest-rate cuts by central banks, and the Bank of England�??s bail-out of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender. The October 2007 rise happened two days after the Bush Administration announced an initiative to coax banks to assist subprime borrowers. A year later, sales of the book rose after America�??s Treasury said that it would use a big chunk of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Programme to buy stakes in nine large banks. Debate over Mr Obama�??s stimulus plan in January gave the book another lift. And sales leapt once again when the stimulus plan passed and Mr Obama announced a new mortgage-modification plan.

Whenever governments intervene in the market, in short, readers rush to buy Rand�??s book. Why? The reason is explained by the name of a recently formed group on Facebook, the world�??s biggest social-networking site: �??Read the news today? It�??s like �??Atlas Shrugged�?? is happening in real life�?�. The group, and an expanding chorus of fretful bloggers, reckon that life is imitating art.

See the full article for more.