The Rand novel (all 1,075 pages of it) has been a classic for a while.
The Galbraith book is recent (this year). Rand refers to the state predators (upon industrial innovators and the wealth they produce) as looters, and skewers socialism and altruism in general as the propaganda that seduces voters into supporting the looter state's legislation. Galbraith, however, sees predation in the conservative political actions that have brought us to our current economic crisis.
The first third of Atlas Shrugged is about the triumph of a political regime that strangles industrial innovation in the name of (allegedly) equalizing opportunity, while what is actually happening is that the cabal in charge is expropriating all the wealth created by technological innovation. Nothing actually equalizes because the overall productive capacity of the nation is falling, mainly as a result of predation upon the producers, but also as a result of an unusual mode of resistance to that predation, which is the plot (and title) of that book.
Galbraith's take is better explained here
and here.
Rand is by now (especially in these parts) notorious for having excessively simplified and politicized these issues, but she was, after all, born in St.Petersburg in 1905, so perhaps she had just cause. Her book views the predators as preying on technological innovation, but Galbraith's views them as preying on the social safety net, on social security, on federal deposit insurance, on everything that was originally designed to protect the middle class (as their return on their tax burden).
I realize dailyKos is not the world's best place for a philosophical discussion, but my point is, trillion-dollar interventions in the private economy in the name of the good of the overall system put us in a place where Rand seems eerily prescient regarding the problem (if not the solution). That the perpretrators would be bankers first and the victims the middle-class first (as opposed to politicians vs. engineers) is obviously not something she foresaw, but government actions in general are going to produce a swell of smugness ("I told you so") in Rand's notoriously naive followers, as we go forward. The other side is starting to be so bold as to bribe universities to teach Atlas Shrugged (UNC-Charlotte and the neighboring historically black college have both bitten already).
Therefore,
It would be NICE to be able to COUNTER with, "No, stupid, THE ACTUAL looters in THIS day and age are" Wall Street bankers and the conservative lawmakers who protect them.
SO anybody who has read either book is encouraged to say something constructive. And if it can't popularly be said here then please feel free also to pimp some other forum.