Pope Again Condemns Usury

The Pope addressing the UN reiterated the Catholic prohibition of usury, defined as charging any interest at any rate for any period of time.  Most of the anger directed by right wing Catholics, the name calling, etc, is based on his maintaining this eternal teaching.

The need for greater equity is especially true in the case of those bodies with effective executive capability, such as the Security Council, the Financial Agencies and the groups or mechanisms specifically created to deal with economic crises.  This will help limit every kind of abuse or usury, especially where developing countries are concerned.  The International Financial Agencies are should care for the sustainable development of countries and should ensure that they are not subjected to oppressive lending systems which, far from promoting progress, subject people to mechanisms which generate greater poverty, exclusion and dependence.

The heart of the economic disequilibrium is centered on usury. Everyone agrees interest rates matter, but whether they do harm depends on whose ox is gored.

What makes a Catholic is a relationship to a body of teaching (since all Christianity is one), and most Catholics relation to the teaching of the Church on matters of morals is rejection.  Nonetheless, the better way stands on offer.

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Greek Practical Solution to Capitalism's Failure

Capitalism is a failed monster, but a monster still cornered, wounded and dangerous.  many alternatives are being tried to Greece, but this sounds interesting:

“In Greece there’s a major liquidity problem,” said Mr. Roussos, who met the tire vendor and scores of new clients through an Athens-based online barter club, Tradenow, which created its own currency called tradepoints. “People are finding it more convenient to trade because money is not readily available.”

Isn't this just a budding version of the Swiss WIR?  No free market ever has a liquidity problem, liquidity problems merely attend every attempt at capitalism.  The solution is to get rid of capitalism, delegitimize it, and let the free market replace capitalism.

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Simple Solution for Russia

Whrn the Russians shook off Soviet Statism, they were overwhelmed by the criminal clatch out of Harvard that offered "shock therapy", that is, line their pockets and become wealthy spokespeople for progressive causes while Russia languishes.

Thus the Russians have no idea how to advance a free market.

The Russian government has during the past year accelerated programs to replace imports with locally produced goods, but the plans have been hampered by high interest rates and a shortage of capital to invest in new facilities.

The need only delegitimize usury, stop enforcing interest payments in law, and then all the credit they need will manifest.

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CAT To Lay Off Another 10,000

After laying off 31,000 the last three years.  Shutting down eight million feet of manufacturing space.  Revenues down a billion or so...  outlook is good for a much trimmed company?

The damage was done during the boom, when EZ mal-credit was spread far and wide and thick and companies like CAT could make money selling heavy equipment to the extraction industries to dig up minerals like copper, nickel, tin, oil, etc to sell to companies that make materials for manufacturers, which in turn sell to wholesalers who sell to retailers like Home Depot that provide what the end-users need to fix up their MacMansions.

A big bubble is blown, the banks privatize the profits and leave the losses on the pensions who invest their ersatz funds into false-economy companies, a list ginned up by government fiat.

So that thin layer of actual USA productivity, made up of companies actually producing things people need and want, like Caterpillar Tractors, just got thinner.  But the claims on that asset base just got bigger, with another 10,000 people, expert at making heavy machinery, are looking for work in a much smaller heavy machinery industry.  And it will get worse: they will be offered student retraining loans so java coders can learn to become roofers and roofers can learn to be java coders and they all come out  to no demand but $25,000 in unbankruptable student loan debt.

Now what should be happening is with 8 million feet of useless warehosue/manufacturing space coming on the market, the price of such space should be dropping fast.  but no, with ZIRP the policy of the land, land banking, sitting on empty space is better than taking a loss.  You can borrow more money at no cost with a building valued on the books at $500,000,000, than you woould get if you sold the building for a million, what it is worth.

Labor rates should fall,  real estate prices fall, and energy would be falling right now, except for government interference, ever making the day of reckoning for bigger and badder than if we had bit the bullet earlier.

But the powers that be could care less what happens.  They win no matter what,  The people in charge of the Soviet block before it imploded are the people in charge now.  So it will be in the USA.

And there is always war.  Gas prices have not dropped with the lack of demand because China is stockpiling "strategic reserves", as in preparing for war.

Who knows what is going to happen, but one thing is sure - the asset base cannot meet the claims on that base.  By what margin?  Will people have to settle for 90 cents on the dollar? 50, 20?  I think it is more a matter of some get 90 and some get 10, depend on how hard you fight or game the system.

Better to step away completely from that mess, create your own business and economy.  Adopt patterns and practices we had even only 40 years ago, and live in a real economy, surrounded by an economic Stalingrad.

Is he point of craft whickey, a family sized business quality, or local.  Yes, source matters in whiskey, as it does in sourdough bread, terroir the wine makers call it.  But the cost of shipping liquid, even at real market rates, and meeting local demand, can be done by a local family competitively now that the bankers have blown the EZ Mal-credit economy.

Start your business, count all else lost.

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More Good Trade Show Advice

I disagree with the stated goal,

Our goal: to get email addresses and permission to contact.

but the writer goes on to otherwise give very good advice...

I also say yes, give them literature; you LCL MOQ FOB.  One sheet fits all.

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President of China Visits Tacoma

That's no joke.  The connection is he'd been there before, and set up a sister-city relationship with Fuzhou.  But perhaps there is more...  Seattle-Tacoma is doing a San Francisco-Oakland thing, with white-collar work in Seattle, and blue collar work in Tacoma.

With port work moving to Tacoma, and UW labor studies ensconced in Tacoma, the future belongs to the real economy of Tacoma as opposed to the false economy of F I R E in Seattle.

Who knows, we'll see.

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Usury: Everyone Agrees Interest is the Heart of Our Economy

You will only read here anyone saying all interest, at any rate for any duration, does damage.

I never say criminalize usury, as it has been for almost all history in all places.  I argue only delegitimize it, that is, make it like gambling debts, not enforced in law.

The funny thing is from top to bottom, left to right, all economists and financial experts profess interest charges and rates have an effect on the economy. They only argue about the right rate, or the right to manipulate the rate to engineer socially acceptable outcomes.

All will say the interest rates can have a mal-effect on the economy, but whether a given rate is doing damage all depends on whose ox is gored.

We now have massive claims on paltry productivity.  This occurred because we legitimized banks lending credit (not money) which turbo-charged the usury mal-effect.  People used to pay cash for cars and education, and now can't make the payments on either. Clothing is trashy, housing is hyper-inflated and food is good, if you can afford the good stuff.  Medicine has gone downhill, except for those who can leave the country.

It all gets back to charging interest for vast swathes of the economy where we once never did, like only 40 years ago.  Lending credit instead of money profoundly harmed out economy.  Can't fix what is not understood.

When this economy crashes, it will be merely "an economy" even "their economy."  it does not have to be "the economy" or even "our economy."  We need not be inconvenienced by the desolation brought by the country allowing the bankers free reigh.
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Did Steve Jobs Purposely Sabotage Apple?

If not the number one place, Steve Jobs certainly knocked someone out of the top ten entrepreneurs in history, including Jacob.  Adverbially challenged, Steve Jobs is known for think differently.

Steve Jobs was behind of some spectacular failures, largely unrecalled: Lisa, Next, Newton, the lateness of the laptop, Square to name the biggies.  But that is to be expected on the way to number one, which Apple reached under Jobs.

But look at the legacies of the other greats: Tesla, Edison, Hughes, Boeing, and great companies - General Motors, Boeing Airplanes, General Electric, IBM, McDonalds, all welfare queens that would fall faster than the Saigon government is USA life-support was curbed.

Would it not be more like Steve Jobs, unique among entrepreneurs, to wire in the end of his company, release all that pent-up talent to go out and build on what they learned, and leave only a memory instead a hoary old welfare queen (eventually) as his legacy?  Would he not prefer the zen nothingness to "GE - We Bring Good Things to Life"?  Would he not see Apple far more valuable gone than selling watches and iPointers?

I am sure Tim Cook is an excellent executive, if preoccupied, but he is no Steve Jobs.  But then no one is.  My theory is Jobs wired in the end of Apple and he picked Tim Cook, bless his heart, as just the man to do it.  No one tell Tim, he is doing a great job.

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