Controversial Mother Teresa Declared a Saint Today

I "met" Mother Teresa during the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster.  Death, burns, blindings...  all horrifying.  And all for capitalism's sake.

Of course I'd heard of this nun and her remarkable work, but then the Catholic church has millennia of such people.  Anyway, as she gets off the plane to lend her aid, she is beset by reporters from around the world with cameras and microphones:

"Mother Teresa, what do you say to the victims of this disaster?"

"Forgiveness" came her immediate reply.  My jaw dropped.  Is she kidding?  The survivors, the blind, the widows, the orphans, the burned should forgive Union Carbide? That's when I started paying attention to her.

She has been attacked by the left for being pro-life, and I have read the attacks on her which are profoundly ignorant.  But for all the coverage I noticed something I have never seen anyone mention before.

One attack is she has met with so many wicked people, and publicly said nice things about them.  Despots seemed to invite her to visit for it promised a photo-op and a generous endorsement. Here is a short list.

Charles Keating
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos
Baby Doc Duvalier
The Enver Hoxha gang.
Indira Gandhi
Robert Maxwell
The Argentine Junta
The Clintons when president.

Now, what as far as I know has not been noticed is what happened to every one of those wicked people and groups shortly after they met with Mother Teresa?  Disaster.  Every single one that her detractors mention, and more. For most some kind of exile, for some death, for the Clintons it was irretrievable reputation loss over the Lewinski thing.  They are the laughing stock of the world as cheap shake-down artists.  St. Paul said speak nicely to evil folk and it is like showering hot coals on their heads. (Romans 12, and then in 13 he talks about submitting and respectful to govt.)  If you did not like those despots, then nothing more sure to bring them down than a visit by the nun.

I can't be nice to people who are wicked.  I know my rejection gives them power, but no, my fate is to talk back.  I don't recommend it, learn from Mother Teresa, not me.  She's got the better way.  Be nice to bad guys, says Saint Paul.  But that is within the context of Jesus' teaching, do not be like them. Mother Teresa was not like them.

Another criticism is she did not use her donated wealth to upgrade the health care to hospital standards. Name one person who donated money to her hoping she would.  As if the people donating money to her had no idea what she was doing.  Of course they did.  They wanted to make sure she had enough to keep going.

Her charism was to be physically present to the abandoned and dying.  That is it, no more or less.  A cleaning, a meal, and if any of her critics wanted to start a charity that would pick up her beneficiaries and take them to a hospital, St. Teresa of Calcutta would have welcomed it.

Further, there was a Catholic nun that took the donations and built series of hospitals around the USA dedicated to helping the poor, dying, injured.  It was a a charity, pay what you can.  Nobody ever turned away.  A model for health care world wide. Her name was Mother Cabrini.  I was born in a hospital she created.  The Providence Sisters did the same thing. Their charitable acts were legion.  Mother Cabrini was declared a saint as well. Where are all those hospitals now?  Gone.  All gone.  How come?

Because with collectivization in USA, get big or get out, they were run out of business (or should I say run out of charity?).  Now we have spiraling medical costs, people bankrupted by overstated medical costs, baleful health statistics, "death panels", and ever deteriorating health care.

Now Catholics have over 500 years of exemplary health care charity in India, but not a single Catholic hospital today, as I understand it.  They are allowed to have colleges and associations,  but no hospitals. Perhaps it is a regulation thing effectively forbidding it, like in USA.  So to ask her to create a hospital when it cannot be done would be like demanding a miracle.  Funny, her detractors wanted her to do miracles.

She did offer to take any child from any women contemplating an abortion.  Now to care for kids can be expensive. Perhaps people were donating to make sure she could make good. The sisters did open orphanages (which take foundlings)  with medical care, and that can be expensive. But last year, since the sisters could not comply with new adoption rules, the State is threatening to shut down their orphanages as well.

However, she expressed the hope that they could be won round. “We are trying and persuading them because they are valuable, good people and have experience,” she said. “But if they do not follow the central guidelines, we will be left with no option but to de-recognise the orphanages run by them and shift the children to other places.”

So here they go again (and this is not just India).  Build something good, have it destroyed.  "Central guidelines." The heart of capitalism is centralization, collectivization, concentration of power in ever fewer hands. What about the parents who expressly left the kids with Saint Teresa's crew knowing their ethics?  Too bad, the kids "get shifted."  I've got nothing nice to say about that.

What her life prophesied is when you got nothing else to offer, you can still offer love.  That's hard.

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Ting! I Got A New Phone

I have written here many times about the way things were, and resuming those practice is a path to escaping the terrors upon us.  I was thinking small business, but here comes Ting using precisely what I am arguing to take on "too big to fail" phone companies.

Why I came across Ting, I am not kidding, is because AT&T just made it too hard to pay.  Their websites are tedious junkyards of whiz-bang coding ostensibly designed to get me to upgrade.  Trying to figure out the path to pay a bill was so onerous I took to simply paying in their stores at a payment kiosk (so it seems I am not alone) while I was running errands.  Then they required a password and login to pay, even with a debit card, at the kiosk!  I complained, and a clerk advised me to contact "customer support."  I advised the clerk I had come to make a payment, not chat with customer support.  I was miffed.

So I began to search for the phone company with the easiest payment method.  It was never about the fees, which I assume you get what you pay for, VOIP being cheap but sounding like a car radio at 3am in the High Sierras.  Ting jumped out as the easiest pay method.  Their billing system is old school benecredit, they bill you at end of month for usage, what you used...

Nope. No plans here. Rather than asking you to pre-pay for a portion of your usage, we decided to keep things simple. Just use what you need and we'll settle up at the end of your billing cycle.

Well, I don't use much at all. My bill:

Hi John Spiers,
Thanks for continuing to be a part of Ting!Here are a few details for your Ting bill, which was for Apr 20 through May 19, 2016...
-------------------------------------------------------------------Activation Fee                 2069150337                     $0.00 Plan Data Usage XS->XS plus... 1 MB                           $0.00 Plan SMS Usage S               24 messages                    $3.00 Plan Minutes Usage M           426 minutes                    $9.00 Line Fee                       2069150337                     $6.00 Apr 20 - May 19 -------------------------------------------------------------------
And here were the taxes we collected for Uncle Sam...-------------------------------------------------------------------Utility Users Tax - Wireless                                  $1.54Sales Tax                                                     $1.97E911 (Wireless)                                               $0.95Fed USF Cellular                                              $1.00FCC Regulatory Fee (Wireless)                                 $0.01-------------------------------------------------------------------Total comes to:                                              $23.47

You should see a charge for 23.47 on your card ending in 4XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX  from Tingin the next day or so (if you don't already). That's us..

For years I have paid around $60, often more, a month for AT&T.

I like Ting's humor: Uncle Sam.  Note that the taxes are more then 30% of the bill, just as with AT&T.  That is wealth transfer from me to the bankers.  There were no telephone taxes before the Vietnam War.  Then Johnson laid them on to help pay for the war, and the war ended, but the taxes never went away, they just went up.

We had a pro-peace/anti-war movement back 1960 & 70s, and most of us just refused to pay that part of the bill.  The phone company never cut anyone off, you were just not paying Uncle Sam.  The amount, a few dimes back them, a couple of bucks in today's world, was too small for Uncle Sam to come after you.   With larger amounts, and computerization, now Uncle Sam can strike an individual quite easily.

Sadly, with the poverty draft and deep-state perpetual wars, the American people have come to accept war as a given, even if the people of Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc, themselves have never abandoned their anti-war/pro-peace aspirations.

With all of this in mind, here is what I will do. If you have any of the biggy phone company services, dump them now and move to Ting.  Do yourself a favor.

Sign up with Ting, I get $50 or $25 (at some point, depending on how much you spend). (Apparently, at this time, you get $25 off, too!) What I will do is bundle up any and all remittances to me and donate them to one of the land mine removal charities, with a request they get it to SE Asia.  (Not sure which charity yet, I'll have to check the various ones for legitimacy).  There is a symmetry that telephone revenue would be directed to remove UXO in SEAsia delivered in part with funds from telephone taxes.  I like it!

(If remittances are in the form of deduction from my phone bills, then the money I would have put on the phone will be what is bundled and remitted to the charity.  Whatever, we'll make it work.)

It will be delightful to report say quarterly how much we have directed to war reparations.  To sign up with Ting in which kickbacks are directed to me, click here: https://z32i345idje.ting.com/

And by the way, I've experienced zero difference in call quality despite the half-off pricing.

So right now, click on the Ting link above, sign up to save money (and ease of payment!) secure your credit and mine, and let's do good while doing well.

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Zuckerberg's Big Deflation Savvy Donation?

These foundations are billionaires ways of avoiding wealth transfer, with a halo.  Usually in effect the billions are protected from confiscatory taxes and wealth transfer, and they are obliged to spend 5% a year, but these billionaires spend it on buying access to 10%-a-year investments, and they hire family members and congressmen's nieces (as part of what is "given away") so the power is in perpetuity.  We taxpayers maintain the cost of protecting the billionaires' assets.  But the newest member has created a foundation with a twist:

Zuckerberg added that he and his wife will receive no tax benefit from transferring their Facebook  FB 1.72%  shares (currently worth that whopping $45 billion) to their foundation. Rather, they will be on the hook for paying capital gains taxes when the LLC sells its shares. Had it been set up as a traditional foundation, they would have received a tax benefit.

When it sells?  It never will.  But never mind, the more interesting thing is what happens in a deflationary era (the next forty plus years) when the asset value is falling faster than the preferential deals billionaires get can cover the deficit?

If they are not obliged to spend 5% as an LLC, how will they increase the value, tax-exempt, over time?   It is something to contemplate what with deflation changing the nature of investments.

Tyler Durden takes his dishonesty apart from a  different angle.

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The Right Interest Rate, Jews and Small Business Start-up

As a sideline I began teaching small business international trade in 1984, after a decade of working for others in the field.  My goal was actually to write a book, for two reasons; 1. To get down the essence of the work, 2. To make a record of what was important as we moved into (as anyone could see) big changes in the world.

Thirty years later, principles haven't changed, but we are now an impoverished nation, and no more aware of it than the Soviet Union was in 1989.  The biggest challenge for the USA, as it has been for the Russians, is too few know how to run a real business.  Anyone can get get loans and pretend to be in business for years if need be (serial "entrepreneurs") and our biggest companies have all been on life support for 40 years.  There has been no apprenticeship program that led to new masters in each field. We've lost three generations of entrepreneurs to F I R E.

Let me define terms again, first, there is mal-credit and bene-credit.  I recall bene-credit, when the vast majority of commerce worked neither on money nor credit-at-interest (usury) but at on credit at no interest.  Sure there has always been loan-sharking, but what was new starting in the mid-seventies was the fraud of lending credit with no assets backing the loan.  Loan sharks actually lent something and took a risk of loss.  But not banks, starting in the very early 1970s.

With no rational limit to what might be financed, astonishing misallocation and malinvestment followed.  Anything goes!  There has been no rational limit to what we can finance, so instead of alabaster cities we got wars, more wars, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, sports stadiums for billionaires, privatized profits and socialized losses.

What astonishes me is how all commentators look to interest rates as the nexus of the problem.  They agree the problem is to the degree the interest rate distorts the economy, we have problems.  They only argument is what is the correct interest rate, and in this case each specially pleads that someone else's ox  be gored, not their own.

So there is near 100% agreement the problem is interest rates, but the sturm-und-drang is over the right rate and how to achieve it.  What do we know?

1. For most of history, most commerce has been on asset-backed, interest-free credit as the basis for an economy.  Money (properly defined) is for special deals in which relational obligations are extinguished.  There is simply no need for and interest-based loan in commerce.  All needs can be met by other means.

2.  In this forty-five year experiment in asset-less credit lending, at interest, we have seen interest rates go from a few percent to 21% and now down to zero (and even negative, effectively.)  That range pretty much gives every interest advocate an empirical basis to stake a claim on the benefits of charging interest. Care to point out when, since 1970, the economy has been fruitful, prosperous, just, (name your standard)?  Show us your ox.

3. You might argue, well, at the current zero (effective) interest rate, is not the usury-free argument destroyed by the present dreadful economy?  Not at all, for the overwhelming factor is that presently the zero interest is with asset-free backing.  Even if you are not charging interest on cars, you've misallocated resources to make cars the "buyers" will not pay for, and you've "educated" students with content they will not use and student loans they will not repay.  Java coders re-educated to be roofers, roofers re-educated to be java-coders.

4. And finally we know the solution to the problem, de-legitimize (not criminalize) the charging of interest on loans.  If and when no judge will enforce the interest portion of a contract (like no judge will enforce a gambling debt) then the practice will dwindle and drift away, losing the force needed to maintain the fraud of any loan at interest at any amount for any duration.

There is no rational limit to how far this might go, the bankers simply keep probing further and deeper, without a clue, but always with a jet ready to flee to a paradise prepared elsewhere.  There is no rational limit to how far this can go, so when it comes crashing down, it will also be for some irrational reason.

(And as an aside, when I say "bankers" I don't mean Jews, I am not persuaded by the delusional argument "it's the Jews."  It's us, the Rockefellers, Morgans, Mellons and their protestant work ethic devotees. It's no coincidence that before this experiment in massive fraud the Chairmen of the Fed Reserve were WASPs, and starting in 1970 (that year again!) the Fed Chairmen have been Jews.  If you are going to risk your country's economic health for personal gain, make sure you have some Jews out front to take the blame. It always works. Jimmy Carter, my favorite president, appointed a goy in '79, in an attempt to get us back on track.  The guy lasted a couple of months.)

Stockman is doing a good job collecting and distributing commentary...  Buchanan on the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld criminal wars, how mal-credit made China a commodity giant, and now it has a giant usury problem.  Global Stock markets have lost ten trillion in the last three months.  Lost?  No, the valuations are just be adjusted and saps paying into pension plans are being gored.  One specific loser is a Chinese billionaire who made a bid to create a second Panama canal.  Oooops, he is down 90% on his tally, for no billionaire actually has any money, they have nominal tallies of what they have accumulated.  No one objected when they were told in 1998 their $200,000 house was worth $300,000 as interest rates (there it goes again, the heart of all of these problems, usury, charging money on loans) dropped from 9% to 6%.  But now that interest rates are near zero, and the house is nominally worth a million, and the household income has not gone up, but taxes are still a flat .006 on a million instead of $200k, and the debt on the house cannot be paid... oh ouch, once a millionaire and house rich, now a slave tied to a bank loan.

What is the policy answer?  More funny money, until it breaks.  if and when, watch out below!

A big unseen monster is global dollar fund shortage.  Well, yes and no. Yes, it is a symptom of a terrible  disintegration, but a disintegration of the false economy.  It has nothing to do with money, everything to do with currency as tallies and nominal valuations.  If you see syphilis dying out, you can relax.  Watching these problems, I am relaxing.  It's an economy dying, their economy, not mine.

Chinese containerized freight is down 30%...  bad for the big boys.  Good for me and my customers, my economy.  In their economy it is all lay-offs and cooking books.

USA Ag exports collapsing,  which is disastrous for the big boys, like Monsanto whose unnatural practices are catching up with them, stock down 25% this year.  At the same time, the food in my economy is enjoying growing exports.

None of this is secret, but what else can people do?  They just await the news, or play on facebook, a drug designed expressly for this time and place.

There is a solution, it is well known, but there is a problem with that.  A great idea can be had, but does anyone know how to market a product and develop a business?

Well, not enough people, and certainly no one learns "how to" in school.

They all learned false economy methods in which results do not count.

Let me give you one tiny insight that astonishes any student I teach under 40 years old (for they know no better.)  I deliver noncredit courses through colleges on small business international around the USA and Canada both online and in person.  The schools have learned online marketing is delusional.  To get enrollments, they must still mail out a catalog of course offerings, that is the offerings printed on paper and sent through the USMails.  Cost of acquisition of enrollments is about $7 each.  With online marketing, cost of acquisition is about $90 each.  (Divide the money spent by enrollments gained, learn the cost of acquisition by method.) Since most course fees are less than $90, schools avoid online marketing.  This is the problem for all online marketing, whatever the product, the cost of customer acquisition is more than the cost of what you are selling.  Yet, try to hire a marketer who is not trained to drain your company of all profitability, sooner or later.  (In 22 years of asking, I ask again, someone prove me wrong with evidence of online marketing working.)

On the other hand like paper catalogs of course mailed to homes, there are still principles and practices that actually work, although as perplexing as a slide rule to an engineer who is used to the TI-90.

But access to that cutting edge info is fast becoming lost. How come?  Usury again, charging anything on any loan at any amount for any length of time.  Student loans, crossing a trillion and a half, have nearly killed the market for continuing ed.  Burdened with useless information (as Drucker said, you can tell when info is obsolute, universities make it core curriculum) and crushing loan debt, people who would have gladly taken an improving noncredit course are wondering where the next meal is coming from.

This will come back to haunt university administrators, for it is well-established that continuing education is a prime recruiter for credit programs (degrees).

I've had two seminars cancelled for low enrollments, a first in 30 years of lecturing.  The time not lecturing will be spent on considering this development.  Often when I see something unexpected of perplexing in business, I look to the music industry as a model.  The seminars sell the books?  How about the books sell the seminar?  Back to correspondence school model?  hard to say, but I'll for a hypothesis and test it. I'll keep you updated...

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Greece: 200 Years Ago, Precisely the Same Thing

Read this fine historical essay, and see how today is a repeat, along with the eventual solution:

It is now largely overlooked, but the 19th century had its own precursor to EMU in the shape of the Latin Monetary Union, set up principally to try to solve the hoary problems of silver:gold bimetallism. But, if much of the Union’s history was dogged by the narrow technical issues of how, firstly, to structure its members’ own monetary system and, thereafter, to align it more closely with those of the non-members, there were other features, too, which are still very much germane today.

Also, note this:

“…taxes had been increased by 45%; immense loans had been contracted and it had been decided to confiscate… the property of the religious corporations. [But] toward the end of 1865… a final deficit of 210 million lire [~40% of receipts] was found to exist… taxes… proved unreliable and it was found necessary to float a new loan.”

The neocons took a page from the Nazis who charged Catholics clergy with pedophilia as the Church rejected Nazi militarism.  The Catholic Church in USA was the only entity to reject the Bush/Neocon wars, so they too were targeted the same way.

The next step, after raising taxes (no big deal to the self-employed) will be the seizing of church assets on a larger scale.

We've seen all of this before.

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The Ebola Scam

Liberia was set up by the USA as a "ship 'em back to Africa" thing, in order to keep manumitted slaves freed in USA from allowing current slaves to know Americans of African ancestry could actually handle freedom.  Can't have that.  And as if paying quite a price to become an American, they were not Americans.

We now have an africa Command, and it needs something to do, so we make up stories about boogie men, Boku Harum, the Khorasam group, and ebola crises.  This is how it works:

Here in Liberia, everyone is excited about the millions of US dollars being poured in to “fight Ebola,” and everyone wants a piece of the pie.  A certain NGO out in rural Liberia quarantined a village, claiming they’d tested and found three cases. They applied for and received US$ 250,000 to fight Ebola in this village.  They brought in a few sacks of rice and some chlorine.  The villagers mobbed the trucks and carried off the plunder.  And, miracle of miracles, not a single person died in the village.
Great effort at treating and controlling Ebola?  Or pretending there’s Ebola in order to pocket some easy cash?  I’ve never heard of a 0% fatality rate for Ebola, but you make the call.

The doctor in the article is too nice.  As long as people are dying, then there is a crisis that the USA military MUST solve.  For a insiders report on the evil of NGOs, read Michael Maren's The Road to Hell.    It's listed on the left of this page as one of my basic readings for those in int'l trade, scroll down, get it read it.  He has never been disputed as to the names named and events portrayed.



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I Want To Give Back To The Community

As soon as I hear these words, or similar sentiments, my hackles rise.  My instant reply is "What did you steal from the community?"

People who have repented of a secret theft will want to do the right thing, make restitution, and pay back what they stole.

The other use of the term is to pay back a loan of some sort.  OK, so you want to pay back a loan?  Is that something remarkable with you, that we would all celebrate something you ought to do anyway?   "Today I am going to help an old lady across the street!"  Thus spake hero?

The words come from wordsmiths who craft buzz words to at once please the searching and warn the enlighteners.  The searchers pick up the line assuming is strikes the right note.  The enlighteners hear it and assume either knave or fool.

We need always a separation of charity and business.  They can never mix.  Age quod agis.  When doing charity, do it.  When doing business, do it.

"Giving back" is a sort of emotional blackmail.  You are no longer testing your offering, you are confusing your product offer by adding "it's for the children."  Hard buyers hear diversion and extra expense.  If you want to give up some of your natural profits to charity, that is your business, but as the advice goes, don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.  Certainly Apple will do a "red ipod" at a higher price to support aids cure in Africa, and no doubt picks up some corporate sales or who knows what, but in no way will Apple allow itself to be essentially associated with a cause.  Calvin Klein was notorious for refusing to allow his company to be in any way associated with the AIDS prevention and cure movement, and as is good business practice, what support he did give was otherwise unknown.  Companies whose essential offer is "giving back" all fail, as far as I can see, over the last 40 years.

Apple (Jobs) and Calvin Klein have certainly given more to the communities then their communities have ever given them, but really there is no accounting.  The idea that the political economy in which they thrive fostered their success may be true, but it ignores the fact that the same political economy has robbed countless others of success.  The question isn't what we are owed by those few who make it through the welfare/warfare klepto-gauntlet, but what system allows more people to succeed.

At the same time, the Catholic church recognizees small business startup as an act of charity, a teaching I am trying to figure out, but certainly putting every cent you have into business helps others at the most fundamental level.  And all religions see the act of a loan (not at interest) as an act of charity.  Small businesses extend credit commonly.

And customer-employed (AKA self-employed) you yourself are kept off the dole.

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The CDC, Autism and Whistleblowing

Now here is a troubling bit of theatre, an anti-autism group has reported on CDC mischief, and has rather credible evidence, naming names.  Nothing special there, although human drug trials can be criminal, all drug trials done without consent are criminal in USA.  Except by executive order, when the president can legalize a company running trials on people without their permission.  All human safety laws in USA are trumped by an exception by executive order.

Time magazine and others are reporting on this controversy, and here is the controversial video.


I have a bit of a problem with the mention of whistleblower.  The video starts out making a false claim, "CDC Whistleblower revealed."  Well, in fact, the "whistleblower" is not named.  It is like all of these people who come out 25 years later after some official crime, and when safely in retirement tell us that some crime was committed. McNamara is the poster boy of this ethic.  Unless someone is willing to stand-and-deliver, then shut up about it.  If this is true, whoever is "so sorry..." is not sorry enough to stand up like a man and say what he did when he did it.  No one goes to jail for these crimes, so he is not at risk of that, what is left at risk is retaliation in which he would lose he pension.  And there is exactly why criminality can flourish, because the people with some conscious get conscious trumped by the god ka-ching. Also, this half-way expose leaves controversy which ultimately serves the bad guys.

The video opens with the CDC run Tuskegee Experiments, and has the surprising data showing the autism rates impact people of African ancestry disproportionately.  Well, that is USA.  People of African ancestry are the despised class (every country has at least one, because like a national airline, you are not really a country without one).  Abortion rates among people of African heritage run about 30% on average, 60% in some places.  A disease uniquely African-american is sickle cell anemia, which rather goes begging for research dollars.  I see nothing good in patents, and I smell a rat when we Americans take out a patent on ebola, and the ebola breaks out in Africa, where we can save the day.

Just as it was in 1974 that at the same time USA declared "food as a weapon" there were policy guidelines issued and kept secret until 1992, in which our Sec State outlined that controlling food would control the world, so we may find in 20 years a similar directive in which we control the world by controlling medicine.  Sine the GMO thing is on the ropes, time for Monsanto to get into ebola drugs? Time to move to more subtle means?

But back to the CDC targeting people of African ancestry.  The fact that no one will step forward and say "I did this, I have first hand knowledge of that" means no one will take responsibility.  C'est la vie. My main objection is I am denied the good of the competition of people of African ancestry in the measure they are the playthings of the oppressors, and thus denied the opportunity of participation under the progressives.  Our economy needs as much competition as it can get.

The tool around which all of this mischief is organized and supported, the command and control, is the usury regime.  Get rid of this, and no one can concentrate the power to advance their pusillanimous evil ends.

Here is a billion dollar business.  Set up an office in Hong Kong in which US Citizens can upload their medical histories.  In USA medical history revelation will get you jailed, it is super secret, not for confidentiality, but because results sometimes reveal intentions.  All of these scandals could be easily spotted early on with pure science.  As the Hong Kong company received more and more medical histories, the data would highlight mischief afoot.  Other scientists around the world could come up with alternative therapies and counteract, in any event the data itself would be golden. Gather the numbers for free, crunch the data, and sell the reports.  Billions there, but illegal here.

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Mish Gets Libertarian Advice Wrong

Of course I am no libertarian, but Mish entertained a question as to whether a "Trust Fund Baby", an adult whose family is supported by a trust fund and therefore no one works, prefers to spend time together (I wonder what that is like, spending all your time together), a libertarian, who finds under Romney/Obamacare he is legally entitled to $600 in welfare payments.

Two points jump out:

1. Two teens still at home.

2. "The trust fund makes the money, not him."

Mish turns to a mentor, Pater Tenebrarum (Father Darkness?) who in turn cites Ayn Rand.  Eeeew! And the advice is in essence, take the money and run.  You paid in, so take out what you can get.

It's not that simple.  People and corporations ought pay in as little as possible, do everything within the law, like Boeing and Apple and Google, to pay no taxes whatsoever, because there are no instances when taxes are used to do good.  In every instance taxes go malinvestment which in turn distorts the market and leads to the terrible uneven distribution we see daily.

On the other hand it is foolish to run afoul of the tax laws, however wrong, even Jesus paid his taxes, although he performed a miracle to do so.  The lesson is if you pay taxes, it is another example of a miracle.

So to navigate whether to take government money, we first need to understand only end-users, consumers, pay taxes.  Business cannot pay taxes.  When you buy a Hershey chocolate bar, you have paid all of Hershey's taxes (as well as all of their expenses).  All costs including taxes are paid by end users.  (If a company goes bankrupt, the taxes it paid borne by the end-users, the receivers of the bankrupt firm).  In this case paying as little as possible becomes a competitive advantage, you lose unless you play.    All of this talk of "business paying their fair share" is pointless drivel.

The point is to wherever you find yourself in the flow of funds, you leverage it to the good. Let's look at some examples.

Now, taxing government payrolls is too a pointless exercise (why not just pay them net?) until we come to the business tax laws.  Your average federal paycheck is about $80k, and taxes may be about $20K, so $60K net say.  In that case that funny money $20k could be pre-tax dollars to invest.... instead of giving it to Uncle Sam in taxes, use $20K to start a business, and reduce your income to the Same $60k take-home anyway.  Of course your taxes are now based on $60K, not $80K, so maybe now you have $13K in taxes, but you make have built untaxed equity in a business in excess of the $13K in taxes.  Consult a CPA about where that sweet spot is for you ($80k is average, half make above that, so $200K is nothing special for mid-level ministers of funny walks, etc.)

Of particular interest to me is the "marketing dollars" the Feds distribute to businesses looking to build export markets.  Now this is money taken in taxes and then given back to businesses that are building markets worldwide.  Here is the problem in this instance:

1. It is directed to a very specific activity - essentially advertising.

2. It is putatively for all USA business but as a practical matter designed only for large USA business.

So here is the deal, if you do not use the money, it will be used by big business.  You can only use the money on market-building.  Here is the problem, as a practical matter it can only be used by big business, but  I F ,   if, you know how the game is played, you can work the program to where legally you can take advantage of it.  In this instance, you are building your business and starving evil big business of the limited funds.  But it is like Odysseus sailing past the Sirens, you have to be strapped to the mast during a certain phase or the programs will drive you mad and your business will crash.  One reason I teach is to show people how to get this money, and most importantly, when, and how to leverage it properly.

There are programs that are just hoaxes, like Foreign Trade Zones which get you nothing except paperwork, and payroll work subsidies that get you headaches.  yes some programs you ought to just steer clear of.

But now to the Trust Fund Baby.  We are all trust fund babies, we fly in planes in an industry that has never turned a profit since the Wright Brothers got that bicycle to launch.  A classic example of socializing costs and privatizing "profits" the airline industry is an example of convention, not markets.  Not to pick on the airline industry, just one example of countless instances of which we are "heirs" to investments we do not paid for, we did not earn.  Indeed, USA borrows half of what it spends, so we are all welfare queens as well.

Mish takes Father Darkness's lead in pointing out all taxation is theft, so any and all restitution is acceptable.  Take the money and run.  Fair enough analysis. Except...  we are all also thieves.  So grab from the booty and run?  The USA economy, and imperial economy depends on our ability to terrorize others who cannot be bribed into paying us tribute.  That is imperialism.  We cannot get away from the reality is little girls are set on fire overseas so we can have free junk here.  We call it collateral damage, or "the price we pay" but it is not rare, Madeleine Albright said expressly a half million dead Iraqi children is worth it.  (Razia did not die after being set on fire by USA troops.)  We invaded their countries on a false pretense, but with the express goal of having them pay for their occupation and our hegemony.  This hegemony is the basis for Chinese loans to us, that we can credible repay from imperialism what we borrow form the Chinese so we can have pointless junk that crowds out a more authentic life.  We are all as guilty as hell of that, and there is probably not less than 100, not 50, not ten here who are not guilty.

So as I pointed out above, the salient points are trust fund, no work, two teens...  free "money."  Well, the trust fund is a state creation to achieve a stable cadre of regime-adherents.  The fund is strictly limited as to in what it can invest.  One gets trapped into a pas-de-deux with the regime.  Next, managing assets would be work in its own right, but here again, expressly forbidden by the regime rules.  So the funds in the trust are as solid as the state (in fact support the regime goals) and at the same time deny us the good of the beneficiary being obliged to come out and compete with the rest of us.  The kids of these adults will never know from example of what it is to struggle and produce. The Trust Fund is an evil government entity.

So the $600 a month in welfare payment to an independently wealthy family is indeed odd.  The money comes from imperial oppression, if not taken it will likely end up in the war profiteers accounts, so what to do?

We are all trust fund babies in some sense and we will all be "getting" social security at some point. Social Security is a welfare payment to a trust fund baby when you get it, so we are all faced with the fellow to which Mish refers.

So what to do?  For my part, I have decided I will take the money, but not "run" with it.  Since these payments all rely on USA imperialism, I've targeted the funds to a group that removes UXO around the world, particularly Vietnam.

I tried to find a charity that does this, but charities (NGOs) are government chartered entities that usually end up doing far more damage than good (see "Africa").  Eventually I found a private company that can sally forth with $10,000 to remove mines, ex-minelayers who repent of their evil.  This is serious work, not for starlets and princesses, fronting NGOs, who more often simply, as Father Darkness advises, take the money and run.  So my social security checks will go to the UXO removal company, which actually removes UXO, by people who are healed by removing UXO.  I rather dig ditches for rice and beans in Mexico than accept USA welfare.  (I am assuming the ditches are not far from the ocean, and there is beer with the rice and beans.)

What is left is working at building what is good, directing what targeted funds are around you to good rather than let it go to bad, and direct "untargeted funds" to the people upon whom we've imposed for the provision of the money in the first place (say, Laotian farmers.)  Then you are closer to the free market, and are closer to surviving come what may.

And also, along these lines, it pleases me to no end to see the poor using their EBT cards in the most upscale grocery stores, buying the finest free range meats and organic produce.  the last thing they should be buying is Cheetos and Coke, and in so buying upscale they support the small farms in their effort to recover farming in USA.  Smile encouragingly when you see the mom with the screaming kid stocking up on pate and paying with her EBT card.  Offer to carry out her bags (not to worry, the store has plenty of help for that.)

The bottom line is entrepreneurs never take risks. Whatever your circumstances, work with it.  There are no times in history when things were just right.  Previous generations left us work for us to do.  We've got to get out of imperialism, and each of us can work in a relatively free market, by our practices.

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Love Of Money is the Root of All Evil

If the Bible said "love of Disco is the root of all evil" I could relate to that.  Those were some very fun times, some wicked things were done, and it was a lot of fun.  I loved it.  But that is not what the Bible says.  The Bible says "love of money is the root of all evil."

I guess if you have the gift of ADD/ADHD, making money is never a problem, and if something is never a problem, you don't worry about it.  Certainly people around me worry about me and money, just not me.

But that love of money quote got me thinking, the ban on usury provided a negative hint, and how usury concentrates power in ever fewer hands to the point it takes extremely few people to "call the shots" is clear.

When world problems come to mind, they can all be understood as love of money at the root, and usury as the means to the present end.  Iraq, Ferguson, the coming stock market crash, any and all problems can be traced to too much power in too few hands, effected by usury.  Do I believe usury (taking or giving interest on a loan) should be outlawed?  No!  Just make it unenforceable in law.  End of that regime.

I've been reading much on this, and this week can across a book online on the topic...  S C Mooney, Usury, Destroyer of Nations.  Mooney does yeoman work carefully taking down every religious and social argument pro-usury.  Very good stuff.  I cite Dr. Gary North here often, since his stuff is good, but North is pro-usury, with which I obviously disagree.  North has made a lifelong concerted effort to critique the entire Bible for economic wisdom, and it is good stuff, but he gets something central, usury, wrong.    This blindness put him on the losing side of an argument with Mish on hyperinflation, North and Mish being of the same school of economics, the Austrian, and Mish gets it right.  Mish just yesterday returned to the topic and this is a good summary of the right side of the debate.  His foil this time is a Forbes writer, it is sad to see Forbes go so downhill so fast.  Ironic, a magazine that promoted usury sells out due to usury.  (Forbes sold out to a Hong Kong outfit.)  One point Mooney concedes is there will never be business loans at no interest.  (I'll say it again, all loans are charitable events, if you have money with which to make more money, invest as a co-owner, not take a (relatively) sure thing from someone taking a risk.  )

Looking around the world where USA is failing to a degree it cannot be blamed on Obama (no one can do this much damage) it looks pretty grim.

So I was astonished to see, unbidden, with no particular impetus, business loans at no interest, crowdfunded by Kiva.  Now, when Kiva first came out, it was micro-finance at interest crowdsourced.  So I could see it was the evil Grameen Bank Mohammed Yunis look-alike bringing micro-evil to Islam, the last bastion of usury-free business.  But Kiva-zip is crowdsourced loans at no interest!  I (and other on this list) jumped in to make small loans at no interest, and the borrower picked up $10,000 total well within the timeline.  I am very keen to find out the metrics... do no-usury loans subscribe faster better?  What is the average loan size?  What was the impetus for this effort? And so on and so on.

Now, this new thing is immediately contrary to patterns and practices of this corporation we call the USA.  You cannot make charitable loans in USA to businesses without someone imputing interest and paying taxes on the imputed income.  So either the giver or the beneficiary will be in trouble with the IRS.  That is just how capitalism works, and the USA as a corporation has over the centuries taken on patterns and practices of capitalism, which is "love of money" above all else.

Good on Kiva for offering this...  the people making the loans will have to fork over more money to the IRS for having done so, or more likely, the beneficiaries will become targets of the IRS, but either way,  we are now designed to crush good things before they get started.  In capitalism, the IRS works for the bankers, and to the degree no-usury loans displease some banker, business loans at no interest will be crushed.

But started it did.  When the market gets wiped out in the next couple of months, just recall in the chaos there are good systems we can adopt.  ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/08/david-stockman/does-the-wall-street-casino-seem-dangerous/  This too...  http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/08/19/crisis-collapse-in-world-capital-flows/ Remember, just like last time, 2008, and every time before, the powers that be will tell you "no one saw this coming."  Plenty of people saw it coming.  Just no one will do the right thing.)

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Austrian Economics & Interest

von Mises says:

We cannot even think of a world in which originary interest would not exist as an inexorable element in every kind of action.

True, if you presume a world in which usury is acceptable.  In the section cited, he compares an investment in a hotel in which the interest (usury) paid calculation prices out the project as untenable, to another location where the costs are lower to the interest rate works out, by all calculations.  And indeed, if and when interest is universally charged, it becomes a necessary consideration in overall calculations.  Thus, interest (usury) once allowed, becomes a necessary consideration since competitors will avail themselves of such factors.

This is similar to the phenomenon of building material codes.  Once there is a government enforcement of building codes, and usury to collect power in ever fewer hands, the big boys begin to design the materials, own the patents, write the codes that all builders must follow.  This monopoly is necessarily lower quality products, which then make for costs dropping due to subpar while prices rise due to inflation.  Small builders create profits (rents) for the big boys by at once paying higher interest rates and being forced to include materials in construction in which the same big boys turn a profit.  Further, the meager profits of the small boys are taxed to pay for enforcement, while the big boys pay no taxes whatsoever, with the government concessions for the big boy projects.  The introduction of government supervision of health and safety leads to a downward spiral in health and safety and community wealth.  The small quality builder is forced to build junk, but on the other hand, he need only be slightly better than the horrors produced by the big boys in order to earn a living.

Education saw the same thing. As govt supervision of education increased, public education went very far downhill fast.  Private schools need only be slightly better to charge a super-premium price.  Private schools today would be disgrace in the 1950s, but that does not matter.  The comparison is what sells.

As to Mises comment, a Moslem would ask "Why not just invest in the hotel, instead of lending money at usury?"  And certainly Christianity teaches the same thing: don't invest at interest (usury), invest as a participant in the profit and loss.

But we live in a system in which it is acceptable to lend in which you are guaranteed a return no matter what happens to the other.  Since some small players can and do benefit, we all accept a system that overall impoverishes most of us.

I would never say outlaw usury, I would say just do not make us pay to enforce usurious contracts.  they is necessary, and sufficient to end it.

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Food Renaissance Now - Your Participation

You can become part of the food renaissance right now, and begin your own escape to good food and self-actualization.  It takes a small step, a few minutes of your time, and an act of commitment that says "I am changing things myself."  It's simple enough, kick in a crowdfunded loan to a rancher.  And I have visited this ranch, you want to be a part of it!

What goes around comes around. To help someone else will give you some "buy-in" to help yourself.  You'll change in your thinking knowing you are a part of something good.

A farmer wants a loan, but does not want the traditional big bank loans with their woeful consequences.   I am so keen on this effort because it is a critical component in regrowing a just economy.

So what you do is just log on and make a "loan" of as little as $5! or $50 or $100 or finish this up and be a hero by loaning $3335.00.  The goal is $10k and they have over $6500 pledged now. You get paid back in monthly installments over 36 months.  (And Paypal seems to be their payment processor, but Paypal is optional in the process, if that matters to you.)

More than the money in and out, you are reminded monthly of the contribution you are making, and knowing that a farm is safely borrowing.  And you will learn about this wholesome, fair, beneficial community financing method because you have hands-experience.  It continues to grow.  Help make it bigger and be there when you could use financing.

I am studying usury and economic justice and so on as I have been blogging.  There is a working alternative that is actually active worldwide.  Participate now, even if you have to switch a small amount from one budget item to this.  Then you will have something new in your mix upon which to reflect.  They only have 12 days left in the campaign. You see good food and can say "I am a part of that." Make a Kiva loan now.

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We Buy El Salvador's Lunch

Comes the news on USA foreign aid:

El Salvador is a recent example of corporate domination in U.S. foreign aid. The United States will withhold the Millennium Challenge Compact aid deal, approximately $277 million in aid, unless El Salvador purchases genetically-modified seeds from biotech giant, Monsanto.

Where do we get $277 million dollars to "aid" El Salvador?  Well, as long as we can lend credit, for which there is no rational limit, credit-backed dollars are unlimited.  $277 million might seem like a lot to you or me, and even El Salvador, and certainly some El Salvadorans who were educated in USA, but to Uncle Sam who admits to 16 Trillion in debt, it is peanuts.

El Salvador is a small country, but as more and more small countries are paid by USA taxpayers to buy Monsanto products, it starts to add up for Monsanto.  Please note that without USA taxpayers buying the Monsanto products for El Salvador, El Salvadorans would not buy Monsanto products.  In big biz/big govt USA, this means taxpayers must pay El Salvadorans to buy Monsanto products.  Well, not pay for, but add it to our tab, since we are putting all this on credit.

As small countries take the money and then buy Monsanto, the food control shifts from the growers to the Harvard educated city bureaucracy, and the result is the chaos of such countries as Somalia.  We have destabilized many a South American and African country with this "aid."  We did so to the USA inner cities.

How did we get here?

The watershed event was the USA leaving the the last vestiges of the gold standard in 1971, and with that broke free of any rational limit to borrowing.  With limitless borrowing, comes limitless credit, in turn which can be lent.  What is outlawed in the three great monotheistic religions, is now calculated in the trillions.

But to what end?  It is always the same thing: libido dominandi.   Lust for power drives all sorts of people and Rome was not the first to conquer territories for food, and then use food for control.  It was ever thus.

USA was supposed to be exceptional in this regard, but we have proven to be unexceptional.  With the limits off, USA got busy using, as Earl Butz noted, food as a weapon.

Time magazine (November 11, 1974), concluding its special report on the world food crisis, explains its support of triage:
In the West, there is increasing talk of triage. . . .If the U.S. decides that the grant would simply go down the drain as a mere palliative because the recipient country was doing little to improve its food distribution or start a population control program, no help would be sent. This may be a brutal policy, but it is perhaps the only kind that can have any long-range impact. A triage approach could also demand political concessions. . . . Washington may feel no obligation to help countries that consistently and strongly oppose it. As Earl Butz told TIME: "Food is a weapon. It is now one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit."

The press was no less government-controlled back in the 1970s than it is now.  Continuing the blend of theories of Malthus and Darwin, leading magazines proclaimed there are too many people and someone had to go.

Only surplus food will find its way to those nations unable to compete in the market. But not even this paltry sum has been directed to the areas most in need. The Sahelian countries of Africa, where 100,000 persons were felled by famine last year, received relatively little of this surplus food. The decision as to where the food is shipped is based on cold war politics. Last year nearly half of our food aid went to South Vietnam and Cambodia. Our "defense perimeter" certainly did not include Chile under Salvador Allende. Three days before the military coup d’état, the U.S. turned down a request to sell wheat to Chile for cash. Yet one month after the junta’s putsch, with Allende dead, the U.S. granted the new regime eight times the total credit ever offered to Allende to purchase wheat. Food for Peace has been handled as an adjunct of our military assistance programs.

The system now depends on a regime in which there is no rational limit to what can be "borrowed" against "ourselves" (meaning our kids) with the only caution beyond forbidding usury is the vague "unto the third and fourth generation."  Bill to the USA taxpayers El Salvador purchase of GMO grain?  Why not? There is no rational limit, until something goes wrong and it comes a crashing down.

What are the chances the people of El Salvador escape this deal?  What are the chances we escape this deal?   Near zero?  That is capitalism, that is democracy.

On the one hand, there is absolutely no need for these programs.  Yes, people are starving in some places, but not for a shortage of food.  People starve pursuant to political decisions.

The small business of food trade worldwide is necessary and sufficient to literally deliver the goods.  If capitalism and democracy could have delivered by now, it would have.  What proper nutrition people in fact get is the result of free markets.  Like the socialists and communists, capitalists are free riders on the success of free markets.

The most revolutionary act you can perform is to start a business.

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Gary North On Brat on Usury

I've learned a lot form the Christian anarchist Dr. Gary North, all the while aware of his anti-Catholic bias.  Brother Jimmy Swaggart has nothing but deconstruction for Catholicism, but he is one fine exegete.  When he talks, I listen.

North has also read and critiqued Brat, and although Brat neither mentions nor elucidates Catholic teaching, only Calvinist, and Brat and North both wholeheartedly agree usury (charging interest on a loan) is a good thing, North takes the opportunity to slam Catholic teaching and comes up very short. Let's take North apart:

Beginning in the late medieval period, the Catholic Church began to enforce laws against taking interest on loans. The justification for this officially was that the Old Testament prohibited interest on loans.

Actually usury was prohibited all along.  North is a historian, he can do better than this.

This was probably the single most serious exegetical error in history of Western Christianity. It was categorically wrong. It led to a strangling of capital investment. It led to a series of obvious pretenses that justified taking interest by means of work-around arguments. Interest was not called interest.

Ummm.. how about gnosticism, or the Albigensian heresy?  Come on, lighten up, Gary.  Kantianism, much? How did they build all of those fantastic Cathedrals, the googles, space programs and Apple Computers of the day, without usury?  It is possible usury is simply not needed, as proven throughout history?  Three hundred years later the triple part deal was introduced, but not in 1250.  And interest was not called interest, because the etymology of the term means "to take a loss" not "to take a gain."  Etymology is a subset of history, Dr. North, check it out.

The prohibition handed over a very nice monopoly to the Jews, since they were not under the restrictions that applied to the church. They freely lent money to Gentiles at high rates of interest. They had no legal competition. It gave them a comfortable monopoly.

Whew!  This is very wrong.  There is nothing comfortable in that which can easily be repudiated and occasionally got you executed in that which some might engage.  The expulsion of the Jews from England and Spain was hardly comfortable, and the horrors of Ghetto-isation maybe more so.  Jews were expulsed from England in 1290 by Edward the Confessor, and did not return until the mid-17th century.  The entire English renaissance, and a whole lotta finance going on was, as a Calvinist might put it, Juden-frei. No Jewish usury.  Sure enough Pepys et al stepped into the breach, but the fact is usury got you executed if caught, Jew or no.

The problem that the Catholic church had in 1250 is the problem that is still has. Technically, the prohibition still exists. It was never justified by the Bible, and it was always bad economic policy.

The prohibition has nothing technical about it.  It is absolute, and has never changed.  Vix Pervenit is the last official word, the prohibition is absolute and has not changed.  Well, how come then is usury so widely disregarded?  Well, how come the teaching on birth control is so widely disregarded?  Something like 94% rejection on birth control, 99% rejection on usury.  How about that, something taught even more rejected by Catholics than birth control! Selling of indulgences was widely practiced until Luther put an end to it.  Pope Adrian specifically wrote to Luther telling Luther he was right.  Bishops from Peter forward have often got things wrong and taught error.  What is new?  The teaching of faith and morals of the Catholic Church are infallible, the Bride of Christ is not to be abused, but bishops teaching faith and morals?  The pastor mustn't get too far ahead of his flock.

It took me from 1965 until about 1990 to figure out what the biblical position is. I discovered it as part of my project, an economic commentary on the Bible.
Here is the famous bottom line. The Mosaic law did impose a restriction on charitable loans. For charitable loans, it was illegal to collect interest payments of any kind. 

Famous in your own mind? All that time and still got it wrong, Gary.  Some serious anti-Catholicism and pride at work here.  All loans are charitable events.  There are no exceptions.  One reason Islam is hated is they have this right: all loans are charitable events, even though you are to be paid back.  If you are not paid back, certainly you are aggrieved, but Allah favors the compassionate, the idea being you forgive the debt.  As Jesus says too.  Investments are always skin in the game, not a guaranteed return.

The church enforced this prohibition. The state did not.

Correct! And for an anarchist to let slide the fact that the state was able to introduce something, under the rubric of a tendentious reading of Romans 13 (not North, but putative-Christian usury-queens), is astonishing.  Kings brought kingdoms to ruin by contracting usury,  while forbidding it to their subjects.  Good old-fashioned hypocrisy where the damage was limited to the King losing his head.  With the state-allowed usury, we get the horrors of mal-education, malnutrition, endless wars, subpar housing, medical malpractice, and so on ad nauseum.

Dr. North goes on..

Charitable loans were unique in ancient Israel. They were loans that were made by Jews to neighbors who had fallen into a crisis through no fault of their own. This included some non-Jews: resident aliens. These debtors were willing to agree to a specific penalty if they failed to repay the loan. They would go into slavery until the next sabbatical year. This term of slavery ended on the day that Jews today call Yom Kippur, but only at the beginning of the seventh year, also called the year of release. All non-commercial debts were canceled. Also, no planting of crops was allowed. It was part of the system of laws governing the land. This law was unique to Mosaic Israel.

Well, Israel was the first recorded instance, but not unique, proto-Hindus, indeed every major religion condemned it.  Chinese philosophers condemned it.   And I think I can quickly find a half dozen Rabbis that would take apart Dr. North's summary of the Old Testament in this regard.

With respect to commercial loans, there was no restriction on interest. If a person defaulted on one of these loans, he could be sold into servitude to pay the lender.

Note he does not cite the passage.    I think I know why, it is not there.  Next Dr. North goes too far:

Jesus specifically identified the taking of usury as legitimate in Matthew 25, the parable of the talents. 

So Jesus is the master in this parable?  If so, is Jesus the stupid, greedy person in  Luke 12 16-21?    Is Jesus the man who loses all in the face of stronger forces, in Mark 3 27?  In Luke 16:19–31 is Jesus the rich man who goes to hell and cannot be saved?  In  Luke 18:1-8 is Jesus the unjust judge?  In  Luke 18: 9-14, which one is Jesus?  The tax collector or the Pharisee?  Claiming a story about someone evil supports Jesus endorsement of doing evil is risky business for a Christian.  Contrary to North's tendentious reading of Matthew 25 is Luke 16 1-13, where  Jesus is expressly appreciative of debt forgiveness, and usury plays no role.    But there is more -

The point of the parable was this: whatever gifts you receive from God, you're responsible for increasing their net value as part of the process of kingdom expansion. But to get this idea across, Jesus used the example of the moneychangers. They were bankers. They lent at interest.

Wait.  What was Jesus' first act after being acclaimed King of Israel by the people?  He drove the moneychangers from the temple.  This brought out the old guard who confronted Jesus as to what authority Jesus had to do this, and set new rules against for the temple?  If anything got Jesus killed, it was his overthrow of the economic order.  That went too far for the powers that be. Apparently Dr. North stands with the Sanhedrin on this point.  Dr. North would have Jesus directly contradicting himself.

Or not...  look at two statements Dr. North makes in the same paragraph:

Jesus specifically identified the taking of usury as legitimate in Matthew 25, the parable of the talents.
...
That's a fairly clear statement in favor of usury.

Which is it Dr. North?
"Jesus specifically identified... taking of usury as legitimate..."
or
"..fairly clear... statement in favor of usury..."

Some serious backtracking going on.  I think deep down he knows this is anti-Catholic bias, not conviction.  Usury is like lying, you know it is wrong when you do it.  Like lying, the more you do it the easier it gets.  Dr. North has a conscience.

As to usury, referring to an article that does not mention Catholic teaching, speaking about a Calvinist trained seminarian, Dr. North offers -

The Catholic Church understood none of this. It has never has gone into exegetical detail on the supposed basis of the usury prohibition.

O dear.  The world over, Muslim and Christian alike, go to John Thomas Noonan, a Catholic lawyer and author who wrote the book on Catholic exegesis on usury in 1957.   Everyone cites Noonan, one way or another.  As a Greek and Latin scholar Noonan can read the originals of the vast Catholic exegetical details on usury, something North cannot do. As to this book, you cannot have a copy.  But you can find one at some libraries.  Noonan is now a Federal Judge, and I had lunch with him to discuss his book last year.  Few topics have been so thorough covered in Catholic exegesis as usury.  This statement is utterly ridiculous by Dr. North, and is I am sure just blind bigotry.  The funny thing is, North would be better off reading Noonan, who claims the Church changed its teachings on usury, a point the good judge and I disagree upon.  (I am right).  But Noonan makes his case, exegesis by exegesis, in language by language.  This comment by North is so wrong I'd imagine he would withdraw it.

There are a few screwball economic groups today that invoke the Catholic Church's position on usury, as of about 1250. These people have no training in economic thought. They are very often associated with the Greenback movement. Omni Press publishes these anti-usury Catholic books. Omni is a Greenback press.

I don't doubt this at all, and Dr. North is pitch perfect in his deconstruction of the greenbackers.  So I am happy to arrive back at admiration for Dr. North.  Greenbackers grab at any old straw to make their point, so Dr. North citing them is damning by association.  Don't drag clowns into the discussion.

https://2012patriot.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/debt-slaves-payments.jpg

The Acton Institute is another very good source on economics, but fails miserably when it comes to usury.  They cite apparently with approbation Brats essay. It was a delight to watch Sirico take Lapin apart on pre-emptive torture.  But no one has the whole picture, and almost no one has the picture on usury, except the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church on matters of faith and morals.  Usury is wrong because it does damage, not because anyone says so.

The law is really simple: all loans are charitable events.  Don't make money off of charity.  If you want to make money, invest your money.  It is called equity stake.  Loans at interest (aka usury) are utterly unnecessary in any economy.  But the ultimate end is always the same.




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Wealth and Specialization

If wealth is judged to the degree what assortment of goods and services are accessible to the community with their own money, then we get an economy constantly matching resources to needs.  There is division of labor and specialization, constantly adjusting.  This would be a comity, where people cooperate.

If you believe wealth is judged to the degree one person has accumulated assets, then you either desire to be as "wealthy" as possible, or endeavor to get that wealth redistributed.  Hence the eternal rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic by democrats and republicans.  This would be a polity, where the powers that be direct all.

But assuming the first definition, then there needs to be means of financing that matches the definition.  Indiegogo seems to fill one possible means of financing in the former comity.  Apparently is is a means of distributing charitable contributions.  Well, it does foster creation of products that need financing, such as this.

Laws are being written by the progressive fascists to crush this means, because it is felt to be contrary to the latter definition of wealth.  But after the capitalist system goes down, like communism did, we'll need to recall what was sustainable.

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Peace Rocks

Capitalism creates massive distortions of the market by aggregating more and more in ever fewer hands.  In free markets, we have "creative destructionism" in which innovation eventually leads to more better cheaper faster.  Capitalists despise free markets because free markets militate against the exceptional levels of solitary wealth only capitalism advances.

Capitalism with its "creative finance" destroys what is good.

Capitalists always resort to violence to change the topic when their destruction goes too far.

So we have China getting into "territorial disputes" with most of its neighbors.

And we have a million and a half 16 - 24 year olds unemployed, and countless more with unbankruptable student loan burdens.  War is their way out.  A command economy is the capitalists' ideal.

The current Vietnam contretemps is over the Spratly and Paracels, which back in the 1960s was well known to be the reason USA had invaded Vietnam, to get the oil there.  The Vietnam war was about oil.  As I understand it from private conversations, there is not enough oil there to be worth fighting over, how come the Chinese are trying to position a billion dollar rig there?  Maybe they did not get the word?  The Senkaku Island dispute with Japan is also over oil.

So let's not go to war. Let's do the decent thing.  An international convention in which these places are developed and exploited and the money funnelled into international aid.  All of these countries fork over billions in foreign aid, just earmark the net from development of the rocks to foreign aid, and call the disputed lands Peace Rocks.

I know that is not going to happen.  Sometimes shoving matches turn lethal, and that is probably what we will get here.  We need more Hong Kongs so people of good will, merchants, can proceed to peace and prosperity, in spite of the madness to which capitalism drives some.

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A Good Cause

If you are looking for a place to make a Christmas donation, Haiti is still suffering, and donating to plant coffee trees in Haiti makes for a donation that never quits.

I know the people involved so I kicked in a bit, and I recommend them to you.  Click here....

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Controversy Over Joy of the Gospel Encyclical

Judge Napolitano wrote an essay criticizing the controversial Papal teaching document Joy of the Gospel, even saying it "seems... Marxist":

His encyclical, entitled “Joy of the Gospel,” attacks free market capitalism because it takes too long for the poor to get rich. “They are still waiting,” the Pope wrote. Well, without capitalism, which rewards hard work and sacrifice, they will wait forever. No economic system in history has alleviated more poverty, generated more opportunity and had more formerly poor people become rich than capitalism.

Sigh.  Capitalism and free markets are mutually exclusive. Napolitano conflates the two where the Pope does not say any such thing.  At no point does the Pope mention "free market capitalism." In fact, no where in the document does the word capitalism or capitalist appear. Or Marxist.  Napolitano has set up a straw man.

Here is what the Pope actually says, the only reference to the free market in the long document:

54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

Although Andrew Napolitano is an exceptionally bright judge who made it to State Superior Court level, he really ought to approach what a Pope says with some humility.  The operative word in #54 is "theories" regarding economic growth, in which a free market plays literally a parenthetical role.  The Pope clearly keeps the "trickle-down theories" and free markets as separate things. It seems the Pope knows the difference between the free market and supply-side Chicago school economics. And just who has Judge Napolitano been criticizing his entire celebrity career other than the selfsame "those wielding economic power"?  Anyone reading the Pope's source document can comprehend what the Pope actually said. Napolitano's criticism is flat out dishonest.

And Napolitano's "alleviated more poverty..." spiel is nonsense in two ways:

1.  Capitalism has 3,482 definitions right now, so which one does he credit with all those good things? (The Pope appears to be targeting the Chicago school, or more specifically, supply-side economics.)

2. A free market is free from force and fraud, free to contract.  In every one of the 3,482 definitions of capitalism, usury is permitted, which is both force and fraud.  So free markets and capitalism are mutually exclusive.

Napolitano dishonestly attributes benefits that arise only from free markets to capitalism, by conflating free markets and capitalism, in support of a theory, as the Pope says, which has never been confirmed by the facts.   Yes, we've seen some good things, but because of free markets, and in spite of capitalism.  The Soviet Union got more food from the personal garden lots allowed than from the collectivist farms. So we saw the same thing under communism.

I have not finished reading the document, but it has solid arguments:

202. The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of society, but because society needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it, and which can only lead to new crises. Welfare projects, which meet certain urgent needs, should be considered merely temporary responses. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality,[173]no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.

What is he saying?  Welfare projects should be temporary?  Spot on! What is a big problem we have?  Welfare projects are multigenerational, and destroy whole cities.   "Absolute autonomy of the markets and financial speculation" is a problem?  This is news?  To whom does one imagine the Pope is referring?  The 15 year old American of some African heritage who is braiding hair without a license?  Is that the "autonomy of the markets (ie, free market)" that keeps the Pope awake at night? Or the "regulated" worldwide who have captured the regulators: big finance, big medicine, big agri, who answer to absolutely no one and ruin economies plus bring on follow-on military action.   We vote against bail-outs and get bail-outs.  We vote against stadiums and get stadiums.  We vote against war and get war.  And then the lawless have the temerity to label their work "free markets" so their victims are confounded as to where liberation might be.  The bad guys fear free markets most of all.  The Pope is criticizing the lawless powers over the Tunisian (now overthrown) government that beat up the fruit seller, not the fruit seller.  The most revolutionary act a human being can make today is to start a business.

(Also Napolitano slams the Pope for saying youth unemployment is a top crisis...

"It's a throwaway culture that discards young people as well as its older people. In some European countries, without mentioning names, there is youth unemployment of 40 percent and higher," he added. "A whole generation of young people does not have the dignity that is brought by work."

I think the Pope has that about right...  And with the push for $15/hr min wage, we can expect a whole lot more youth unemployment.)

I welcome anyone who might read the Pope's letter and find something controversial to cite it and send it in to me to respond.  You have nothing better to read or watch.  This Pope is changing things, and it is can be a very useful source of discussion and ideas.  Here is a .pdf of the document.  it's 225 pages as a .pdf, but if you copy and paste the HTML into a WP doc, then strip out the citations and table of contents, reduce it to 12 point, narrow the  the margins, etc, it gets down to 60 pages...  I await your critiques...

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