The “experts” are now starting to predict a “fallback” or “correction”
in the stock market. This is something
we’ve been warning about for some time.
Like most “booms,” the rapid, even drastic increase in stock prices
unconnected with a sound economy, full production, and widespread capital
ownership in an economy in which capital grossly out-produces labor has a very
hollow sound when thumped, accounting for that booming sound.
What is to be done?
For one thing, an immediate implementation of an aggressive program of
widespread capital ownership combined with essential monetary and tax reforms
would at the very least point the economy back in the right direction. At the very most, of course, it would bring
full employment within 2 years, restore equilibrium within 5 to 7 years, and eliminate
the national debt within 65 years — sooner, if there is rapid capital expansion
that is broadly owned by as many people as possible.
True, 65 years seems like a long time, but we are talking
the life of a nation here, not the life of a single individual. Not only that, but a 65-year repayment
schedule beats a non-repayable debt and national bankruptcy every time. That is why we never stop working at
implementing the Just Third Way, nor will we ever:
• Astrid Uytterhaegen’s volunteer fellowship at CESJ is
drawing to a close. In a little less
than two months she has acted as official translator and commentator for the
Just Third Way to the President of the Republic of Guinea, traveled to
Cleveland, Ohio, to participate in meetings with civic and religious leaders
and potential funding groups, written, directed, and produced a Just Third Way
video, and gotten a gourmet lunch every day.
There were more events and projects scheduled, but a number of plans
fell through due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control.
• If you are self-motivated,
creative, and interested in a CESJ internship, fellowship, or volunteer,
especially if you are in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, please feel
free to get in touch and discuss your interests with a member of the core
group. More information can be found on the CESJ
website. (There are also
projects for people that can be done over the internet if you’re not in the DC
area.)
• Guy Stevenson (“the
Fulton Sheen Guy”) and Jeanna Casey have come up with a number of quotes
recently illustrating Fulton Sheen’s intellect and scholarship — an aspect of
him that many of his fans today neglect or of which they are simply
unaware. Many people these days think of
Sheen simply as “the first televangelist,” or “that radio preacher,” without
considering what made him so effective. This
is odd, because the great G.K. Chesterton characterized Sheen as a defender of
reason above everything else. Or perhaps
it is not so odd — so great is the distaste for reason and common sense these
days that even the disciples of “the Apostle of Common Sense” prefer to focus
on Chesterton’s “mystic” and “poetic” side, rather than his major contributions
to the effort to restore reason as the basis of civil, religious, and domestic
society.
• Guy has a limited
number of copies of the Just Third Way Edition of Fulton Sheen’s Freedom Under God available for
qualified reviewers, commentators, and policymakers (not necessarily with the
government), and other well-placed people.
If you think you qualify to receive a copy, send an e-mail to “publications”
[at] “cesj” [dot] “org” making your case, and we’ll forward it to Guy for a
final decision after an initial screening.
Otherwise, we encourage you to purchase the book from Amazon
or Barnes
and Noble, and post a review on those websites.
• We are getting close
to launching the Campaign for Distributive Justice to fund the effort to
complete, edit, and market an in-depth study of what happened to the
understanding of the concept of distributive justice, and why the restoration
of the classical understanding is so critical to the restructuring of the
social order in conformity with the laws and characteristics of social justice,
and the three principles of economic justice: 1) Participative Justice, 2)
Distributive Justice, and 3) Social Justice.
The campaign will combine “crowdfunding” with targeted solicitations to
foundations and organizations that have an interest in restoring a sound understanding
of concepts of justice to society.
• CESJ’s latest
“Paradigm Paper,” The Political Animal:
Economic Justice and the Sovereignty of the Human Person, has been
submitted to the printer. We anticipate
that copies in bulk will be available by the end of September, and individual
copies will be available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble before the end of
October.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 51 different countries and 45 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, Australia, Ecuador, and Canada. The most
popular postings this past week were “Happy Capital Day!, II: The Capital
Question,” “A Legal Amateur’s Look at Roe v. Wade,” “Aristotle on Private
Property,” “Fulton Sheen Suspended . . . Again?, I: What’s the Story?” and “Happy
Capital Day!, I: The Theories of Labor.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those 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, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
