Some Insights on the Economic Crisis July 4, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in Federal Reserve, federal government, national debt, news, political economy.Tags: economic crisis
add a comment
In his recent financial commentary titled “When Zombies Attack,” Bill Bonner wrote,
“Rise of the Zombies,” is a headline in today’s Financial Times. It tells a familiar and predictable story: the feds have propped up businesses coast-to-coast. Instead of being allowed to fail, they are kept alive by the government…and continue to take resources that could be redirected to more promising competitors.
But don’t bother telling the feds that. They don’t care. The old, worn out zombie businesses still make campaign contributions and employ voters. The businesses of tomorrow don’t. The present votes. The future does not.
After telling us how the feds are ripping the taxpayers off to keep worthless business because of political cronyism, Bonner expands his coverage to include state revenue and a equation of political economy.
The feds and the states are losing income. When businesses lose revenue
they cut back expenses. But governments – at least those that are
modern popular democracies – find that they need to increase spending. They have more people asking for help. And they have programs that become automatically more expensive – such as unemployment benefits – when the economy softens.
Now, the equation of political economy:
Let’s see. Expenses down, income up = happiness.
Expenses up, income down = misery.
See how simple it is?
In another commentary titled “Stay Out of the Water,” Bonner get more patriotic meaning the Londoner mentions July 4th. Leading up to this holiday some news we all could believe in. It casued reveling among economists, investors and politicians. First, the report about Madoff’s sentencing for lying to investors was followed by reports from Bloomberg, General Electric’s CEO, and George Soros’ pronouncement that the “crisis is behind us and that growth will begin again next year.” But, on Thursdays, all of their hopes crashed after hearing the official employment report. Instead of going down as predicted, another 467,000 people joined the Democrats unemployment plan.
Bonner’s not-so-happy commentary continues,
And so…this weekend, investors walk along the beach deep in thought. Is it safe to go back into the water…or not? They should listen carefully. That gurgling sound they hear is not mermaids singing, it is the world economy, drowning.
As we reported in this space, the feds’ bailouts, boondoggles and bankers’ bonus plans aren’t working. At the end of last year, they predicted unemployment over 8% in 2009 – if the stimulus plan were not enacted. But it was enacted. Unemployment is at 9.5% already and it is still rising. It will be over 10% before the end of the year. Global trade is collapsing; exports from Germany and Japan are down about 40% from a year before. Prices are going down too – with a report this Wednesday that the entire Eurozone has slipped into negative inflation. And from Britain came data showing a contraction of 2.4% in the first quarter, bringing the year-to-year decline to nearly 5%. “Economy shrinks at 1930s rates,” said the headline in Wednesday’s Telegraph.
When we look at America’s employment numbers, we feel like a school doctor. We would call the authorities, except that it was the authorities who should be arrested. After the feds got finished with them, the numbers told of a better-than-expected drop in May U.S. payrolls. The key to this uplifting news was not a genuine improvement, but new and improved techniques in torture. Water-boarded with seasonal adjustments and birth/death models, the numbers began to see jobs
everywhere. As for “discouraged workers”, meaning those who gave up
looking because they couldn’t find a job, these unfortunate souls
disappeared from the jobless figures altogether.
John William’s Shadow Government Statistics reports that without these twists, the numbers tell the same story they’ve been telling all year – unemployment is still getting worse, at about the same pace as earlier in the year. “The unadjusted annual decline in May payrolls was the worst since May 1958,” says Williams. And if they were allowed to speak freely – as they did in the ’30s – the figures would show real unemployment at over 20% of the workforce…or about 30 million people. That approaches Great Depression levels…and we’re still only in 1930, not 1932. As for those still working, an additional 1.5 million U.S. workers have been “forced into part time work” according to the Financial Times.
Analysts compare these trends to post-WWII pattern, which result sin a 62 year cycle of credit expansion. That’s a long time of debt-based economic growth. That cycle is coming to an end and a new cycle begins. “It is the beginning of a major credit contraction, with no pent-up demand, no savings, and too much capacity to turn out too much stuff that too many people don’t have the money to buy.”
“With incomes falling and house prices weak, consumers will miss
payments, default, and cut back spending. Business earnings will
decline; bankruptcies will increase. This economic undertow is
treacherous. Investors should stay out of the water,” says Bonner.
For more financial insights of Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.
A Jewish Understanding of America’s Declaration of Independence July 3, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in American Revolution, Chrisitanity, Declaration of Independence, God, Judaism, law.1 comment so far
The American Declaration of Independence embodies a doctrine of revolution. The Declaration teaches us that the people of any country are not obliged to obey the laws of the State if these laws violate the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” But who is to judge whether the laws of the State violate the “Higher Law”? This question involves another: “Where is the supreme authority in a State that recognizes a ‘Higher Law’”? That crucial question was addressed by the Italian rabbi, theologian, and philosopher Eliyahu Benamozegh (1823-1900) in his magnum opus Israel and Humanity.
Rabbi Benamozegh asks: “Where is supreme authority to be found in Israel?” To answer this question, he ponders the Law-Giving at Sinai Revelation. He writes:
In order to grasp the central idea of Israelite doctrine on this crucial matter quickly and accurately, let us proceed by a process of elimination and determine first of all what that doctrine categorically rejects…. Does supreme authority reside in a man invested with supreme power? The very idea of a Revelation which embraces all of life, public as well as private, precludes any such possibility. A Revelation so total cannot speak through any single entity whatever, whether priest or monarch. … Neither the king nor the priest can possess unlimited authority, for each moves in a well-defined sphere and his function is circumscribed by impassable limits.
Nor is supreme authority vested in a privileged class, an oligarchy or an aristocracy. The provisions of the Law, the history and conception of Revelation itself, prove, if proof be needed, that there can be no such class. Neither is it to be located in the totality of Israelites, at least not in the sense of an absolute power residing in the people as a whole, which would legitimize all that the people might decree. As for the authorized interpreters of the Revelation, however, the people convey their sovereignty in this matter to those whose place in the hierarchy renders them qualified, according to established rule. This role of the community is the only one which is logically possible in a state faithful to a Revelation.
“If then, according to Judaism, supreme authority adheres neither to the high priest, nor to the king, nor to an elite, nor even to the entire people as a collectivity, where is it to be found? In God alone; which is to say, using modern categories, in absolute reason and justice. God is the only legislator, and the people His only interpreter on earth. Such is the Jewish ideal.”
The same conclusion may be deduced from the American Declaration of Independence. Suffice to consider two of its principles. Its First Principle inheres in these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These rights are “unalienable” because man is created in the image of God, which means that man alone possesses free will and the capacity to distinguish good from evil. In other words: It is from God, and not from any Government or body of men, that we derive our rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Imago dei is what makes those rights “unalienable” and establishes them as basic ends of legitimate Government.
Therefore—and this is the Second Principle: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” The people, therefore, are sovereign under God, which means, in the final analysis, that the People are His interpreters!
However, since the phrase “any Form of Government” obviously includes Democracy, it follows that the People or their Representatives are theologically prohibited from establishing a Government or enacting laws that violate “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” or that violate “absolute reason and justice.” We see here that the Declaration of Independence is basically consistent with Jewish law and provides no justification for the establishment of a secular democratic state!
Having said this, let us put to rest certain errors. The “Creator” referred to in the First Principle must be construed as a theistic, not a deistic God, otherwise—and regardless of their personal convictions—it would have made no sense for the 56 signers of Declaration to appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the world,” or to express their “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” Moreover, and of paramount significance in interpreting the meaning of the Declaration, its language should be construed in terms of the understanding of its audience, which was overwhelmingly Christian, consisting, therefore, of theists, not deists.
Now consider the phrase “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The term “Nature” is foreign to the Torah. Moreover, the notion of “Laws of Nature” suggests autonomous or self-sustaining and eternal laws, something impossible in a created universe. And since Greek philosophy never conceived of creation ex nihilo, let us put to rest the Stoic basis of the Declaration. The truth is that the Declaration is an eclectic but nonetheless magnificent document into which Jefferson injected Greco-Christian nuances, which Christian nuances, however, are rooted in the Torah, the source of monotheism. Evidence of this will be found in the law lectures of James Wilson of whom a brief statement is necessary.
Wilson, who taught law at the University of Pennsylvania, was widely deemed the most learned man of his generation. Wilson was not only a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His contribution to the deliberations of the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 was second only to that of James Madison. Moreover, like Rabbi Benamozegh, he regarded God’s will, as interpreted by the people acting through their representatives, as the supreme authority.
This means that the concept of “popular sovereignty” must be understood within the context of a monotheistic culture, and it is only within such a culture that can one rightly understand the American Declaration of Independence.
One more thought. The Declaration, as Abraham Lincoln understood, embodies the political philosophy—more accurately the “political theology”—of the American Constitution. Here is what John Adams, another signatory of the Declaration, said of the Constitution: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” That religious morality is crystallized in the Declaration of Independence on which America stands and which is now being subverted.
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg, retired professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and author of On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence.
Cap-and-Trade Legislation Will Torpedo American Economy July 2, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in Congress, United Nations, economy, energy, environment, globalism, news, politics.add a comment
When it comes to a consensus on global climate change, there really isn’t a consensus among scientists, and apparently there isn’t among the Democrat majority in Congress either.
On the evening of June 26th, the Democrat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a massive tax increase (H.R. 2454) commonly known as the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, by the non-consensus vote of 219 – 212.
Also known as a “cap-and-trade” bill, this legislation is truly an unprecedented tax increase in the form of an “energy tax” that will affect everyone, regardless of income level.
Obviously, this will offend some adherents to the climate change religion but a tax is exactly what this is. And everyone will pay it in some form or another – higher utility bills, higher gasoline prices, higher food prices and higher prices for anything which requires energy to manufacture, transport, warehouse or stock.
If this bill becomes law, it will go into effect in 2012 which means we will start paying higher prices almost immediately. According to the Heritage Foundation, the average family of four will see their energy bill increase by $436 the first year; it could reach as much as $1,241 by 2035, or an average of $829 per year over that time period. That’s just the energy cost impact. The cumulative cost of living impact is estimated to average $2,979 per year. The first five years of this bill could cost the average family of four almost $15,000; the first ten years would be almost $30,000.
In addition, the Heritage Foundation projects unemployment will increase by two million the first year of the program. The Heritage Foundation is not alone in this estimate. The Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank, and the National Black Chamber of Commerce both project job losses in the millions and similar economic losses.
The sheer size and scope of this massive energy tax increase should drive Americans to the streets in protest. The bill totaled 1,200 pages prior to the 300-page amendment which was added at 3 a.m. the morning of the vote. Consequently, it is likely that few, if any, of the 219 members of the House who voted for it read the entire bill prior to voting.
Moreover, those who voted for this bill are either unaware of, or chose to ignore, the growing body of scientific research which counters the theory that human activity is causing global warming.
It’s not just Congress who is ignoring the scientific evidence on global climate change. Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), submitted a report based on research he initiated himself that documented scientific findings that human activity has had minimal impact in terms of global warming.
He also cited data that shows we may now be in a period of global cooling. Carlin’s supervisor refused to pass his study on to the department responsible for EPA’s climate change program.
Critics of Carlin, who has worked in the EPA for 35 years, have tried to discredit him by claiming he is an economist, not a scientist. Carlin, in fact, also has a degree in physics.
Carlin is not the only critic of the science behind the push for cap-and-trade legislation. An in-depth report just released by The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) documents in great detail the errors in the United Nations report on climate change. The authors state that the UN’s Fourth Assessment Report “… is marred by errors and misstatements, ignores scientific data that were available but were inconsistent with the authors’ pre-conceived conclusions, and has already been contradicted in important parts by research published since May 2006.” Furthermore, the NIPCC report says the UN report “… violates many of the rules and procedures required for scientific forecasting, making its ‘projections’ of little use to policymakers.”
The report also includes a petition signed by 31,478 American scientists, including 9,029 individuals with PhDs, endorsing the statement that there is no scientific evidence that human-released greenhouse gases are a threat to the Earth’s atmosphere.
The bottom line: the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House is not about saving the planet from catastrophic climate change, it is about catastrophically changing the American economy and society. President Obama and his liberal mates in Congress are going full-speed ahead in their efforts to remake American society and they will torpedo anything that gets in their way, including the American economy.
To see how this bill will effect your personal income and state, see Table 1 to Karen Campbell and David Kruezter’s article “Waxman-Markey Global Warming Bill: Economic Impact by Congressional District”
——————————
By Gary Palmer, president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.
The Future Belongs to Israel June 26, 2009
Posted by Daniel Downs in Israel, Middle East, United States, Zion, democracy.add a comment
Israel is rotting in politics. So must it be before Israel’s eventual ascendancy as a light unto the nations. The seed must rot before the flower emerges.
One does not have to be a political scientist to smell the odor of politics. Political scientists merely affirm the commonplace when they define politics as a struggle for power, a lust for self-aggrandizement. We all know that this lust is couched in honorific terms, like “democracy” or “peace” or the “common good.” We know that politicians manipulate the unwary, mislead them by spin or misleading language—even outright mendacity. We see this in America, we see this in Israel.
Although democracy doesn’t have a monopoly of disinformation, money and the mass media have trashed Jeffersonian democracy, which was supposed to foster reason and rational debate. America has lost its bearings. What about Israel?
Unlike America, founded on Judeo-Christian ideas and values, Israel was founded on a truncated form of Zionism—“secular” Zionism. But Zionism can’t be secular without eviscerating original “Zion,” which involves three interrelated ideas: (1) the People of Israel, (2) the Land of Israel, and, most emphatically (3) the Torah of Israel. This third idea had no role in the reestablishment of the State of Israel. It may well be argued that the founders of the state, who wanted to create a “new Jew,” wanted to relegate Judaism not merely to the home and the synagogue, but to the dust heap of history.
Indeed, if Israel had as its leaders, when the Second Temple was destroyed, secular Zionists like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Jewish people would have become as extinct as the dodo. No serious person will dispute the fact—affirmed even by Ben-Gurion—that it was the Torah that preserved the Jewish people during two thousand years of dispersion, torture, and decimation.
Nevertheless, the secularists Zionists—mostly socialists—who founded the State of Israel thought they could dispense with the Torah. We see the results: their political descendants—not only the “post-Zionists”—are willing to abandon Israel’s heartland, Judea and Samaria, as well as the 300,000 Jews who live on this land. Hence, they are willing to amputate the first and second ideas of “Zion”!
Still, one sometimes hears voices from the “Right,” including the Likud Party, that deplore the abandonment of Zionism, without realizing that this began with the abandonment of the Torah. It’s important to recognize that secular Zionism died some sixteen years before Prime Minister Netanyahu buried it at Bar-Ilan University, once a stronghold of religious Zionism.
Politics in Israel is therefore devoid of any ideology, of any distinctively Jewish national goal. This can be most promising, provided Israel awakens to the fact that the death of Zionism is a logical consequence of the flawed foundations of the State. As mentioned on previous occasions, and as may be seen in the first sentence of its Declaration of Independence, Israel’s reestablishment was based on the territorial nationalism of nineteenth-century Europe—Europe, where the nation-state is succumbing to the multiculturalism and internationalism also manifested by post-Zionism! Irony of ironies, this is why a secularist like Netanyahu supports the territorial surrender involved in the “two-state solution” initiated by post-Zionist Shimon Peres.
Let us not despair. Israel is shedding what was at best a make-shift ideology—the secular Zionism that contributed to Israel’s physical redemption. Needed is Israel’s spiritual redemption, and this is coming. Never has there been so many Jews returning to the Torah; never so many yeshivas. A veritable renascence is taking place in the study of Jewish law, revealing its great rationality and relevance.
Meanwhile, a convergence of science and Torah has been taking place with every advance in astronomy, physics, and molecular biology. “The Science of God” is the title of two books; “God and the new cosmology” the title of another; “God and the new physics” still another. Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis refuted Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion twenty years before that tract of Darwinian fundamentalism was published. But this is not all.
Consider what is happening in the United States. At last the U.S. has a president that dispels the stultifying illusion that Israel’s salvation depends on America. This will prompt more Jews to turn to God.
But what about that bizarre pro-Muslim president? That a man long associated with anti-American malcontents and scoundrels, a man who, according to Islamic law is a Muslim—and, so far as we know, he may not even be an American—that this man was elected president of the United States signifies that democratic politics is intellectually and morally bankrupt and that America—short of a spiritual revolution—is approaching its nadir as a Judeo-Christian nation.
America was the model of mankind. Its decline is a precondition for the eventual ascendancy of Israel. This will be hastened by Islamism, whose spearhead is Iran. Iran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map” should be understood not simplistically as a manifestation of Jew-hatred but as a dim foreboding—now of universal scope—that the future belongs to Israel.
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg,
Keep Jerusalem United
