After a slight downturn as a result of concern over the rise in oil prices coming from the unrest in the Arab world, the stock market is up . . . and, of course, so is the pump price of gasoline, the latter rising precipitously. Add to that the rapid rise in the price of basic foodstuffs, and you have a very volatile mix. Not to worry, though — the economy is in full recovery, as the stock market rise proves beyond a shadow of a doubt.
All that stuff about the necessity of employment and production as the true indicators of economic recovery . . . bah. Alarmism. This is a jobless recovery. As long as the stock market is doing well, everything must be fine. That's because the secondary market is really the primary market. An economy isn't supposed to produce marketable goods and services for people to use. It's just supposed to move money around, allocate financial resources, and make certain prices on the stock market continue to rise. All those unemployed people and companies that can't get credit to finance new capital and create jobs are just too dumb to realize what really drives the economy.
If you haven't caught on by now, both of the above paragraphs are what we call "sarcasm."
Let's be honest. The current situation, both economically and politically, represent one of the best opportunities for implementing the Just Third Way than we have seen in a long time. Of course, all times are good to act justly and do the right thing. It's just that, with so much going wrong, it's more obvious that the time has come for the Just Third Way. To take advantage of that, here's what we've been doing for the past week:
• CESJ's Director of Research, Michael D. Greaney, will be the featured guest on tomorrow's The Challenge, with your host Russell Williams. Again, it's easiest just to republish the station's press release so you know how to tune in: "Saturday February 12th 2011 marks the debut of THE CHALLENGE with Russell Williams, an innovative weekend talk show focusing and bringing emphasis to economic justice and empowerment. Tune in every Saturday morning at 9 AM Eastern on WKND 1480 AM Windsor-Hartford, CT and online at www.goisradio.com/wknd. Call in and let your voice be heard at 860-218-2173 or 860-218-2174."
• Norman Kurland was down at Harris Neck, Georgia earlier this week for an important meeting with community and religious figures interested in the initiative. He returned to Arlington, Virginia, for a day, and then flew back to participate in a "retreat" for the prime movers in the project, at which he will be the keynote speaker.
• CESJ has made a potentially important connection with the National Lawyers Association, [http://www.nla.org/] that spun off from the American Bar Association when the ABA adopted a policy position contrary to principles of the natural moral law that provide the framework and context of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution without the majority consent of its total membership.
• Today is the last day for sales of CESJ and UVM publications to be recorded for February. Possibly due to the growing realization that the natural moral law provides the only sound basis for a just social order, sales of CESJ and UVM books have grown significantly, and this month has set a record for the most sales in February.
• We have been having some interesting conversations with a prospective intern from Brigham Young University. While CESJ internships are unpaid, they frequently offer participants greater scope for creativity and input than other internships. No CESJ intern has ever been sent for coffee, nor made copies for anyone other than him- or herself.
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 51 different countries and 47 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 Philippines, the UK, Canada, and Pakistan. People in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Brazil, and Canada spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular posting this past week is once again "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," followed by "Seeing the Nose on Your Face," "The Right to Choose," "Aristotle on Private Property," and "The Problem with Money, Part VI: Say's Law and the Real Bills Doctrine."
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.
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