The stock market (of course) is bouncing all over the map,
prices for food and fuel are rising rapidly (but there’s no inflation), and the
world is generally in the same sorry state as usual. The difference is that we’re making progress
in advancing the Just Third Way to improve the situation in spite of what seems
to be a strong push to keep things the same, only more so:
• Italy faces nearly $3 trillion in debt and is panicking overwhat to do about it.
Ironically, Italy — the home of
commercial banking — could finance growth with the present value of future
increases in production of marketable goods and services, which is what
commercial banks were invented to facilitate.
Instead, they're assuming (incorrectly) that they can only finance growth
by cutting consumption. This is what Dr.
Harold G. Moulton called “the Economic Dilemma” in his book, The Formation of Capital (1935).
Briefly, the dilemma can be stated, if no one will consume what you produce,
why bother to produce it?
• A combined CESJ/EEI team is in Cleveland this week to
discuss the possibility of applying Just Third Way concepts to the economic
revitalization of the city. While a
Capital Homestead Act would be ideal, there are ways that much of what Capital
Homesteading would accomplish that can be done within the framework of existing
law. This would be very beneficial in
the short- to mid-term, although the full Capital Homesteading package would
need to be enacted within 5 to 7 years at the latest in order to ensure
sustainability.
• Efforts continue to encourage Delegate Bob Marshall to
talk to Norman Kurland about spearheading a similar program for the
Commonwealth of Virginia. You can send
Bob an e-mail suggesting that he talk to Norm at delegatebobmarshall [at]
Hotmail [dot] com.
• The CESJ core group has initiated contact with a lobbyist in
Pennsylvania who might be able to put Norman Kurland in touch with key
legislators and politicians there.
• Guy S. in Iowa continues to network in support of the Just
Third Way and Capital Homesteading among his network, with special emphasis
among fans of G. K. Chesterton and Venerable Fulton Sheen, both of which wrote
a great deal that is consistent with the Just Third Way.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 55 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 United Kingdom, Canada, India, and the Philippines.
People in Columbia, Morocco, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States
spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past
week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,”
“A ‘Virginia-Only’ Currency,” “News from the Network, Vol. 6, No. 4,” and “Avoiding
Monetary Meltdown, I: Andrew Jackson’s War on the Economy.”
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.
#30#
