Friday, February 12, 2016

News from the Network, Vol. 9, No. 06


Perhaps the most interesting thing about the current fluctuations in the world’s stock markets is the fixed — and erroneous — belief that such things have anything to do with real economic growth.  The powers-that-be can’t seem to get it into their collective heads that “money” is the result of economic growth, not its cause.  Thinking that printing more money will “stimulate the economy” is putting the cart before the horse, and turning over control of money and credit to the politicians instead of to people who actually produce marketable goods and services.

In any event, here’s what we’ve been doing to try and get people to understand how money, credit, and economic growth are related (among other things):

"But the cat CAN'T grin if you don't participate!" said Alice.
Amazon Smile program.  To participate in the Amazon Smile program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/.  Next, sign in to your 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.

"I don't need a Just Third Way (But keep it under your hat.)"
• The CESJ core group had a very good meeting on Thursday with a professor of international political economy at Webster University.  He was referred to CESJ by a priest in the Arlington Diocese with whom we met the week before, and who was very interested in the Just Third Way and Justice University as a possible means to implement and maintain an economically just social order.  We will be following up in two weeks with another lunch meeting.

• This morning we received a shipment of books from the United Kingdom.  The research materials for the project on the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin came in a large bag with official seals marked “Royal Mail.”  Fortunately the contents are as impressive as the container.

• A number of people have expressed interest in the current blog series, “Socialist Delusions, Capitalist Illusions,” and think it should be turned into a CESJ publication.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 54 different countries and 51 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, India, and Kenya. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “The American Chesterton, XVII: Sheen v. Radical Catholicism,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “The Purpose of Production,” “The American Chesterton, XI: The Disciple of Common Sense,” and “The American Chesterton, XVI: What is Truth?”

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#