We recently had an enquiry about whether we thought that
things like Military Banking Facilities, credit unions, and mutual insurance
companies such as USAA should or must give way to the giants of today’s
financial services industry. If you’re a
regular reader of this blog, you just know what we had to say about that . . .
completely aside from the fact that a significant number of people in the CESJ
Core Group qualify for USAA insurance. . . .
Financial institutions that specialize on specific services
and market segments, such as the military, provide essential services that the
financial services industry is not geared toward providing. The markets are completely different, and
specialization is justified.
Further, there is a significant difference between consumer
financial services, and those designed and intended to serve agriculture,
commerce, and industry. The giants of
the financial services industry are there to provide commercial financial services, where MBFs, CUs, and mutual
insurance companies provide personal and consumer services.
Rather than consolidation of all financial services under a
single umbrella, or a few large umbrellas, consumers (both military and
civilian) as well as the agricultural, commercial, and industrial sectors would
be better served if specialization were increased, rather than decreased, and
financial institutions separated by function and market. Separation and
specialization prevents conflicts of interest, restores internal control,
reduces the need for government regulation, and limits the potential scope of
mal- and misfeasance.
Here’s what else we’ve been doing:
• Members of the CESJ Core Group in Cleveland have been
having discussions with a possible funding source for Justice University and a
project at John Carroll University.
Meeting arrangements are still in process with contacts at Georgetown
University to discuss the possibility of building a network of institutions of
higher learning. The plan is to start
with Catholic colleges and universities, since that is where CESJ currently has
the most contacts, but to bring institutions affiliated with other faiths, and
secular institutions into the network as soon as it becomes feasible. The CESJ chapter in Cleveland is making a
donation to defray a portion of the traveling expenses.
• Early this week CESJ received permission to place and
comment on an article by the Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. The article is concerned with how many people
are misinterpreting virtually everything that Pope Francis says. Before his election, Pope Francis was Grand
Chancellor of the university, and the Rector’s “boss.”
• Deacon Joseph B.
Gorini, founder, chairman, and CEO of Evangelization Enterprises, Inc.
(EEI), and also Apostolic Action, Inc. (AAI), has surfaced a number of
potential contacts who might be open to implementing the Just Third Way in a
number of companies. Within the framework of existing law, this
means the “JBM S-Corp ESOP,” which is legally the same as any other S-Corp
ESOP, but adds features that make it uniquely adaptable to Justice-Based
Leadership and Management. Deacon Gorini
also heads Light and Heat Ministries (LAHMin), an operating operation
division of EEI, and which is currently the public face of the
organization. (Note: don’t confuse
Deacon Gorini’s EEI with the for-profit ESOP investment banking and consulting
firm, Equity Expansion International, Inc., which by mere coincidence has the
same acronym.)
• Norman Kurland recently received an e-mail from Dr. Robert
Crane, one of CESJ’s co-founders. Bob,
an Islamic scholar who is with a university in the Middle East, put Norm in
touch with a key individual in Afghanistan, who is interested in proposing CESJ’s
oil proposal for Iraq and the Abraham Federation concept to enable everyone
to share in the direct ownership of land and natural resources as a means of
bringing peace to the region.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 60 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, India, Australia, and Canada. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle
on Private Property,” “Avoiding Monetary Meltdown, II: Salmon P. Chase and the
Greenbacks,” “‘Inspired Amateurs Should Avoid Politics’,” and “Guest Posting: A
Critical Response.”
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#