well. . . . at least when the market closed yesterday to wild jubilation.
Yes, yes, jobs are still disappearing. True, yesterday's drive along an industrial corridor revealed a number of empty factories that six months before had at least had workers' cars in the parking lot and a flag flying. It's just petty to bring up the fact that the increase in GDP is fueled by artificial and unsustainable government stimulus spending and the vast increase in empty and self-negating transactions on Wall Street itself. It is irrelevant to mention that the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was preceded by similar fluctuations and a vast increase in non-productive "investment" that generated no production and only succeeded in raising stock prices to artificially high levels.
To take our minds off of such negative thinking, here are this week's news items:
• While pursuing a reference in Joseph Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, we came across Dr. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, an English economist who described himself as a member of the new school of institutional economics. We sent an e-mail, briefly describing the Just Third Way and binary economics, and had a very informative skype conference with him on Tuesday of this week. It turns out he is familiar with ESOPs, but was unaware of Kelso's monetary theories. He was positive about the concepts, and asked to be kept in touch.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.
• Also on Tuesday we had a very interesting telephone conference with sixteen students of Mission Viejo High School, who are participating in a mock election run by the school's Humanities Department, as we have described in previous postings. They have scheduled a video conference in which it is anticipated that up to ninety students will participate next Friday, November 6, 2009, and Norman Kurland will respond to questions on the issues after a brief presentation on the Just Third Way and the platform of the American Revolutionary Party. Mr. Mark Selle, a superintendent of schools near Spokane, Washington, has expressed interest in duplicating the program in his two school districts.
• On Wednesday, CESJ had its monthly "News and Project Reports" meeting, the usual follow up to the monthly business meeting. A great number of projects and news items were covered, many of which have been reported in the previous weekly news updates.
• Work on Dr. Alamgir's book is progressing. The manuscript is now being indexed. Other projects, such as the "Ferree Compendium" and Dr. Harold Moulton's The Formation of Capital are waiting for the indexing of Dr. Alamgir's book to be completed. The first draft of the "short version" of the money book is finished, except for approximately half a dozen cites and references that need to be tracked down.
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 41 different countries and 40 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, Aruba, and India. People in Aruba, the Czech Republic, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, 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 and the general malaise afflicting the world. The posting on "Personhood and the Ontology of Personalism," while not the most inviting popular title, has had more hits in one day than any posting except the one on Mr. Obama's inauguration. It ranks right behind "The Slavery of Past Savings" for the number two spot, followed by "Justice, Justice, Thou Shalt Pursue," and the recommendation for Dr. Charles Rice's new book, "What Happened to Notre Dame," followed by "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 an increasingly louder chord with our readers.
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