Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Bernie Does the Vatican
As an observant Catholic, I take Joyce's "Here Comes Everybody" explanation for its apparent weirdness. Given the Christ, that any and all struggling to get it right would be followers, and all in various stages of disrepair struggling forward anyway, well, anyone can find a place in the Church. Like benecredit, the Church is always exactly the right size as soon as someone decides to join in.
We have the term "cafeteria Catholics" to refer to those who pick and choose among the church teachings as to which to adhere or not. Certainly the majority (and I think the number is about 85%) of self-identified Catholics reject the Church teaching on contraception. I know few if any Catholics who accept it.
That is tricky business for a Church. Do you throw them out to maintain purity? What do Sinner Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests and so on down the line do with people who reject Church teachings that they themselves have no problem maintaining? And although they find the burden of chastity light, they absolutely fail in other areas. Not in a position to cast stones, they know.
Well, there is the vade mecum St. John Paul II put out, advising again the eternal guideline of not causing someone with informal error to shift to formal error. A Catholic who is presently ignorant of the objective good of natural family planning and therefore informally rejects Church teaching ought not be cornered and coerced to formally reject it.
As a practical matter a Catholic may approach a priest and say "Father, the church teaching on birth control is crazy for these reasons (fill in the blank.) The priest can clearly hear where that person is on their journey. In any event, the priest will simply restate the church teaching... "Well, the Church teaches...." and then let the conversant respond. Any improvement? If so, work with that. If not, give it time. But don't condemn and threaten. Jesus answered the rich young man who then left sad, but who knows what happened later.
There are about 24 Catholic Churches independent of Rome but accept Rome as primus inter pares, that is first among equals and accept the Church teachings. Ironically is really only the Roman Catholics, and largely in the Western countries where the teaching is rejected. Further, the rejections are usually grounded in 1. the teaching is undemocratic, 2. the Church should not interfere in private affairs, and finally raw ignorance of what is actually being rejected.
How come? It gets down to Calvin and Luther, two sides of the same coin. The reformation was the beginning of the modern western world most agree. But the history of the change is mush debated. I think the reformation was merely a realignments of rents and rent seekers. After 1000 years, locals resented so much wealth heading to the Vatican. (To this day in Luxembourg the property of those who die intestate goes to the Church.) Protestants could put a halo on rebellion and they found an unlikely pair that offered that halo. The wars that followed were over real estate, not religion, like all wars in all times.
Luther was one such person who was cornered and so hardened into a most prolific anti-papist. Luther suffered from scrupulosity, driven by fear of eternal damnation. Seneca scholar-extraordinaire Calvin supplied Luther with the Stoic position of yes, we are wretched and unworthy, but predestined to be saved. From these two most of protestantism comes forth, and the modern western world. And capitalism, the protestant work ethic, and expressly addressed by Calvin, legalizing usury. And since usury is a process for mulcting wealth from workers to rent-seekers, the northern protestant countries gathered extraordinary wealth.
Those who settled the USA were originally Puritans, and WASP originally meant white anglo-saxon puritan. Americans do not quite recognize the measure that Puritan streak that we have never shaken off. Out tendency towards the nanny state, for all our talk or freedom, is rank puritanism. The milieux of Catholic countries terrifies us: Brazil, Philippines, Venezuela, the Congo, and most terrifying of all: Mexico! What do they all share? Poverty!
As defined by usurers. We actually rank pretty low compared to these countries in any human-level categories: education, infant mortality, health care, obesity, justice... and so on. We do have skyscrapers and ... umm... what..? fear. We in USA are scared $#!+less of the rest of the world. We have that.
The Catholic Church offers the Catechism as a encyclopedia of its teachings. Well worth a read, I keep a copy handy. It also has the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church, a document I dreaded until I actually read it. Whereas the catechism is the letter of the teaching, the social doctrine book is how it is applied. I like if far more than the catechism now, since it is teaching in action. It is wildly misunderstood by most Americans.
Just as a church that became legitimized by Constantine needed to address war, so a church confronted by the protestant hegemonic state needed to address social teaching. The just cause and just war theory give the conditions we can make war. In the 1500 years this teaching has been in place, there has been no instance where the conditions were met. When faced with a political structure it rejects as illegitimate, democracies, the church came up with a set of teachings that have never been achieved by a state (and never will). Why bother teaching it? We are all struggling in our journey. Teach the truth, and don't force anyone into a corner.
So Bernie Sanders an American, goes to the Vatican and regurgitates what Popes have said.
OK... so the premise is the problem is grounded in the unregulated and deregulation and the solution is regulation. Never mind that no sector of any economy of the world is more regulated than finance. Never mind that regulations provide for what we have wrought. Keep your eye on the clearly unwarranted claim that lack of regulations is the problem.
Bernie, econ 101, corps do not pay fines, their customers do. We are coerced into being their customers by regulations. What is the plan?
Bernie, what we have is capitalism, not market economy. None of these horrors can exist in a free market. Get your terms right. But the gauntlet is down. Those who have benefitted and gained by the regulations in place will be brought back in line... by regulations! Yay!
As an American, Bernie has the puritanical core that assumes the Church teaches a nanny-state where coercion is king, and to the penitentiaries for noncompliance! (The word penitentiary we use for prison comes from the Quakers, the Puritans, who ran our first prisons. They fed sinners oatmeal.) The church is a completely voluntary organization. It puts no one in prison. You are free to accept or reject. If and when, like the church, Bernie, your rules are teachings and compliance is voluntary, then you will "get" Catholicism.
But maybe Bernie understands most American Catholics do not "get" catholicism, inasmuch as they reject Church teaching because it is not put to a vote and it is not easy.
Probably 99% of Catholics know the teaching on birth control and some 80%+ reject it, at least informally. Probably less than 1% of Catholics know the church strenuously condemns (Vix pervenit = "no sooner than we answer...") taking or giving any interest in any amount for any duration. When the Church gets little compliance on sex when everyone knows the rules, what can they hope for money when almost no one knows the rules?
Right wing Catholics in USA are no more conscious of the voluntary nature of the Church than the lest wing, and so they get apoplectic when social teaching does not support capitalism. The left wing delights in the thought that the Church coerces people to pay a minimum wage, when the reality is the hegemon cannot get anything right.
As essentially Puritans, these problems will not be solved. It'll be 300 more years of stumbling along in the dark, then something else.
In the meantime, get self-employed so you can stand aside and let the puritans fight this out.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
We have the term "cafeteria Catholics" to refer to those who pick and choose among the church teachings as to which to adhere or not. Certainly the majority (and I think the number is about 85%) of self-identified Catholics reject the Church teaching on contraception. I know few if any Catholics who accept it.
That is tricky business for a Church. Do you throw them out to maintain purity? What do Sinner Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests and so on down the line do with people who reject Church teachings that they themselves have no problem maintaining? And although they find the burden of chastity light, they absolutely fail in other areas. Not in a position to cast stones, they know.
Well, there is the vade mecum St. John Paul II put out, advising again the eternal guideline of not causing someone with informal error to shift to formal error. A Catholic who is presently ignorant of the objective good of natural family planning and therefore informally rejects Church teaching ought not be cornered and coerced to formally reject it.
As a practical matter a Catholic may approach a priest and say "Father, the church teaching on birth control is crazy for these reasons (fill in the blank.) The priest can clearly hear where that person is on their journey. In any event, the priest will simply restate the church teaching... "Well, the Church teaches...." and then let the conversant respond. Any improvement? If so, work with that. If not, give it time. But don't condemn and threaten. Jesus answered the rich young man who then left sad, but who knows what happened later.
There are about 24 Catholic Churches independent of Rome but accept Rome as primus inter pares, that is first among equals and accept the Church teachings. Ironically is really only the Roman Catholics, and largely in the Western countries where the teaching is rejected. Further, the rejections are usually grounded in 1. the teaching is undemocratic, 2. the Church should not interfere in private affairs, and finally raw ignorance of what is actually being rejected.
How come? It gets down to Calvin and Luther, two sides of the same coin. The reformation was the beginning of the modern western world most agree. But the history of the change is mush debated. I think the reformation was merely a realignments of rents and rent seekers. After 1000 years, locals resented so much wealth heading to the Vatican. (To this day in Luxembourg the property of those who die intestate goes to the Church.) Protestants could put a halo on rebellion and they found an unlikely pair that offered that halo. The wars that followed were over real estate, not religion, like all wars in all times.
Luther was one such person who was cornered and so hardened into a most prolific anti-papist. Luther suffered from scrupulosity, driven by fear of eternal damnation. Seneca scholar-extraordinaire Calvin supplied Luther with the Stoic position of yes, we are wretched and unworthy, but predestined to be saved. From these two most of protestantism comes forth, and the modern western world. And capitalism, the protestant work ethic, and expressly addressed by Calvin, legalizing usury. And since usury is a process for mulcting wealth from workers to rent-seekers, the northern protestant countries gathered extraordinary wealth.
Those who settled the USA were originally Puritans, and WASP originally meant white anglo-saxon puritan. Americans do not quite recognize the measure that Puritan streak that we have never shaken off. Out tendency towards the nanny state, for all our talk or freedom, is rank puritanism. The milieux of Catholic countries terrifies us: Brazil, Philippines, Venezuela, the Congo, and most terrifying of all: Mexico! What do they all share? Poverty!
As defined by usurers. We actually rank pretty low compared to these countries in any human-level categories: education, infant mortality, health care, obesity, justice... and so on. We do have skyscrapers and ... umm... what..? fear. We in USA are scared $#!+less of the rest of the world. We have that.
The Catholic Church offers the Catechism as a encyclopedia of its teachings. Well worth a read, I keep a copy handy. It also has the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church, a document I dreaded until I actually read it. Whereas the catechism is the letter of the teaching, the social doctrine book is how it is applied. I like if far more than the catechism now, since it is teaching in action. It is wildly misunderstood by most Americans.
Just as a church that became legitimized by Constantine needed to address war, so a church confronted by the protestant hegemonic state needed to address social teaching. The just cause and just war theory give the conditions we can make war. In the 1500 years this teaching has been in place, there has been no instance where the conditions were met. When faced with a political structure it rejects as illegitimate, democracies, the church came up with a set of teachings that have never been achieved by a state (and never will). Why bother teaching it? We are all struggling in our journey. Teach the truth, and don't force anyone into a corner.
So Bernie Sanders an American, goes to the Vatican and regurgitates what Popes have said.
We need a political analysis as well as a moral and anthropological analysis to understand what has happened since 1991. We can say that with unregulated globalization, a world market economy built on speculative finance burst through the legal, political, and moral constraints that had once served to protect the common good. In my country, home of the world’s largest financial markets, globalization was used as a pretext to deregulate the banks, ending decades of legal protections for working people and small businesses. Politicians joined hands with the leading bankers to allow the banks to become “too big to fail.” The result: eight years ago the American economy and much of the world was plunged into the worst economic decline since the 1930s. Working people lost their jobs, their homes and their savings, while the government bailed out the banks.
OK... so the premise is the problem is grounded in the unregulated and deregulation and the solution is regulation. Never mind that no sector of any economy of the world is more regulated than finance. Never mind that regulations provide for what we have wrought. Keep your eye on the clearly unwarranted claim that lack of regulations is the problem.
The billions and billions of dollars of fines they have paid for financial fraud are just another cost of doing business, another short cut to unjust profits.
Bernie, econ 101, corps do not pay fines, their customers do. We are coerced into being their customers by regulations. What is the plan?
Some might feel that it is hopeless to fight the economic juggernaut, that once the market economy escaped the boundaries of morality it would be impossible to bring the economy back under the dictates of morality and the common good.
Bernie, what we have is capitalism, not market economy. None of these horrors can exist in a free market. Get your terms right. But the gauntlet is down. Those who have benefitted and gained by the regulations in place will be brought back in line... by regulations! Yay!
As an American, Bernie has the puritanical core that assumes the Church teaches a nanny-state where coercion is king, and to the penitentiaries for noncompliance! (The word penitentiary we use for prison comes from the Quakers, the Puritans, who ran our first prisons. They fed sinners oatmeal.) The church is a completely voluntary organization. It puts no one in prison. You are free to accept or reject. If and when, like the church, Bernie, your rules are teachings and compliance is voluntary, then you will "get" Catholicism.
But maybe Bernie understands most American Catholics do not "get" catholicism, inasmuch as they reject Church teaching because it is not put to a vote and it is not easy.
Probably 99% of Catholics know the teaching on birth control and some 80%+ reject it, at least informally. Probably less than 1% of Catholics know the church strenuously condemns (Vix pervenit = "no sooner than we answer...") taking or giving any interest in any amount for any duration. When the Church gets little compliance on sex when everyone knows the rules, what can they hope for money when almost no one knows the rules?
Right wing Catholics in USA are no more conscious of the voluntary nature of the Church than the lest wing, and so they get apoplectic when social teaching does not support capitalism. The left wing delights in the thought that the Church coerces people to pay a minimum wage, when the reality is the hegemon cannot get anything right.
As essentially Puritans, these problems will not be solved. It'll be 300 more years of stumbling along in the dark, then something else.
In the meantime, get self-employed so you can stand aside and let the puritans fight this out.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Friday, April 15, 2016
China to Dump Some Subsidies?
If and when China gets rid of its export rebate, then we can see how much trade we really do with China, for who knows how much false invoicing has been going on, to scam the export subsidies, but $5 million for an $80,000 Vancouver house is some indication of how much has been going on.
China wants to be like USA, so there is no chance they will agree to anything that matters to them...
Ho hum. Poultry? That is Tyson chicken shipped to China to be parted and packed and sent back to USA as Chinese produce. World trade policies make for some very unintended consequences.
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China wants to be like USA, so there is no chance they will agree to anything that matters to them...
"The Chinese want to become a high-tech country. They want to move up the value chain," said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Chinese agriculture products that will lose the subsidies include apples, beef, mushrooms, pork, tea, tomatoes, beans, ginseng, poultry, seaweed and, garlic, USTR said.
Ho hum. Poultry? That is Tyson chicken shipped to China to be parted and packed and sent back to USA as Chinese produce. World trade policies make for some very unintended consequences.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Negative Interest Rates and Velocity of Money?
Here is a Wall Street Journal video trying to make sense of negative interest rates, with pretty much nothing to say except it might not be good from a 1%'r point of view.
It mentions the "velocity of money", an odd idea based on a wiggy definition of money. It tries to measure credit as money and then see how fast it moves through the system, this being some indication of financial dynamism.
Well, benecredit opens and shuts deal by deal, as needed, uninterestingly. No deal is necessarily linked. Nothing to see, just move along.
Well, it gives wonks something to do when there's nothing to do. Check it out.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
It mentions the "velocity of money", an odd idea based on a wiggy definition of money. It tries to measure credit as money and then see how fast it moves through the system, this being some indication of financial dynamism.
Well, benecredit opens and shuts deal by deal, as needed, uninterestingly. No deal is necessarily linked. Nothing to see, just move along.
Well, it gives wonks something to do when there's nothing to do. Check it out.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Hurry Up & Get Biggest!
You can grow your own company and avoid the mess corporate in which corporate America is mired... their jig is up.
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Longer-term, if these new secular trends working against profit margins are to remain in place, earnings growth will be much harder to come by for corporate America than it has been over the past few decades. And there are plenty of signs it is already becoming very difficult for them. Corporate cash flow has essentially been flat for the past five years. At the same time, more and more companies recently have resorted to financial engineering via buybacks, non-GAAP reporting and even outright fraud. My guess is this is all in an attempt to make up for broadly slowing organic profit growth due the these secular tailwinds shifting to headwinds.Alaska Air is buying Virgin, Branson is smart enough to cash out. This is a nice analysis.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2016
The Folly Of Taxing Business
It is inexorably true that a business cannot be taxed. All taxes are paid by the end user, so when you tax Amazon or Apple or Starbucks, it is their customers, you, who ultimately pay the taxes. A tax is just another business expense. When you eat a Hershey bar, you have paid all of Hershey's taxes on that.
Talk about Pynchon's gambit: Get them to ask the wrong question, who cares about the answer. "Should corporations be taxed?" Goofy question, cuz it asks "should we pay more taxes?" Why not just ask, "Should we pay more taxes?" The history of USA the last 60 years is how to get people to pay more taxes without them realizing.
Then there is the double folly of taxing a Google or banks or another false economy business. They produce nothing, so to extract something from nothing gets you.... nothing... but deeper in debt. They will add to their credit lines what is mulcted by demand of the people, and then the people will get more free $#!+ added to their bill. Things only get worse, but immediate gratification is met.
Bernie Sanders is promising all the hopes and dreams of the free $#!+ will be met... free college! Yay! But so do the republicans, and Hillary. Bernie is the only one expressly saying "free something" to get votes. Trump is hated cuz he is suggesting some freebies be discontinued. Fear and loathing!
Why not get the state out of education and let it return to when a kid working in fast food and summers could pay his way through?
Naw! Gimme free $#!+, no matter what it costs!
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Talk about Pynchon's gambit: Get them to ask the wrong question, who cares about the answer. "Should corporations be taxed?" Goofy question, cuz it asks "should we pay more taxes?" Why not just ask, "Should we pay more taxes?" The history of USA the last 60 years is how to get people to pay more taxes without them realizing.
Then there is the double folly of taxing a Google or banks or another false economy business. They produce nothing, so to extract something from nothing gets you.... nothing... but deeper in debt. They will add to their credit lines what is mulcted by demand of the people, and then the people will get more free $#!+ added to their bill. Things only get worse, but immediate gratification is met.
Bernie Sanders is promising all the hopes and dreams of the free $#!+ will be met... free college! Yay! But so do the republicans, and Hillary. Bernie is the only one expressly saying "free something" to get votes. Trump is hated cuz he is suggesting some freebies be discontinued. Fear and loathing!
Why not get the state out of education and let it return to when a kid working in fast food and summers could pay his way through?
Naw! Gimme free $#!+, no matter what it costs!
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Taleb on Change
I recommend Taleb's books, and he has this to say:
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Power is shifting—from large, stable armies to loose bands of insurgents, from corporate leviathans to nimble start-ups, from presidential palaces to public squares. It has become harder to wield power and easier to lose it, and the world is becoming less predictable as a result. As people become more prosperous and mobile, they are harder to control and more apt to question authority.Check out the article and get busy with the links.
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No Future for Shroffs?
As long as Bitcoin was being touted as money, it was useless, since that could not be true. Now that it is being seen as what I said it was, it is be being considered:
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The tie-up with Barclays means Circle will be able to move sterling across the blockchain — a public ledger where bitcoin transactions are verified and recorded.I say "tallies" but that is the same as ledgers.
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Monday, April 11, 2016
An Excellent Sketch on Usury
Here is one part of many in a most readable essay:
I mention all the historical objections to usury because it has been a religious and moral issue in different eras or cultures right up to the present, but not in the modern day Western culture until very recently. Modern Westerners had mostly dispensed with the notion of usury after President Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, but ever since the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 there has been a new, deep, and abiding sense of moral outrage at banks. This is not so much a religious idea as a political and moral attitude, in my opinion, but it is pressuring banks (especially Too-Big-To-Fail or TBTF banks) to justify their existence and purpose, and they have been coming up short in the great debate. U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said, "The business model of Wall Street is fraud."Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Creating the 1%
An insider says things look worse than 2009. Well, of course, nothing was done last time to fix the problem. The powers that be just doubled down on the bad bet. But what do they care, they win more when things get worse for everyone else. The elections manifest this.
Interest rates are the problem, as the banker notes. Everyone agrees, but no one agrees where they SHOULD be, and few point out interest rate at any level are a bad idea.
Interest on loans is
1. Not necessary for peace and prosperity and econ dev.
2. Not possible without state backing
3. Always does damage.
How come we have it? It's how the 1% gets there.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Interest rates are the problem, as the banker notes. Everyone agrees, but no one agrees where they SHOULD be, and few point out interest rate at any level are a bad idea.
Interest on loans is
1. Not necessary for peace and prosperity and econ dev.
2. Not possible without state backing
3. Always does damage.
How come we have it? It's how the 1% gets there.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Econ 101: The Damage is Done During the Boom
The Econ 101 lesson that must be remembered is the damage is done during the boom, not the crash. The crash is just the unbalanced economy tipping over. Karen DeCoster caught an excellent example of hegemon interest-rate market distortion in real time:
The private credit that matters is asset based. That is created between two parties who assume all risk upon themselves. This benecredit is always pitch-perfect and is limited only by the rational considerations of economic actors. No hegemon required (which is why the hegemon attacks it.)
We can walk away from this today, but we won't. We've all assume our tallies show a net positive, when truly they only show the degree to which we are guilty.
Start a business, move over to the side that ameliorates.
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The auto bubble, with its easy credit and super-low (or no) interest rates guiding the way, has redirected consumers from more affordable small and mid-size cars to the $30k – $40k+ SUVs and pickups that are financed at or near 0% on a 5 – 7 year loan period. In mid-2015, Kelley Blue Book reported that the average new car transaction price had reached $34k. I personally know of individuals who have financed cars that cost at or near 100% of their annual (gross) salary. This is not uncommon, and it is unsustainable.Here an article on Stockman's site gets started in analysis way too late in the narrative:
Few question the importance of private credit in the global economy. When households and businesses are borrowing to expand production and buy homes, vehicles, etc., the economy expands smartly.Stockman usually writes as if the problem started 25 years ago.. well... try 1971. But to the point, what is the source of that "private credit?' If it is malcredit, whether private or hegemon, it is every bit as toxic. Who cares if people use hegemon or "private" malcredit? It is all damaging.
When private credit shrinks–that is, as businesses and households stop borrowing more and start paying down existing debt–the result is at best stagnation and at worst recession or depression.
The private credit that matters is asset based. That is created between two parties who assume all risk upon themselves. This benecredit is always pitch-perfect and is limited only by the rational considerations of economic actors. No hegemon required (which is why the hegemon attacks it.)
We can walk away from this today, but we won't. We've all assume our tallies show a net positive, when truly they only show the degree to which we are guilty.
Start a business, move over to the side that ameliorates.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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