"The characters are thin shells used to promote Rand's thinking and in no way reflect reality."

Well, whose thinking do you think they should have promoted, exactly? And why do characters in a novel necessarily need to exactly reflect reality? I haven't run into any elves, dwarves, or immortal wizards, but that didn't stop me from enjoying Tolkien.

"The idea that unbridled self interest leads to the greatest good guided Greenspan's monetary policy and got us into this mess."

Really? How do artificially low interest rates translate into unbridled self interest?