An interesting week, as usual. Issues are being clarified, and the world situation makes it increasingly plain that, without Capital Homesteading, there is little likelihood of any country coming out of this with a whole skin. The speculators on Wall Street and the politicians in Washington can comfort themselves with the wild fluctuations in the stock market, as if such activity is somehow a sign of healthy economic growth (yeah — like the convulsions and subsequent death rattle of a murder victim), but the rise and fall of the stock market (the Fourth Reich) doesn't actually do much to put food on anyone's table, or produce one marketable good or service that can be used directly or exchanged for food, clothing or shelter.
So why all the excitement and focus on the secondary market for corporate debt and equity? We have no idea. We prefer to concentrate on something a little bit more productive, like advancing the Just Third Way:
• Norman Kurland had a very good interview with a magazine journalist this morning on the subject, "Money is not evil." Naturally, we can't give out the name of the journalist or the magazine until the issue comes out (it's scheduled for July) — it makes no sense to give out exclusive interviews and then for the interviewee to "scoop" the journalist — but we can tell you that Norm was, as always, right on the mark. He focused on the importance of access to money and credit as a social tool that can be used to help people become capital owners rather than remain wage slaves, and outlined the critical role that Louis Kelso played, both in developing these ideas and getting them to prime movers like the late Senator Russell Long of Louisiana.
• The Coalition for Capital Homesteading group met on Friday. A number of important items were discussed, although due to limited time, the agenda was not completed.
• Wendy in Denver is intensifying efforts to get Norm a meeting with religious officials in the mile-high city.
• With the theme, "the death of the economy is the first step in the death of a civilization," Guy Stevenson has created a "Louis Kelso Mix" for YouTube with the title, "Louis Kelso: Saving the Economy. It is well worth sending around to your network.
• We have finished the first draft of a response to some (groundless) concerns that have been expressed about Supporting Life (the book) and Capital Homesteading (the proposal). We believe that we have managed to answer all expressed concerns, and are only waiting on receipt of some supplementary material cited by the concerned citizen before sending it off. (By the way: Amazon has lowered the price of Supporting Life below wholesale, despite the fact that we've sent them a number of e-mails pointing out that they might want to correct this little error ... since they now lose money on every sale. Either they're 1) ignoring "customer feedback," or 2) Amazon is one of the strongest corporate supporters of a Pro-Life economic agenda we've ever seen, willing to pick up a significant amount of the cost of the book for their customers.)
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 49 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, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Brazil. People in Nigeria, Honduras, Venezuela, Canada and Qatar spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular posting this past week was once again "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," followed by "Aristotle on Private Property," the memorial to Robert P. Woodman, "Economic Recovery," and ""Finding the Right Negatives."
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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