News from the Network, Vol. 2, No. 16

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr. Obama appointed a $7 million commission to study how to save the American automakers instead of taking advantage of a proposal to do the same thing much faster and cheaper for $150,000 put forward by the American Auto Worker Ownership Committee. This would appear to be consistent with what seems a definite bias on the current administration's part against ordinary people owning the means of production. This may be rooted in the false Keynesian dogma that only existing accumulations of savings (by definition held by the rich) can be used to finance capital formation. Thus (according to Keynes) the most efficient economy is one where ownership of the means of production is as concentrated as possible with the State controlling the rate of new investment and the rate of return on investment, and anyone who would use investment income for consumption instead of reinvestment (compound interest) is discouraged from capital ownership. Since the Federal Reserve was designed and intended in part to provide the private sector with new money and credit without the necessity of first cutting consumption and saving, Mr. Obama's possible fear that investment capital will disappear if ordinary people own the means of production and thereby gain control over their own lives not only doesn't make sense, it is counterproductive in the extreme.

The power that the Federal Reserve has to create money without inflation for private sector growth and investment is the reason that the Just Third Way is demanding democratizing the Federal Reserve so as to open up democratic access to capital credit (the chief means by which capital is financed and ownership acquired), and to deliver genuine "power to the people" by spreading out control of the central bank system of the United States, taking it out of the hands of the bankers and the State bureaucrats.

• The biggest news this week was the postponement of the rally at the Federal Reserve due to weather. The rally is tentatively rescheduled for Wednesday, April 22, 2009 outside the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC, "Earth Day."

• In the space of one week, a single CESJ member managed to place letters and articles in the Washington Post (4/10/09), the Wall Street Journal (4/13/09), and the National Hibernian Digest (March/April 2009 issue). The placements in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal were letters from different perspectives (depending on the particular slant of each newspaper), looking at the recent interference by the Federal Government in the rules established by the Financial Account in an effort to "fix" the "mark to market" rule by making it easier for investment companies to inflate book values of investments without an objective, "third party" verification. This violation of the "pillar" of the Just Third Way regarding a limited economic role for the State exacerbates what may have caused the home mortgage crisis in the first place. The short article in the National Hibernian Digest, the official publication of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, Inc. (the "AOH," a fraternal order for Catholic men of Irish birth or descent) gave a short précis of some social action initiatives being considered by the AOH in Northern Virginia in conjunction with CESJ. All three placements illustrate what can be done by individuals who persist in writing letters and articles to newspapers and magazines from a Just Third Way perspective. This can be a most effective way of preparing the ground for opening doors to "Prime Movers," as mention in a newspaper or magazine tends to lend a degree of credibility to CESJ and the whole Just Third Way movement.

• CESJ's twenty-fifth anniversary celebration will take place tomorrow at Lakeside Plaza condominium in Falls Church, Virginia. If you haven't responded by now or requested an invitation, it's too late, but we will try and post a brief report of the celebration in next week's news items.

• Wholesale order forms for CESJ publications from Economic Justice Media will be distributed at the celebration so that CESJ members may take advantage of the member benefit of purchasing publications at the wholesale price. If you are not attending, but would like to purchase publications in bulk (minimum of ten books) at the wholesale price, send a request for an order form to mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org. CESJ does not sell retail, so individual copies are available to non-CESJ members are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or by special order from most major bookstores.

• The "TEA ('Taxed Enough Already') Parties" that took place this past week, while no doubt motivated by a genuine desire for change, really didn't look at anything other than a return to the old, unworkable system to replace the current failing system. It would have been much better to bring CESJ's tax proposals to the attention of Mr. Obama and others who appear to be floundering by claiming to try and "simplify" the existing system, forgetful of the fact that every similar effort in the past has resulted in enormously more complex and confusing regulations that only increase the inherent injustice of trying to use the tax system for social engineering instead of raising revenue, and imposing the belief that only existing savings of the rich can be used to finance new capital formation on a system designed to accommodate the power of the Federal Reserve to create money for private sector growth and investment, rather than government spending or consumer debt. Three CESJ pieces are particularly recommended, "Steps Toward Tax Justice" from the original version published in The Tax Executive in 1977, "Transforming the Federal Tax System," and "Reforming the Tax System."

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 40 different countries and 45 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, with Canada, Finland, and Brazil. People in Egypt and Hong Kong spent the most time on the blog. The most popular posting is now "Cut Us In or Cut It Out" (meaning open up democratic access to capital credit, and stop using the nation's central bank to finance government deficits and bailout failed companies. The next four most popular are on Abraham Lincoln, with the series on "Easter Economics" fast accumulating readers. The rest of the top ten deal with the increasingly obvious flaws in Keynesian economics.

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.