Most of the economic news this week has to do with the debt ceiling debacle, but there are other knavishly imbecilic events as well. (That’s our current catch phrase, by the way, so expect to see it a lot.) Naturally, a lot of these problems and others could be solved or at least ameliorated with the Economic Democracy Act, but that might actually work, so they run away from it as fast as they can:
° The Greater Reset for Five Dollars. As part of it’s effort to promote the book you should be reading instead of watching reality TV instead of surfing the net, TAN Books is again running it’s $5 sale on selected books, foremost among which is The Greater Reset: Restoring Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law. TAN may give free shipping on large orders (check the fine print), so for what three copies plus shipping will cost you at the Amazon price ($100+), you can get twenty copies at this price, $100 even (makes a great Independence Day gift). For a measly $500, you can get a hundred copies, for $5,000 you can get a thousand copies, and if you sell your house, you can buy out the print run. At this price, you can afford to give them away, or if you resell them at the cover price of $29.95 (or a “suggested donation” of $30 so you don’t need a license since it’s not a sale), you can make enough to buy back your house.
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| Alas, poor Dollar, we knew him well. |
° Demise of the Dollar? The experts are once again predicting the demise of the U.S. dollar as the most widely accepted global reserve currency. The problem is that any reserve currency that is backed with government debt instead of private sector hard assets is at the mercy of the politicians . . . and why should someone in Andorra be ruled economically and financially by somebody in Washington, DC? The only solution is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act, which would back reserve currencies with private sector hard assets instead of government debt, making the whole question which currency was used moot.
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| ""Not to worry, peasants, I got mine!" |
• Buffett Blasts Balanced Budget. Warren Buffett has called for an end to the whole debt ceiling controversy, which sounds crazy on the surface, but it ends up being crazy like a fox once you understand how Keynesian economics works. F. Scott Fitzgerald once commented that “the rich are different,” to which Ernest Hemmingway (allegedly) responded, “Yes, they have more money.” That’s only true in a sense. The fact is there are two ways of being rich. You can have a lot of money, or you can have a lot of wealth. The value of money can be manipulated by governments issuing reserve currencies backed with their own debt. The value of wealth is usually only subject to the laws of supply and demand. (That, by the way, is why totalitarians of every kind rail against the laws of supply and demand, which are a description of how a free market operates; they want to control others by controlling money and credit, and forcing everyone to subsist on government-created jobs and government provided welfare.) When your assets are denominated in money, government manipulation of the currency can wipe you out overnight. When your assets are only measured in money but consist of capital that produces marketable goods and services, then inflation makes you rich(er), and deflation makes you powerful. Buffett, of course has billions in wealth measured, not denominated in dollars, so he wins either way. Most of us have assets denominated in dollars, so lose both ways. What’s the answer? Adopt the Economic Democracy Act, and make it possible for everyone to become owners of cital measured, not denominated in dollars.
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| "Don't worry, peasants, I'm getting mine." |
• Paul Krugman Also Blasts Balanced Budget. Neo-Keynesian economist Paul Krugman is also calling for the debt ceiling to be abolished and is worried about a U.S. debt default. Not because he fears that the U.S. won’t pay its debts, but because the country (meaning the politicians) won’t be able to issue new debt, further debauch the currency, and control the rest of us, which is at the heart of Keynesian economics, which is predicated on the growth and maintenance of the authoritarian state (and if you don’t believe that, just read the first paragraphs in Keynes’s Treatise on Money). Since Krugman’s income and status comes from telling politicians what they want to hear (how to be rich and powerful without doin’ nothing), he is all for debauching the currency and wrecking the economy as fast as he can. He would be the last person to advocate sound economy and rational public finance as can be found in the Economic Democracy Act.
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| Gold Rush Days in San Francisco |
• Sheering v. Slaughtering. Lawlessness is so bad in San Francisco that more and more stores are simply pulling out or closing up altogether. The authorities are baffled, although the causes shouldn’t be too hard to find when the law makes being an outlaw fun and profitable. By making major theft only a misdemeanor, law enforcement can’t afford to waste its limited resources prosecuting small offenders who loot stores and kill and maim anyone who tries to defend himself or stop the looting. It’s far more important to protect abortion clinics from protestors praying the rosary, guard parades of naked cyclists, and arrest children who make a gun with their hands and shout “bang-bang” while playing cops and robbers or cowpersons and indigenous oppressed personnel. Of course, adopting the Economic Democracy Act might put a stop to such knavish imbecility, but who wants to do that?
• Moonlighting Mania. As economic conditions worsen, workers are finding it less and less attractive to work harder and get less. Constantly being urged to take one for the team doesn’t do much good when all the benefits for doing so go to others. Consequently, many people are taking on part time and even full time second and third jobs to make more money and get some satisfaction and reward for their efforts . . . and employers are complaining, of course. They want to control others for their personal benefit, not be a part of the team whose virtues they extol for others. The obvious solution, of course, is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act, but apparently people who are power mad and consumed by greed don’t think in those terms.
• Panic on the Street! (Again). The stock market had one of its increasingly frequent panics earlier this week when the labor statistics were released. It’s not that stock speculator’s give a rat’s ass about whether people have enough to live on, which nowadays comes from wages and welfare for most people, but that they need people with incomes to buy the goods and services that make profits that raise stock prices so they can sell the stock to make money to buy more stock. Of course, this whole scenario would become meaningless (except for entertainment purposes) if most people had income that didn’t depend on wages and welfare . . . such as would be possible by adopting the Economic Democracy Act, but that, of course, would mean that the speculators and politicians who feed off of them would have to do something productive to get income, meaning they’d be on a par with the rest of us.
• The High Cost of Not Dying. Woman in developing countries have a higher rate of mortality than in the developed countries (as does everyone else for that matter, duh). So, what do they propose? Give the women money. This will presumably put them on a par with women in the developed countries . . . who don’t make as much as men in many cases, claim discrimination, and when they make more money than men complain that they can’t find “high value men” to hook up with or (as a last resort) get married. Of course, just giving women in developing countries money means that they will spend it or hand it over to some guy in many cases, leaving them worse off than before if the money stops and they get beaten up for it or killed. Instead of settling for fifty grades of pay, however, if we had the Economic Democracy Act, people, including women, would have an income by right instead of as a gift from others that makes them dependent.
• Demand and Dollar Stores. Usually hen times get tough, at least economically speaking, the dollar discount stores do a land office business. Things are so bad now (despite the alleged “economic recovery” for the rich) that even places like Dollar General Store and The Dollar Tree are hurting as people stop buying non-necessities instead of shifting to cheaper alternatives. Since an economy is supposed to be for everybody, not just the rich or the abstraction of humanity, immense benefits going to a few while most people are barely making it or not making it at all is an indictment of the system. What’s the solution? Make it possible for people to have an adequate and secure income from capital ownership, not just wages and welfare. This can be done by adopting the Economic Democracy Act, which would make it possible for every child, woman, and man to become a capital owner, paying for it with the future profits of the capital itself.
• More Reserve Currency Woes. India seems to have Russia by the short hairs. It’s been buying cheap Russian oil and paying for it in Rupees instead of U.S. dollars, allowing Russia to accumulate billions of rupees in profits . . . which India then refuses to let out of the country. Quite a few countries do this, by the way. Since virtually all reserve currencies are backed by government debt these days, in conformity with Keynesian doctrine, when another country holds your country’s reserve currency, they are your country’s creditors, which means they have the strongest possible hold on you next to putting a gun to your head. Naturally governments don’t like this, so they prohibit export of their currency, thereby violating the property rights of the people who own the currency that they can’t get their hands on. Of course, they could do what organized crime does and buy crypto currencies with their foreign currency holdings, transfer the crypto to their own country, but then they’re left with the same problem as before: they could only sell the crypto for their own currency, which is not acceptable in foreign trade because it’s backed by debt of a questionable government that might not pay its debts. What’s the solution? In the short run, Russia can get out of Ukraine. In the long run, the Economic Democracy Act, which would back reserve currencies with private sector hard assets instead of government debt, making the whole question which currency was used moot.
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially a minute and a half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s new book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series. The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human persons place in society.
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 well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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