Robot Labor: Why This is Good for Small Business

If everyone loses their jobs to robots, then what can all these unemployed buy?  This is a subtext to Mish's emphasis on robotization.

Yesterday, Apple’s iPhone maker, Foxconn announced an immediate cut of 60,000 workers to be replaced by robots.
Today, Adidas announced the first ever 100% robot-made shoe.

Robots replaced the horses that once provided the drivetrain in transport.  We still use the terms horsepower and drivetrain when speaking of automobiles.  How will we refer to the number of people a robot replaces?  FTEs?  (Full Time Equivalent)

Did the elimination of millions of carthandlers due to locomotives bring poverty?  No, an increase in efficiency brought more leisure time at the same income level.  Did 99% of buggy whip makers going out of business bring on poverty?  No, those people got jobs building railroad cars.  Did containerization end longshoreman work?  No, wages went up and as costs of logistics dropped more could be traded.  Now the median longshore wage is over $100K per year.  Some make a quarter million.

iPhones will get cheaper as will shoes.  As will McD and Starbucks and Uber as they go to robots.  At the same time, human interaction will become premium.

Design will become premium.  Robots do the same thing over and over very well.  Robots cannot improve design, and there seems to be, in life, X amount of design talent.

Those people who once hand sewed shoes can still do it.  Unemployed, some who love making shoes will work with excellent designers and come up with super -premium shoes.  Lifestyle over accumulation.  They will need people who can market, find customers.  Lifestyle over accumulation.  I need only put on a hand tailored jacket with Levis (ok, and a tailored shirt too...) to get treated as though I am some royalty.  When a robot makes a million shoes, they better wear out fast to recover the cost of the robot and have a revenue stream to maintain the machine.  My shoes last thirty years, and look and fit better than anyone else's.   Of course the cost at least four times as much initially, but it is very economical.

I carry a flip-phone and endure derision from children, because people with smartphones miss too much in life.  There are no features on a smartphone that are net-advantageous.  I doubt there ever will be.  Pictures racing by on a screen does not mean you are going places. I am all Apple all the time because Apple's products are the least bad.  Apple charges too much for equipment that does waaaay too much.  If and when defunct Apple production lines start making things I design for myself, then I'll pay a lot more for a lot less tech.

It takes so little to live so much better.  It's mostly attitude, social conditioning.  Are you socially conditioned from the outside to be a consumer?  Or internally self-conditioned to work for lifestyle, not accumulation?

It's inevitable that among the unemployed some creative will start their own businesses.  They need to link up with the others in complementary businesses to thrive: small materials processors, small manufacturers, small designers, sales reps, retailers...  all people who tend toward lifestyle instead of accumulation.  Yes, countless others will elect to join the fight at the trough, screaming their claims of share allocation ...  but that is a choice.

Self-employment is also self-improvement, personal transformation.  I offer classes in business start-up, highly rated and unlike any others.  Check them out.

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Outboarders and Suitcasers

Here is someone I would remonstrate with, for his foolishness:

An outboarder is a company that should be exhibiting who decides to sponsor their own event during the show without the consent of the organizer. A suitcaser can be defined as a non-exhibiting supplier who attends the show and tries to conduct business at the show. Both of these types of parasites are trying to hitchhike on the franchise of the organizer.
For most shows, the bulk of the revenue comes from booth space sales and sponsorships by exhibitors. Outboarders and suitcasers prey on attendees without paying the freight.

"Prey"on attendees?  You mean attendees are forced to deal with these people, attendees cannot simply ignore anyone they do not care to meet?

One thing the IPPE (International Production & Processing Expo) has done over the last several years is to put a clause in all of the hotel contracts mandating that ALL requests for meetings, hospitality suites and functions during the show be approved by the show organizer.
In the contract there is a clause that failure to do so will implement a redress penalty of 10 times the price of a minimum sized booth (10’ X 10’, grossing about $20/square foot). This means that if the organizer finds out about an unauthorized meeting, it will cost the hotel in question $20,000.

If.  Delusional!  People rent hotel rooms and have meetings all the time, unrelated to any show.  I am sure if a show took up every room in the hotel, including all conference rooms, the hotel would comply, but at that point it would be moot.  But the never do. I am also sure hotels will gladly humor this idiot and say, "Yes, we will check with you first on ALL meetings of any kinds."  And then do nothing. Do you think some dairy salesman is going to agree to have his meeting approved by some cracker with something called the IPPE?

The ideal is ultimately to exhibit at a trade show.  Short of the ideal, there are many steps on the way, only two of which are called outboarding and suitcasing.  Shows ought to welcome and embrace and facilitate these people instead of entertaining some delusional ranter.

The inevitable is the ideal.

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Faber Atrocious Asset Allocation Advice

Marc Faber is brilliant, a self-made small-business big money guy, advising and getting it right again and again.  He is a bit older than I, and so he knows well the way it was.  It's appalling how degreed adults have no idea of the way the world recently was. I actually endured a remonstration from an adult, a putative PhD,  who complained, without interest, who would ever make a loan, how would anyone ever get an education,  how could anyone ever afford a house?

Without Zyklon B, how would we ever do mass killings?  The things people allow themselves to be socially conditioned to think!

Well, there was a world before lending credit at interest, there was a world before Zyklon B.

Faber knows the old world and the new world, but he has specialized in playing the big money game.  He is not interested in the world of shopkeepers and lifestyle-over-accumulation.  So his best advice right now is:

He believes that all investors should be diversified  along the lines that he personally prefers:Real Estate (25%)Equities (25%)Cash and Bonds (25%)Precious Metals (25%)

Yikes!  Keep your fruits low hanging for the hegemon to conveniently pluck?  Surely his advice is excellent if you have accumulated much and want even see gains, yet be well hedged.  For those who are socially conditioned to believe in accumulation over lifestyle, that is the ticket.  Now most people, especially in USA, even if dirt poor, "believe in" accumulation over lifestyle.  The more the better.  Never mind the range of goods and services called forth by those who are socially conditioned to accumulation are diametrically opposed to those who chose lifestyle over accumulation.  Think "livin la vida loca" vs "livin la vida Buddha."

At the Wannsee Conference some Nazi officials were complaining the Romanians (I forget, but it does not matter to the point) were shaking down the Jews before the Nazis got ahold of them.  Heydrich advised the officials to leave the whoever alone, because they'd do a good job for themselves and later the Nazis could take it all anyway.

Who knows how and when this circus will flame out, and who cares, the hegemon will take it all anyway when necessary.  Manage your accumulation well!  The hegemon is depending on you to do your very best!

Instead of 1/4 of your assets in real estate, etc, how about 1/4 in pizza ovens, 1/4 in delivery trucks, 1/4 in a cows, 1/4 in heirloom tomato seeds (note everything can be moved).

If the hegemon gets to the point he takes that, it's over anyway.

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Yes: Exporting to China at the Small Business Level

Of course it can be done, in fact, it is the way...

If these corporate giants can't crack China, then what chance is there for the rest of the business world? Well, somewhat unusually, the Chinese export market seems to be best suited to mid and small-sized businesses. The same Chinese middle class that is shunning Amazon and eBay is going crazy for Tyrells Crisps and Jack Wills.
Tangle Teezer, a medium-sized British company selling bespoke hairbrushes, has achieved unprecedented success, with China becoming its second most profitable market after just three years of exporting. Similarly, Suffolk-based brewer Greene King has seen demand for its beers skyrocket in China, with a 16 fold increase in orders in 2015.

What do you think I've been saying?  But it is not only China, what I teach works anywhere, anytime

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Fighting Over the Scraps: One Battle

So when Washington State was created, US Congress wanted to support education, so

Just before Washington became a state in 1889, Congress passed the Omnibus Enabling Act of 1889, which granted the new state millions of acres of land to support public institutions. Today, these trust lands are an ongoing source of land-based financial support to the various beneficiaries, including public kindergarten through Grade 12 (K-12) schools, state universities, buildings on the capitol campus, and correctional facilities. By far the largest of these federally granted trusts is the Common School trust with approximately 1.8 million acres of forestland, agricultural lands and other properties. Revenue generated on these lands helps fund K-12 school construction projects across the state. - See more at: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/beneficiaries#sthash.J29fVlOt.dpuf

 Very good.  Thanks the Indians for your education, but hang on.  If that is meant to make education cost-free for citizens, how come we pay so much in taxes for education?  Well, never mind that for now, there is this...

Most State Forest trust lands were originally privately owned forest lands forfeited to counties in the 1920s and 1930s due to unpaid property taxes. These lands were subsequently turned over to the state and today DNR manages State Forest trust lands for the benefit of the county where the lands are located. - See more at: http://www.dnr.wa.gov/beneficiaries#sthash.J29fVlOt.dpuf

See how this works?  The state issues banking charter licenses.  People take loans at interest to buy land. During a boom, prices increases, and taxes as a percent stay constant, but that 6% per year on a $50,000 property, $300, becomes 6% on a $500,000 property, or $3000.  That was fine during the boom, but now you are busted, unemployed, and can't pay the land taxes on the putative value of the land.

So the state then seizes the land.  You just wasted 10-20 years. That is democracy, and capitalism.  Like it?  Well, just keep in mind this is just one act among the countless that are available in the crisis.  Worked las time.

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Money In Hong Kong

That title is a little misleading, for I will be talking mostly about currency in Hong Kong, which is not money.

What most people call money, the folding stuff used when "paying cash" is really currency, that is the stuff flowing around from wallet to till and banks and back out again on any given day.

In USA in essence the government controls all that, although even in the USA the legal fiction is all that is in private companies hands.  In some ways a larger fight in USA than slavery, the government involvement in that legal fiction has been with us all along.

In Hong Kong they do it as we used to do it in USA, and that is private companies issue competing currencies circulation in Hong Kong at the same time.  So when you pull a twenty out of your wallet in Hong Kong, it could be from any of several companies. it's all good.

Now it gets even more interesting.  You can pull out any other major currency in Hong Kong, say a US$, C$, JPY, EU, and use that as well.  Just about every place will take them, since just about everyone knows all exchagne rates at any given time.  I've paid US$ in shops, to cabbies, etc.  Yes, there are money exchangers on every corner, but they rip you off, and any local can do much better than the corner rate.

Now in Hong Kong they know the difference between money and currency, gold & silver and folding paper notes.  So one day I went looking for money, looking to buy gold coins.  Now my job is to find out sources, indeed the best sources, and I cut my teeth in Hong Kong.  So I was astonished when I could not find a source in Hong Kong for gold and silver coins.

What a few banks will do is sell Chinese minted gold and silver coins, and usually on some sort of program. So of course you can get them, in Hong Kong you can get anything, but as the most free market place on earth there was little demand for money, gold and silver?  The mind boggles.

Upon reflection, a couple of real world free market realities:

1. As long as people are willing to accept currency to cancel debt, why would you ever pay with money, gold and silver?

2. Vendor financing is rampant in a free market.  The retailer extends credit to the end user.  The wholesaler extends credit to the retailer; the manufacturer to the wholesaler, the materials processor to the manufacturer, and so on. Who needs currency, let alone money?

3. Gold and silver is for end-of-relationship deals, when the seller cannot trust the payment of the buyer.   This is why countries buy and sell using gold, as when the Germans paid in gold in Switzerland across the table form the Americans and British who were selling the nazis war material.  Extreme circumstances.

4. Yes, gold is a store of value, but why store value?  Since the Hong Kong market is so dynamic there are endless opportunities in which to invest and grow any value, why sit on any value?

Yes, we need to be on a gold standard for peace, justice and prosperity, but that does not mean we need  the hegemon to enforce it.  It enforces itself if the hegemon does not legitimize fractional reserve banking or usury, or both.

People imagine a free market means everyone is paying in fold and silver coins.  No.  In fact, the freer the market, the less of either you see.  As Spooner noted, ore is minted into coin, and as the price goes down it is melted to be used as plate, decoration and jewelry.  As the price goes up, the plate, decoration and jewelry is melted into coins.  This assures the amount of money is always exactly right.  At teh same time, since credit is extended by private parties to private parties given their own risk analysis, the amount of credit open is also always exactly right.

We live in war, poverty and injustice because we let a couple dozen people in Capitals decide what the right amount of money, currency is out there, with usury and fractional reserve as the levers.

The answer is anarchy, and the closest you can get to anarchy is self-employment.

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Clinton Foundation Enjoying a Pass

One of the many guys who spent ten years screaming, proving, demonstrating, shouting, bugging government regulators about the Madoff fraud (and of course was ignored until shortsellers, the only real securities regulators, exposed him) is now doing the same with the fraudulent Clinton Foundation.

Again he is utterly ignored by regulators.  Regulators, especially financial regulators, are huge consumers of porn while on duty.  Imagine that, earn a quarter million a year as a "regulator" and spend all day collecting porn. Since no one in government is ever prosecuted for crimes, why would it ever occur to them to enforce laws?  That would be hypocrisy.

(Hastert is no longer in government, and he was not jailed for child-molestation, but for money laundering.  Our government has its priorities.)

Who are you voting for?

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All 463 Sports Authority Stores to Shut

Sports Authority is going down, as all the dinosaurs will.  The writer makes the nonsense assertion that the internet did the company in.  Nonsense.  REI continues to do well in this economy, but then REI is a co-op, not a capitalists' scam.

The Sports Authority closings come on the heels of another athletic goods retailer,Sport Chalet, taking similar action. The chain stopped online transactions and began closing sales at its nearly 50 stores in April.

Sports Authority, which was owned by the Los Angeles-based private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners, has said that it was hampered by $1.1 billion in debt, and was late in picking up on shifting consumer trends.

Well, who cares if the debt is 1.1 billion if interest rates are zero, in effect, that debt costs you nothing?  The reason is that there is no way they can buy anything upon which they can make a profit and work their way out.  They played the game of borrow-the-most mal-credit and steamroll over anyone who did not borrow enough.  The online micro-component of sales of sporting goods has nothing to do with it.

Sports Authority was $35 a share in 2002, hundreds of millions in mal-tallies.  its ownership resided in pensions, investors, etc.  Now it is all gone.  This is one way to balance the books.  A billion in losses on the liability side, nothing gone on the asset side, for the hegemon.  At teh same time, for about 75 years REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) has had a "stock price" of about 5 cents a share, as a co-op.  It continues to be rock solid.

Who is going to fire up a production line to serve Sports Authority when it is clear that it cannot pay for what they buy. No one.

For the small entrepreneur, there are two vacuums hear, the customers this big business will no longer serve, plus the widening excess product capacity of manufacturers.

Step in with your own sporting goods, and sell to stores like REI, or open a retail store and sell new and used products side by side.

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Did Chipotle Get Too Big For Its Britches?

According to GoogleBlogs, about 5% of my blog posts I do not publish.   Seems about right.  Sometimes I read my thoughts and say no way, too far out there.

During the Chipotle crisis, I made two starts on a post with the question as to whether "Chipotle" got hacked (the title) and another, Did Chipotle Get Too Big For Its Britches?   In both instances my point was going to be since big whatever in USA commonly engages in criminal behavior for which it never is sanctioned, why wouldn't the Chipotle thing be one of those instances, a victim of sabotage?

I actually posted three posts referring to Chipotle, with only one making a passing reference to their problems, with the point of my posts being competing with a staggering Chipotle (I even managed to bring in Luis Miguel).

Here was a start to one:

The federal policy of Get Big or Get Out, especially in food, proceeds apace.  Obama is rushing through yet more regs to harm small biz.
Plenty of big boys have killed customers and continued unabashed.  But Chipotle's problems are outside the bell curve, relentless.

So what?  I quit and let it go.  Wish I hadn't.  Evidence is pouring just as it was proven in a court of law active duty elements of USArmy sniper teams and an intelligence squad were present at the murder of Dr. ML King, Jr, so US Govt officials have been all around the Chipotle poisonings.

Problem is, the stock price crash has other agencies investigating how come, and well, govt turf wars can be intense.

A federal investigation is now underway to address the serious allegations that Chipotle was indeed the victim of malicious corporate sabotage. The following article uncovers the key details that have been revealed in this explosive scandal.

Seems, well, the problem was too outside the bell curve... but part of a pattern:

Not only did Chipotle’s stock drop forty percent after the E. coli outbreak, they have had to suffer the unfair implication that G.M.O. food is somehow safer, when the exact opposite is true, hence the ban of such in more enlightened countries. Television’s “Dr. Oz”, for example, simply said, albeit on nationwide television, that G.M.O. foods should be labeled as such. Immediately thereafter, he was targeted with a character defamation campaign, later proven to be conducted by former felons working for the G.M.O. industry.

So cui bono?

According to Reuters news service, an unidentified senior Chipotle executive disclosed that a federal criminal probe is now underway to investigate the sabotage of Chipotle’s reputation and stock deflation through the deliberate planting of laboratory bred E. coli bacteria onto their customer’s food.

Really?

Can you see how serious a matter twenty billion dollars is to unscrupulous people? Thusly, you can now comprehend how synchronized visits of corporate spies of the G.M.O. industry, to various Chipotle locations to taint the food in the dining rooms with E. coli bacteria, is not only plausible, it is very likely. This is precisely why there were no sick employees, no E. coli anywhere to be found in any kitchen, two different types of E. coli simultaneously appearing in different states, and one of which being a very rare strain often used in G.M.O. laboratories. On top of it all, perfectly synchronized as well, were assigned federal agents of the G.M.O. friendly C.D.C. “coincidentally” in the very local Health Department lab, at just the right time, to analyze and nationally publicize the first Chipotle E. coli sample, successfully defaming on the international stage the first and only anti-G.M.O. restaurant chain in the world, with its two thousand stores, and growing threat to the G.M.O. industry.

But even if caught red-handed, no government employee is ever prosecuted for such crimes.  Expect the stock scam side to go away, just like the unnamed people who made billions shorting the airline industries just before 9-11.

Since no one is ever prosecuted for Tuskegee, 9-11, etc, it just keeps going on.

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All Hail IPR-free India!

This is not accidental, one of the agenda items of the powers that be is eugenics, getting rid of those Malthus and Darwin deemed excess.

Access to low-cost quality medicines plays a critical role in public health systems. In the last decade, the public health challenges facing developing countries have expanded beyond infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases (“NCDs”) in large part due to changing lifestyles and environmental risks. The World Health Organisation estimates that 80 per cent of all deaths from NCDs occur in low- and middle-income countries like India.

Never mind correlation is no cause, and anyway there is no correlation between population concentration and poverty, using BigPharma to control population is the point, as when the USA Centers for Disease Control ran the Tuskegee Experiments to not treat Americans of African ancestry for syphilis, to see what would happen.  As if 5000 years of experience needed to be checked.  How come they never included white folk upon which to experiment?  Well, not to worry, no one went to prison for the crime, and now ongoing secret criminal experiments continue and include white people as victims too.

Generic drugs cost a fraction of the monopoly prices charged in countries like the United States, and the presence of multiple generic competitors in India has reduced the price of cancer and HIV treatment by as much as 90 to 1,000 per cent. For instance, first-line HIV treatment that costs over Rs.16 lakh annually to treat just one patient in the U.S. costs the Indian AIDS programme approximately Rs.7,000.

Right.  And India needs to get busy making their own real drugs that work for patients worldwide.  In the meantime, the thugs in government who work for BigPharm are trying to blackmail India into participating in the continuation of the Tuskegee Experiments.

India must clearly reject the intellectual property laws which the United States is trying to force on us. These have led to an unprecedented health crisis in the U.S. itself, with spiralling prices of medicines under lengthy and multiple IP monopolies, with American insurance companies struggling to manage the cost of reimbursing expensive new medicines, all of which threaten people’s access to treatment. Current U.S. intellectual property laws have done nothing but enable pharmaceutical companies to charge exorbitant prices for medicines, such as over $1,00,000 annually for new cancer medicines and $1,000 a pill for new hepatitis C treatments. This has made health care simply out of reach for the vast majority of Americans and the issue of affordable health care has dominated the primaries in the ongoing American presidential elections. This failed model, which has allowed companies to profit from human misery and is even rejected in its own country, is not worthy of our consideration.

Go India!

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Why Hoffa was Killed: Unfunded Pension Liability

Unfunded pension liability.  How can a pension get unfunded, not funded.  People work, the boss puts some money in a pot, the pot grows over time.  What could go wrong?

Well, start at the beginning where both the definitions and the premise are wrong.  What is put in the pot is not money, it's malcredit.  Next, those liable for the pension need not ever put in all of the malcredit promised, because with the magic of compounding interest, promises about future payments can be fulfilled with far less assets today.  Pensions start off underfunded on purpose.

This may work relatively well when pensions are funded by money and invested in true economy assets, but when Nixon went off the gold standard (lite) in 1971, this gets dicey since there is no rational limit to what can be promised to pensioners, or anyone else.  Curiously, Nixon let Jimmy Hoffa out of prison in 1971 too.  Inflation kicks in, and all of a sudden everyone is trying out all sorts of financial engineering to to deal with the new economic system Nixon introduced.

 The premise that money only grows through interest is false, we now have negative interest rates.  And then add in many instances the tally is on the books as treasury, that is on the asset side of the balance sheet against a company's liability side.  They should balance, but since the liability is in the future, who can help but borrow that asset today?  But sadly, if he company goes down, that pension goes poof too.

In 1982 in the management side of the table in the Longshoreman Master Contract negotiations, unfunded pension liability was the strike issue.  Hadn't a clue what that was, but learned right away.  The company for which I worked had the pension inside the company, and it was fully funded, so my vote was take a hard position against the union.  The union tactic was to pick off small companies like the one I worked for first, and then put pressure on the big companies next.  There were petty harrassments going on back at the shop, my job was to grin and bear it.

But then murders started, mysterious, unsolved to this day. That essay blames the communist party, but this book blames the mob.  (Indeed, the book cites a dozen of so mysterious union murders across the country in those times). Who knows?  The fact of the matter is the big issue was unfunded pension liability, and usually murders are about "the big issue."

With a new wife and infant at home, and people on the other side getting mysteriously murdered (WE weren't doing it, were we?) the idea of getting protection came up, but the smart money said it was all intra-union fighting.  Are you sure?  And who, of all the people on managements' side sitting in the meeting was most expendable?  Me!  They lived in gated communities and I lived across from the Bart tracks in Albany.  Sheesh.

Well, the can got kicked down the road.  The union did not get much if anything.  And today the unions are looking at 60% haircuts on benefits not being enough to save the pension.  Jimmy Hoffa would not put up with that.  He is dead.  And a dozen other reformers across the country.  Pensions are a huge source of (mal)credit, and since they only grow, one can borrow against what they will be worth in the future.  My guess is Hoffa and the others were murdered essentially for getting in the way of the looting of pensions in the new economic regime.

The heart of this problem is interest, at any rate of any amount for any duration.  With 100 other aspects, no one will focus on this, the actually heart of the problem.  The miracle of compounding interest is a two edge sword.

If you'll note most of the articles on the miracle of compounding interest are directed at the young, for a little today becomes a lot later.  The young accept this even if they do not participate themselves.  But those who use it are the old, whose new (young) projects, funded with malcredit, that promise to be paid back later based on doubtless success.  What could go wrong?

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Christian Prepping

The Catholic Church has never changed its teaching that usury (what we today call charging interest) at any amount for any time period on any amount is a mortal sin.  It is the teaching today.  The fact that he church keeps making rules to fight it, and current popes still fight it, just shows our rules reveal our weaknesses. The last official word condemning it comes from Vix pervenit, in 1745, the title coming from an exasperated pope writing "No sooner than I answered the question, comes another question..." If there was ever a crime for everyone, it is usury.  Even illicit sex is not as popular (nor as damaging.)

A major exhibition on the 500th anniversary of the establishment of the Venice Ghetto has this introduction to make:

Traditionally, the Catholic Church forbade Christians to lend money to other Christians at interest, basing its prohibition on the Vulgate’s translation of Luke 6:35. Prohibitions can be found in the Decretumof Gratian (q. 3, C. IV and q. 4, C. IV) and in chapters 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 13 of theDecretals of Gregory IX. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 enacted a proposal ofPope Alexander III to make all those who violated this prohibition subject to excommunication. This situation made it difficult for people to raise capital, and since the need for capital was persistent, many Christians were open to finding ways to work around the prohibition.

Sigh.  Raise capital for what?  Why do the usury aficionados never say what is so urgent that requires recourse to usury?  A button factory?  Even a mill?  A really big cathedral?  Why, we had all these without usury, so just what is it we need so bad?

One solution was to allow non-Catholics to practice moneylending. This seemed viable, because canon law did not ostensibly apply to non-Catholics, and non-Catholics were in any case not subject to ecclesiastical punishments. Along these lines, many princes throughout Europe adopted the habit of playing host to Jewish communities so that the local Jews could practice moneylending to the benefit of local trade, industry and war-making without the threat of papal excommunication hanging over the Jews or, more importantly, over the prince who made use of them. The fact that Jews were severely restricted from entering most trades in most cities helped to establish this compromise as a trend.

Wow.  Someone said it.  War-making.  Usury to support "local trade" is simply a lie since benecredit covers that.  To say "industry" is disingenuous since the only industry that needs usury is the war making industries and the false economies that rise up around it, like Boeing and Facebook.

And please note the genesis of the "Jewish problem", that is fronting the illicit policies of princes.

Now,

While this practice became well entrenched, it did not sit well with all pious Catholics. The Consilia of Alessandro Nievo is an example of a legal opinion that opposed the employment of Jews for moneylending. Alessandro Nievo was born in Vicenza sometime around 1419 and likely studied in Padua. He spent most of his life teaching canon law in his hometown, where he died in 1485. His literary output includes a number of published consilia, comments on the Decretals of Gregory IX and an edition of both the Decretum of Gratian and Antonius Roselli’s Tractatus de Legitimatione Emendetior. It also included the present work, the famous Consilia Contra Judaeos Fenerantes. In this consilium, Alessandro Nievo argued that Jewish moneylending ought to be forbidden on the basis of the Church’s responsibility for Jewish souls. Usury, he argued, was a mortal sin. As such, St. Peter and consequently the Church had no authority to grant a dispensation for it.

So a famous writer in 1419 made probably the best possible case for stopping this practice.  He was widely read.  How are we doing after 600 years?  Sigh.  Same old same old.

Would railing against this evil practice help make things better for the world?  Bestseller Alessandro Nievo would probably say no after 600 years.  And he was restating the obvious with 1400 years of prohibition behind him. Then why bother?  Because there is nothing to keep oneself from thriving within the bounds of usury-free in spite of a world gone mad.  And although there is no personal escape from what is coming, a tidal wave overwhelms all, but for a Christian a goal is to be Christ-like, and that is innocent of the charges when you are executed, more or less.

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