The freezing temperatures here around Washington, DC, and
the currency spectacle in Argentina (and pretty much everywhere else in the
world) do have something in common. Not
much, but something. I’ll explain.
When I discuss the temperature with a friend in Germany, I
often have something of a “jog” in the conversation. She measures the temperature in Celsius,
while I use Fahrenheit. When, during a
summer heat wave, she says she’s burning up at 20°, I have to pause for that
“Oh, yeah” moment. Once said to her
that, if she would just change from Celsius to Fahrenheit, she would cool off
very fast, start freezing, in fact. (For
some reason she didn’t think that was funny, but Germans have no sense of
humor, anyway.)
Obviously it’s silly to think that you can change the
temperature simply by recalibrating the thermometer or by using a different
standard. It ain’t gonna change nothing.
Why, then, do the “experts” insist that you can promote
economic growth by manipulating or changing the measure of economic growth: the
currency? Money, after all, is not
wealth. Money is a measure of wealth, the
medium of exchange by means of which claims on the present value of existing
and future wealth are conveyed in a transaction. Issuing more money backed by nothing but
government debt only increases the claims, it doesn’t increase wealth. In fact, devaluing existing claims by issuing
debt-backed instead of asset-backed money makes it harder to create new wealth,
and distorts the distribution of existing wealth.
So what have we been doing this past week to try and restore
some sanity to matters?
• This past Monday was CESJ’s quarterly board meeting. The issue of participation of non-board
members was addressed, making it clear that non-board members participate in an
advisory capacity, representing the membership as a whole, with votes being in
the form of non-binding “opinion polls.”
The position of “National Field Secretary” has been put in
abeyance. “Project Manager” was selected
as being more appropriate and descriptive at the present time.
• CESJ interviewed a prospective intern from American
University recently. The prospect sounds
very enthusiastic, and appears to grasp some of the fundamental principles
already. She believes that, assuming she
accepts the internship, she might bring as many as a dozen people to the annual
rally at the Federal Reserve in April.
• CESJ has been working with a consulting group to train
members of the CESJ core group to submit grant applications to foundations. A number of projects have been reviewed for funding,
with the primary one being the Justice University proposal.
• The CESJ core group has been having some in-depth
discussions with two clergymen in Pennsylvania, both of whom have expressed
interest in advancing the Just Third Way through both non-profit and for-profit
channels. We are still in the
“relationship building” phase, making connections, and learning about each
other’s respective approaches and philosophies, but so far everything has been
going very well.
• Norman Kurland attended a reception hosted by “Americans
United for Life,” a Pro-Life legal advocacy organization, the night before the
annual “March for Life” in Washington, DC.
Norm made a number of interesting connections, and will be following up,
with the goal of introducing the Pro-Life movement as a whole to the
possibilities represented by a “Pro-Life economic agenda” as part of the
“platform.”
• Guy S. in Iowa located a rare English translation of a radio address given by Pope Pius XII on September 1, 1944,
in which the pope stressed the importance of private property in securing
family life on a firm foundation, and in reconstructing the social order once
the war then in progress came to an end.
(Scroll up and to the right to see the article by following the
link.) Some parts of the address were
obscured due to poor copying, but reference to the official Italian and Spanish
versions on the Vatican website should make it easy to fill in the missing
words. (An interesting side note for
people interested in Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, “Padre Pio,” is that one of the
newspapers in which Guy found a report of the pope’s address also carried an article about the Italian friar whose masses were attended by “thousands of
U.S. soldiers,” both Catholic and non-Catholic.)
• The big news is still that Freedom Under God is available after nearly three-quarters of a
century. CESJ is now taking bulk/wholesale orders (please, no individual
sales). The per unit price for ten or
more copies is $16.00 (20% discount). Shipping
is extra. Send an e-mail to “publications [at] cesj [dot] org”
stating how many copies you want and the street address (no P. O. Boxes) where
you want them delivered. We will get
back to you with the total cost, how to pay, and estimated delivery time. All payments must be made in advance, and
orders are placed only after payment clears.
Individual copies are available from Amazon
and Barnes and Noble,
as well as by special order from many bookstores.
• CESJ offers a 10%
commission on the retail cover price on bulk sales of publications. If you broker a deal with, for example, a
school or civic organization that buys a publication in bulk (i.e., ten copies or more of a single
title), you receive a commission once a transaction has been completed to the
satisfaction of the customer. Thus, if
you get your club or school to purchase, say, ten cases of Freedom Under God (280 copies) or any other CESJ or UVM
publication, the organization would pay CESJ $3,920.00 (280 copies x $20 per
copy, less a 30% discount), plus shipping (the commission is calculated on the
retail cost only, not the shipping). You would receive $560.00. Send an e-mail to “publications [at] cesj [dot] org” for copies of flyers of CESJ and
UVM publications. (CESJ project
participants and UVM shareholders are not
eligible for commissions.)
• So Much Generosity,
the collection of essays about the fiction of Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman, John
Henry Cardinal Newman, and Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson by Michael D. Greaney,
CESJ’s Director of Research. The book is
now available on Amazon
and Barnes and Noble,
and is also available on Kindle.
Many of the essays incorporate elements of the Just Third Way. The book is priced at $20.00, and there is a
20% discount on bulk orders (i.e.,
ten or more), which can be ordered by sending an e-mail to publications [at]
cesj [dot] org.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 50 different countries and 46 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, Germany, Nigeria, and Brazil. The most
popular postings this past week were “Some Thoughts on Money, Part II,” “A
Brief Course in Banking Theory, I: Banks of Deposit,” “What History Teaches Us
About the Welfare State,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” and “Why Did Nixon
Take the Dollar Off the Gold Standard?”
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#