The mode of this week’s media is
market madness . . . with a nod toward a number of future publications
hopefully soon to come down the pike. Other
than that, there have been a lot of thoughtful conversations and one meeting,
as well as the usual advancement of the Just Third Way:
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| Back to basics in Philadelphia? |
• New Book on Capital Homesteading?
Acceptance is, of course, not certain, but a manuscript comparing
Catholic, natural law social teaching and the Just Third Way has been submitted
to a major Catholic publisher — at the publisher’s own request. While short, in keeping with the publisher’s
requirements, it is substantive, and may answer a number of concerns raised by
some recent books by prominent Catholics and others (Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, Anthony Esolen’s Out of the Ashes, Archbishop Charles
Chaput’s Strangers in a Strange Land)
about how to put the U.S. and other countries back onto a track more in keeping
with the original vision of America’s Founding Fathers.
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| Might need a little fixing up. |
• National Infrastructure Bank.
On Monday, members of the CESJ Core Group met with a group promoting
reforms in banking and tax policy to finance infrastructure in the United
States. A number of the ideas appeared
to be compatible with the proposals of the interfaith Center for Economic and
Social Justice (CESJ) and its “Citizens Land Development Cooperative”
concept. A number of details could be
worked out, such as where ownership should be vested and how infrastructure can
be made self-liquidating and self-sustaining whenever possible, but details
were made to be worked out as long as the basic concept is sound.
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| Just a slight market adjustment. |
• Market Volatility. What with the finagling of interest rates by
the Federal Reserve and the increasingly tense global situation, the stock
market has been undergoing more than its usual fluctuations. For those in it for the long haul, this is
not too much of a problem, although naturally worrisome. For those attempting to “play the market,” it
can be a disaster, as a single bad decision on a long or short sale can wipe
them out. Those it does not worry are
those with access to computer trading and more cash than the GDP of Denmark,
who make money on split second trades any time the market moves in any
direction, up or down, and although they may make a profit of a thousandth of a
cent on a single share, multiplied by the sheer volume of trades means that wild
swings in the market — again, up or down — can generate millions of dollars in
speculative profits in a single day.
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| Old habits die hard. |
• Chinese Robber Barons.
Unverified rumor has it that the Chinese Nomenklatura are making fortunes
by picking up shares at bargain prices from ruined middle class investors who
sank their savings and all they could borrow into speculative shares on the
Shanghai Exchange, while the Chinese market is taking a hammering today. The government encouraged the middle class to
invest, and then financed growth with increased government debt, creating a
speculative bubble as cash flowed into the economy, and those with access to
ready money are picking up the pieces.
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| Fr. William Ferree, S.M., PH.D. |
• Other CESJ Publications. The revision of CESJ’s 2004 policy guide, Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen,
is on track and may be ready for release the early part of next year. Editing of What Happened to Social Justice is proceeding apace, as is that of
the compendium of the writings of CESJ co-founder Father William J. Ferree, S.M.,
Ph.D. Plans for a number of other
projects have yet to be finalized but are in the works. To promote publications, CESJ is
experimenting with producing “book trailers,” short videos to give a preview,
much like the movie trailers seen in theaters.
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 37 different countries
and 46 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, Brazil, India,
and the United Kingdom. The most popular
postings this past week in descending order were “Distributism
and Ronald Reagan, I,” “Distributism
and Ronald Reagan, II,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 41,” “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” and “Just
Third Way Podcast Number 38.”
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#