News from the Network, Vol. 2, No. 31

Once again, the stock market is up, and the economists and politicians are (once again) announcing the end of the recession . . . and (once again) unemployment figures are on the increase and a number of companies have announced further losses. The "key indicators" at which the experts seem to be looking are housing (which is a large part of the reason the recession started) and the stock market (ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto). It is unclear how or why speculation that is not backed up by any productive activity is supposed to signal the end of the recession.

On closer examination, the economic news released today does not really indicate that the recession is over, nearly over, or even that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The only thing that has caused the pundits to start punding is that the economy shrank less than expected. Given the sort of economic and political doublespeak to which we've become accustomed since the hegemony of Lord Keynes, this is interpreted (once again) as "Happy Days Are Here Again."

• On Wednesday, Norman Kurland flew to the city of East St. Louis, Illinois. While there, he had top-level meetings with various figures in industry, finance, and state and local officials. The purpose was to discuss the MECLC initiative for an "E-Macro System" for eleven communities in Southwestern Illinois. The "E" in "E-Macro System" signifies not only "energy," but the extremely innovative citizen ownership proposal: "Equity."

• On Thursday, after returning to Virginia, Norman Kurland and a number of participants from the previous day had a follow-up telephone conference to discuss some of the specifics about the MECLC project that had been raised in the previous day's meeting. The meeting was very fruitful, and a number of specific actions were agreed upon.

• On Thursday and Friday the CESJ e-mail system went down. Consequently, if any news items were submitted to the address below, they have not yet been received. The system is expected to be back up Monday, August 3, 2009.

• On Friday, Norman Kurland had an interesting conversation with a businessman from Provo, Utah, who came across the CESJ and EEI websites and was intrigued by what he saw. Norman Kurland had an extended conversation with him, and expects to hear back from him once he has reviewed the additional information he received during the phone call.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 27 different countries and 42 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, Brazil, the Philippines, and the UK. People in Venezuela, Argentina, the United States, Canada, and Brazil spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings continue to be those in the series on usury, the letter to the Wall Street Journal on Caritas in Veritate, and the news reports.

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.