Has anyone noticed that every time
the Federal Reserve says it might consider considering raising interest rates,
the stock market goes down? And then
goes up whenever the Federal Reserve retracts its statement . . . causing Fed
officials to make another announcement about the possibility of raising rates,
resulting in another downturn . . . .
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| Wall Street, 1907: the Profitable Panic . . . for J.P. Morgan. . . |
Of course, as we have explained on
this blog, market volatility in and of itself is extremely profitable to hedge
fund operators and short sellers, especially with the speed of electronic
trading. Limiting the central bank’s
money-creating powers to providing interest-free liquidity for private sector
productive investment in industry, agriculture, and commerce, and letting the
market set interest rates would fix this problem . . . except that the
powers-that-be don’t seem to realize that it is a problem. They seem to view the stock market as a
leading economic indicator, and an inflationary rise in second-hand debt and
equity as “economic growth.” Exactly how
do you use a rise in secondary equity issues to make dinner, keep you warm, or
shelter you?
There are, however, some signs of
sanity, as well as its alternative:
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| Alpha Condé, President of Guinea |
• Earlier this week we learned that Alpha Condé, who has
expressed great interest in the Just Third Way as applied in an “Economic
Democracy Act” (as “Capital Homestead Act” doesn’t have the same cultural
heritage for people outside the United States), has been recognized as the
reelected president of the Republic of Guinea.
CESJ offers President Condé its congratulations, and hopes in the near future
to reopen talks on implementing the Just Third Way in his country.
• A short piece on the better use of aid money to developing countries was submitted to a U.K. Labor newspaper. Dawn K. Brohawn, CESJ's Director of Communications, and Michael D. Greaney, CESJ's Director of Research, composed the article, with input from Dr. Norman G. Kurland, CESJ's president. Dan Parker of the Global Justice Movement in Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada, opened up the opportunity.
• Also this week CESJ received a very gracious response from
Father Denis Wilde, Associate Director of “Priests for Life. We hope to further the discussions we had
with Father Wilde at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia when we have
the opportunity, especially on the Just Third Way as a “pro-life economic
agenda.”
• Just Third Way stalwart Jean-Marie Bukuru of Burundi is
back at CESJ headquarters. He will be
part of the team attending a five-day World Bank event on Law, Justice, and Development next week, November 16-20.
• Jean-Marie and Norman Kurland attended an event sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation on Thursday. A half-dozen speakers were there from Nigeria, Gabon, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast, with approximately twenty other attendees. All the speakers made presentations advocating economic and social reform in Africa, seeing Africa as the potential leader in the (relatively) new century. The problem, from a Just Third Way perspective, is that everything that was said depends on existing money ("past savings") and the present leaders within the framework dictated by, e.g., U.N. under UNDP, the World Bank, other countries, and global leaders. The speakers were intelligent, well-informed, and educated, but they lacked the Just Third Way framework for a solution. Antonio Betancourt, who organized the event, asked Norm and Jean-Marie for information on Jean-Marie's impressive background, and invited Jean-Marie to speak. Jean-Marie gave a talk on the importance of economic democracy as the main prop of political democracy, and the Just Third Way as a solution to establish and maintain economic democracy. Norman Kurland followed with comments on avoiding further dependency on outside financing from sources outside the country, or on a rich élite, and switching to internal, future savings-based financing as proposed by Louis Kelso. The event was very productive, and a number of participants indicated that they would be following up with CESJ.
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| Jean-Marie Bukuru and Norman Kurland |
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| Mortimer Adler |
• It is becoming increasingly evident that academia is in
serious trouble, and is more and more the victim of its own errors, especially
in basic philosophy — just as Mortimer Adler explained in his book, Ten
Philosophical Mistakes (1986), a book that like the pamphlet Introduction
to Social Justice (1948) gives us new insights whenever we re-read
it. Given recent events at Yale, the
University of Missouri, Vanderbilt, [Fill in the Blank], etc., etc., etc., it is clear that something like CESJ’s
“Justice University” concept to teach fundamental principles of justice and the
other moral virtues is essential if academia — or anything else — is to be
restored and put on a sound philosophical and moral basis.
• Of course, being offended at everything is nothing new,
even on college campuses . . . campi? . . . campy? (We hear the dog howling at our Latin.) The difference is that being offended at
everything, rejecting it, and pursing those who disagree with you with
unyielding malice and vindictiveness used to be the subject of high comedy and
low (albeit hilarious) satire. Remember
when it was fictional college presidents and stuffy academics who were the ones
offended by normal behavior and common sense and would brook no opposition, instead
of the ones giving offense by acting normally?
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 55 different countries and 47 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, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines.
The most popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private
Property,” “Halloween Horror Special XIII: Mean Green Mother from Outer Space,”
“Aristotle on Private Property,” “Three Key Books on Common Sense, XI: The
Awful Apparition of Aristotle,” and “Three Key Books on Common Sense, IV:
Chesterton Versus the Slavery of Past Savings.”
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.
