It’s official (at least according to news reports): “ ‘We Hate Math’ 4 in 10 Americans — A Majority.” Need we say more? And we were beating ourselves up over how
long it’s taking for people to catch on to the common sense of binary economics
and the Just Third Way.
Nevertheless, we continue our efforts at outreach and
education, as should be evident from the roundup of this week’s activities:
• We received some very sad news today. Father Cassian Yuhaus, C.P., a long-time
member and Counselor of CESJ, died February 14, 2013, in Scranton, Pennsylvania,
where he was retired as Rector of St. Ann’s Shrine Basilica. Father Cassian was instrumental in arranging
for CESJ’s audiences with His Holiness, Blessed John Paul II, as well as the
seminars given at the Vatican in 1992, and served as liaison between CESJ and
His Eminence, Achille Cardinal Silvestrini, former Vatican Secretary of State
for Internal Affairs and Prefect of the Oriental Congregations. Father Cassian’s unfailing cheerfulness and
charity toward those who did not understand the message of the Just Third Way
served as an inspiration.
• Don’t forget to clear your calendar for Friday, April 26,
2013 and the annual rally at the Federal Reserve. We don’t have all the details yet, but it
looks as if there is going to be some entertainment and a number of interesting
speakers.
• Talk about a “lose-lose” situation. What with the budget cuts on one hand, and
the Federal Reserve pumping cash into the economy on the other, what we’re
seeing is an accelerating concentration of wealth. Many government programs at least increase
consumption spending, while Fed bond purchases simply shift the holdings of the
wealthy from government debt to private sector debt and equity. This drives up prices on the secondary
market, luring even more money away from the productive sector and capital
investment. Direct government spending
creates unsustainable jobs, but diversion of corporate income to stock market
speculation instead of paying it out in dividends destroys jobs.
• Equity Expansion International, Inc., a for-profit
investment banking firm “for the 99%,” has submitted specs for an innovative
“JBM ESOP” to a law firm that is putting together a design for an equally
innovative “aquaponics” start-up in the Midwest. Indications are that the aquaponics operation
could quickly develop into an industry leader, especially with the edge it will
have with Justice-Based Management. A
number of cities are keeping a close watch on the project as it develops.
• Guy S. in Iowa sent us a copy of Venerable Fulton Sheen’s Communism and the Conscience of the West
(1948). Unlike much of what has been
coming out of Catholic academia for many years, the book is an insightful
analysis of what is wrong with socialism, but without surrendering to the flaws
inherent in capitalism. Reading the
book, we can understand why the Catholic Church “only” criticizes capitalism,
but condemns socialism outright. Thus,
the adherence of many of the Catholic intelligentsia to programs and proposals
that are socialism in all but name is baffling — which may explain the lack of
popularity of Sheen’s book.
• We also received a copy of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (2011), by
James Rickards.
• We continue to work on our analysis of John Mueller’s Redeeming Economics (2010). So far, the book has fully met our
expectations, embodying a shift away from Aristotelian/Thomism while claiming
to be Thomist, and is thus diametrically opposed to the Just Third Way that
(probably thanks to Mortimer Adler) is consistent with the natural law.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 50 different countries and 51 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, Philippines, and India. People
in Nepal, Morocco, Estonia, Argentina, and Jamaica 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,” “Avoiding Monetary Meltdown, I: Andrew Jackson’s War on the Economy,”
and “The Death of Reason, XIII: Understanding Money.”
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#
