Whatever the origin of the terms "bull" and "bear," Wall Street has been in a plunging bear market for the past fifteen minutes. The speculators and gamblers, however, seem able to bear it. At least the streets of the nation's financial district aren't spattered with the remains of brokers practicing self-defenestration from the fortieth floor. In all the excitement and relief over yesterday's end of the recession, however, the economic, financial, and political powers-that-be once again neglected anything having to do with the "real" economy outside of Wall Street and the Washington, DC beltway. Nevertheless, there are some positive signs even among the wreckage of the Keynesian Welfare-State:
• Guy Stevenson, a CESJ member, has ordered a full carton (26 books) of In Defense of Human Dignity (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) that he plans on sending to individuals and groups advocating a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Guy is taking advantage of the 20% discount available to CESJ members and on quantities of ten or more of any of CESJ's publications. For information on quantity discounts, send an e-mail to onceandfuturebooks@yahoo.com.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.
• Larry M. Walker, Jr., of Atlanta, Georgia (who commented briefly on this blog this past week) has been tweeting (is that the verb?) a number of our postings on natural law. Mr. Walker describes himself as a "Proponent of natural law, natural rights, U.S. Constitution & binary economics." His twitters (again, not too certain of the nouns and verbs here . . . we're a little too tempted to say "twit") can be accessed here. Okay, you learn something new every day: we just discovered they're called "tweets." So, unless you're Thylvester the Cat, consider tweeting Mr. Walker, who might want to give Dr. Norman Kurland, president of CESJ, a call to discuss his interest in and promotion of understanding of binary economics. (Contact information is on the CESJ website.)
• Over the past week we have increased our efforts to begin networking with supporters of the natural law. CESJ's next book, the short version of a projected much larger work on money, savings, and widespread ownership, shows (or at least tries to show) how the principles of binary economics and a sound money system are a natural "fit" with the natural law, especially the principles of justice as explained in Chapter V of Kelso and Adler's The Capitalist Manifesto.
• The group of students participating in a mock election at Mission Viejo High School apparently ran up against entrenched mental attitudes concerning money, property, and even some vagueness about the definitions of capitalism and socialism from some commentators and critics. A group of about fifteen students had a telephone conference with Dr. Kurland earlier this week to discuss answers to some of the questions raised about the Just Third Way and Capital Homesteading in the campaign so far. Dr. Kurland gave them a brief rundown on how to respond to some of the questions. Ironically, the most severe critic of the Just Third Way proclaimed herself a supporter of Mitt Romney, clearly unaware that, before Mr. Romney dropped out of the race, his advisors had some discussion with Dr. Kurland on the Just Third Way, and the concepts had been very positively received.
• Outreach efforts to three "name" academic economists have been successful in getting a toe in the door for future discussions. Possibly in reaction against the current administration's misuse of Keynesian principles — seriously flawed to begin with — the more thoughtful economists in academia seem to be having second thoughts about the wisdom of severing the social science of economics from the necessary natural law basis of the social order. This may be sparking some serious investigation of the claims of binary economics, especially regarding the Kelso-Adler principles of economic justice, again best articulated in Chapter V of The Capitalist Manifesto (above). (We are withholding the names of the economists for obvious reasons — they've only indicated a willingness to dialogue — a significant step in itself — and naming them would come across as trying to force their hands.)
• Earlier this week, Norman Kurland and Michael D. Greaney participated in an internet discussion on the role of savings in alleviating poverty. The discussion was sponsored by the New America Foundation. Dr. Kurland posed the question, "Why shrink consumption to turn the poor into capital owners? Since by definition poor people, especially in the developing world, are under-consumers who live from hand-to-mouth, would the New America Foundation be open to an innovative new approach to financing future savings and investment in procreative capital assets (not financial capital) that lift the poor out of poverty through incomes from new work opportunities as well as from profit distributions generated by their new productive assets? There are sound macro-economic reasons to turn to future savings, rather then current or past savings, to finance faster rates of new capital formation in any economy. This approach would allocate non-recourse, privately-insured capital credit through the commercial banking system in any nation with a central bank that is empowered to create new, asset-backed money ('pure credit') for investment by low-income citizens in feasible self-liquidating projects, then using the future stream of income ('future savings') to repay the capital acquisition loan." The response from the New America Foundation was too short to address this admittedly large question and time was running out, so Dr. Kurland invited them to dialogue further on the issue.
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 39 different countries and 39 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, Canada, India, and Aruba. People in Aruba, New Zealand, Venezuela, the Czech Republic and the United States spent the most average time on the blog. Recent postings have generated a surprising amount of interest, arguing that people are starting to look for more creative answers to the economic crisis. The postings on "Justice, Justice, Thou Shalt Pursue" and The Slavery of Savings" are tied for first place, both having exactly the same number of visitors. In third place is the recommendation for Dr. Charles Rice's new book, "What Happened to Notre Dame," followed by "No One Can Breathe Against Their Will" and "What is Natural Law?" The focus on the natural moral law and its application to sound solutions for today's problems seems to be striking a chord with our readers.
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