According to AI (bow), the Number One economic news item this past week was the 100,000 difference in the anticipated increase and the actual loss. Number Two was the decline in the trade deficit . . . not because the U.S. is exporting more, but because it is importing less (at a higher price . . .). Number Three was the rising fuel cost due to the war in Iran. These and other items make us wonder how long it is going to be before we adopt the Economic Democracy Act:
• A Blowhard Bully? Some people never seem to learn . . . or they assume that others don’t. President Trump’s tariffs didn’t work the first time around, and now he is threatening to impose a new round before they can be declared illegal again . . . and, as reported in Politico, “Europe Isn’t Buying.” That’s the problem with using threats instead of genuine diplomacy, or thinking in terms of a stunted “transactional” type of politics with a built-in lose-lose feature. As reported in the article, “Washington is again ratcheting up the pressure on the European Union with new tariff threats. Brussels’ response is strikingly different from a year ago: Don’t retaliate, don’t put on a show for Donald Trump, and don’t let him dictate the timetable. . . . But rather than sounding alarms and scrambling to respond to this new phase of Trump’s global trade war, the EU has shown public restraint — a reaction that suggests that the 27-member bloc has become less susceptible to Trump’s pressure tactics.” Frankly, Trump — and the EU leaders — would be better off pushing for the Economic Democracy Act (EDA), instead of trying to bluff with or respond to outdated and failed 19th century economic tactics ill-suited for the 21st century.
• A Yen for Intervention. From the perspective of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, there is something fundamentally wrong with a monetary system that needs an “intervention” to support the reserve currency. It argues a poorly structured financial system as well as substandard management — or too much of it coming from government. It was, after all, the European intervention in the early 1970s that led to the U.S. abandoning the gold standard which opened up the floodgates to unrestricted government debt financing once the need to support the standard was taken away. That’s why the report from Reuters is so worrying. As noted in an article on August 3, 2026, “The Japanese yen held gains above recent 40-year lows on Monday after Japan and the United States launched a rare joint yen-buying intervention and vowed to take further action if needed to shore up the currency. The intervention on Friday underscored both countries’ resolve to prevent a selloff in the yen and Japanese government bonds from causing global spillovers, such as adding upward pressure on already rising U.S. Treasury yields, analysts said.” In other words, two of the world’s strongest economies are having trouble maintaining a stable value for their currencies. This happens frequently when there is no objective currency standard, the government has a huge portion of the economy, and the reserve currency is backed exclusively by government debt. This would be rare, possibly even non-existent once the provisions of the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) were fully implemented and the national debt paid off, but the powers-that-be never seem to think about it.
• Student Loan Debt Relief. As Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler were pointing out nearly a century ago (how time flies when you’re depressed), turning colleges and universities — or even grade and high schools — into job training where you need a degree but not the education it purportedly represents to get a “good job” is a mug’s game. Still, it’s nice to see that students who were hoodwinked into taking out loans to “invest” in higher “education” are due to get some of the money they expended back. According to an article in Yahoo! Finance, “A years-long legal battle that left hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers in limbo is ending. After a recent court ruling, students who were defrauded by the schools they attended — mostly for-profit colleges that misrepresented the value their degrees could offer students — may soon get relief.” Now the next step is to allow student loans to be eligible (if that’s the right word) to be cleared by bankruptcy. Not right away, of course — we know that game, too, where someone racks up a million dollars in loans for education and declares bankruptcy the day after graduation. No, give it ten or fifteen years. That’s still not addressing the problem, however, which is the rising cost of education in response to tons of government money flowing in and a high demand for degrees to get jobs. Adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) will help get a handle on it, but the only thing that will really help is to return education to its proper purpose of . . . education.
• Trump Kiddy Accounts. Thinking of having your children get rich from a Trump Toddler Account? Don’t hold your breath. According to an article in USA Today, “The Trump Accounts site says, ‘big things start with small steps.’ But if you’re imagining that your child could have hundreds of thousands of dollars – or maybe even millions – one day in a new tax-advantaged Trump Account, well, take a careful look at what it takes to make the big bucks. Building wealth depends a great deal on how many years the money remains invested after the child turns 18 years old. And much depends on whether family, friends, your employer and others contribute cash along the way. Much will depend, too, on how well the stock market does over several years and how the money is invested.” That’s a lot of ifs in there. It would be much better — and certainly much simpler — just to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) which can do all the Trump Accounts are touted to do, and more, and at much less cost.
• AI Changes Your Brain. Oy, weh. We didn’t have enough to worry about with getting old and everything either falling off, falling apart, or just falling. Now we find that using AI changes your brain, “Like TikTok and Fentanyl had a baby.” As explained in an article in Men’s Health, “Not only is AI crushing our focus and memory, but it can also tank our performance and leave us with such cognitive overload and mental fatigue that researchers writing about the phenomenon in Harvard Business Review dubbed it ‘AI brain fry.’” And how is it doing it? By destroying our ability to think for ourselves and remember things. Tests have been done by plugging in students’ brains told to write an essay. A third used AI to write it, a third used Google search, and a third used no assistance whatever. The third using AI were practically brain dead, the third using Google were mildly brain active, while those writing from scratch were firing on all cylinders. It makes us glad we’re still doing most of our own writing, using AI to check facts and give leads . . . unless we’re “ordered” to use AI to get out more work (evidently, we don’t write in an acceptable AI-ish manner). This is one of those situations where we’re not sure how adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) would help, but it certainly couldn’t make the situation worse.
• Big Boom A-Coming. It all depends on how you understand the term “boom.” We keep getting told the economy is booming . . . as people are losing their jobs and many university graduates can’t find one that matches their alleged skill set presumably acquired after spending a gazillion dollars for a job training degree. Not an education, just the degree. To qualify you for a job. That doesn’t exist. So you can write sentence fragments. Like this. Anyway, according to an article in Yahoo! Finance, Wall Street is getting set for a “Big Boom.” In bonuses. For the few who retain their jobs. Okay, we’ll stop. As the article states, “Wall Street is reveling in a year of mega deals, a surging stock market, and a continuing AI frenzy. The compensation consulting firm has hiked bonus projections by an average of 3 percentage points from its already bullish first quarter forecast. The firm tracks across 21 Wall Street job categories. Four out of five Wall Street jobs are projected to see a bonus increase over last year. A clear theme: Big banks are expected to far outpace other corners of finance.” Evidently, for the last men (or women) standing, things are pretty good. Not so good for the rest of us, however, although that could be solved by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) so the rest of us can have a boom, too, instead of just hearing about it.
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| Gone With the . . . Bread? |
• No More “Peanut Butter Raises”. Not too long ago, we had never heard of “peanut butter raises,” which AI tells us are “flat, uniform salary increases distributed evenly across an entire workforce, metaphorically ‘spread thin’ like peanut butter on bread. [Not in our house.] Instead of tying pay bumps to individual performance or merit, companies give every employee the same percentage increase (typically around 3% to 3.5%).” Now, according to an article in CBS News, and consistent with the above item about the boom in bonuses, “More companies are moving away from broad ‘peanut butter’-style pay raises for workers in favor of merit-based and other kinds of compensation sweeteners for top employees, according to new insights from Payscale. The trend toward rewarding strong individual performers within a business marks a shift away from companies spreading pay hikes evenly across their workforces. Just 32% of employers say they are planning a standard, across-the-board increase for workers in 2027, down from 36% who did so in 2026, according to Payscale, a compensation and benefits software company.” In other words, contrary to the usual pep talk people get about how the company workforce is a team, only the stars will get a share of the goodies, thereby ensuring there is no incentive to do better, since raises will go to upper management and those who have learned to suck up better than others, regardless of their actual performance. Why not do as Walter Reuther suggested more than half a century ago and cut everyone in on ownership, with increases coming from profits and distributed according to ownership stake? It’s much more incentivizing and builds solidarity rather than tearing it apart. This could be done by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
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| Thought it was a TACO. |
• Bigger and Better Battlewagons. Bigger is not always better, especially in the “art of war,” as Ukraine is currently proving in its defense against Russia . . . but which world leaders such as Putin seem reluctant to acknowledge. That is why it is so surprising that the current administration is so insistent on building a new class of battleships bigger (and more expensive) than any in history — and all for something that may be obsolete even before the first keep is laid. Not only that, but as noted in an article in CNN, “The Trump administration’s plan for the US Navy to build its largest battleships since World War II comes with a whopping price tag of $275 billion, and US shipyards may not have the capacity to build them, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office says. Each of the 15 nuclear-powered surface combatants will cost more than $18 billion, putting them in the range of the Navy’s Ford-class supercarriers, to date the most expensive naval vessels ever built. The huge cost of the battleships, dubbed the ‘Trump-class,’ is driving the Navy’s total procurement budget for surface combatants, which also include destroyers and frigates, to increase by more than two-thirds — from $11 billion in 2025 to $18 billion in 2027, the CBO report says.” What the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) would do for this is rein in government spending by returning economic — and thus political — power to the people, preventing possibly even the discussion of such things.
• Ignoring Constituents. Evidently “Vox populi non vox dei” — the voice of the people is not the voice of God . . . at least according to the current administration. According to an article in Politico, the White House has become “tone deaf” to complaints about gas prices and concerns about the war against Iran: “Republicans are increasingly antsy over ending the war with Iran. In Congress, and campaigns across the country, many are desperate for a resolution to the five-month conflict that has kept gas prices above $4 per gallon in an election cycle where cost-of-living is top of mind. But the regular messaging guidance the White House and other parts of the administration provided to Republicans at the start of the war has dwindled to almost no communication at all in recent weeks on how to talk to voters on Iran, according to six people with direct knowledge of the matter who, like others in this story, were granted anonymity to discuss ongoing conversations. Briefings on campaign trail guidance are scarce and "tone deaf," according to multiple House Republicans.” We only question the “tone.” It seems that the White House — meaning President Trump — is completely deaf, not just unable to carry a tune for which he is increasingly unable to pay the piper. We’re not saying every problem can be solved by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA), but it would be an interesting experiment to see how many could be.
• Mediocre Jobs . . . Report. It looks as if the surge in sales of ranch dressing couldn’t make up for everything else that was happening. According to a report published in Yahoo! Finance, the anticipated huge gain of 80,000 in “job creation” magically turned into a 23,000-job loss, a difference of more than 100,000. As the article relates, “The economy shed 23,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, though the unemployment rate slid to 4.1%. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a gain of 80,000 positions, an improvement from June's revised addition of 20,000 jobs. Those predictions were dashed as leisure and hospitality dropped 40,000 roles as the World Cup wound down, and local government positions fell by 57,000. Retailers also axed jobs.” Of course, the stock market continues to rise, but that might be because the powers-that-be are creating money like there is no tomorrow instead of adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially 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 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 (now with an imprimatur), 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., 52 or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to info@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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