Not much good is happening, unless you include the $5 per copy sale on for The Greater Reset: Restoring Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law. The debt ceiling crisis has been “solved” by kicking the can down the road a piece (and we’re running out of pavement), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered a new phase with Russia’s premature (from a military standpoint) and criminally insane (from a war crimes and humanitarian standpoint) destruction of the Kakhovka dam . . . in other words, business as usual. The solution to many of these problems can be found in the Economic Democracy Act, but no one seems to be considering that:
• Bargain Rate for Justice. As we reported last week, 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. Taking advantage of this offer, Marc Plotkin, a non-Catholic, reported, “I just ordered 40 copies of The Greater Reset. As I discussed with Dawn Brohawn, I'm going to donate them all to the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa, California for sale in their bookstore. The sale is only in June, so don’t put off ordering copies if you want to use book sales as a fundraiser. At this price, you can afford to give them away as Marc did, 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 put some probably much-needed cash into your organization’s treasury.
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| "Stop killing yourselves. That's my job." |
• Suicide is Treason Against Socialism! Worried that the number of people in North Korea driven to despair over conditions in that country has reached epidemic proportions, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has ordered people to stop killing themselves. Apparently the thought of total oblivion or a tortured afterlife is preferable to living in the workers paradise of North Korea, and the boy dictator, voted the world’s sexiest man by the Onion, is concerned that if he loses too many slaves, he won’t have anybody to show off in front of. In response, he has declared suicide treason against socialism, and anybody who kills himself had better be prepared to take the consequences. “Data was provided on the number of suicides, which included examples of entire families ending their lives, the official said, per Radio Free Asia. ‘[The attendees 0at the meeting)] were shocked by the disclosure of suicide notes that criticized the country and the social system.’ the official added. In the neighboring province of Ryanggang, another official told Radio Free Asia that suicide was impacting the community more than starvation, while mentioning a similar meeting.”
• Chinese Cash Flow Problems. In a flurry of articles in financial news media, investors are being warned not to put anything into China and are pulling out massive amounts of foreign capital. Within the economic and financial framework dictated by Keynesian economic, this is a disaster. China previously tried to stop capital flight by taking over Hong Kong and by forbidding Bitcoin mining, but unsuccessfully as China’s new millionaires continued to siphon their past savings out of the country. They then wiped out a significant portion of the national tax base by ruining small investors by getting them into the stock market and real estate investment in the “ghost cities.” With their credit nearly tapped out with the “Belt and Road” initiative, and international nervousness about the Chinese move into Africa, equivocal support for the Russian Federation in the Ukraine invasion and the desire to take over Siberia and its resources, the repositioning of India vis-à-vis Russia and China — China is about to pay the price for trying to combine Keynesian “soft” Fabian socialism with hardline Chinese-style Marxism. Is there a way out? Yes . . . but the powers-that-be won’t like it, as it give power to actual people, instead of “the” people, controlled by them. It’s called the Economic Democracy Act, and it’s pretty much China’s — and the world’s — last, best hope.
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| "You thought I was serious?" |
• Keynesian Currency Woes. Under the Banking Principle that underpins binary economics, “the money supply” is almost unimportant. We said almost. It is, of course, absolutely crucial that the reserve currency be uniform, stable, and asset-backed, but that should be the only worries . . . and when ordinary people have property, and thus power, it’s relatively easy to keep the politicians from debauching the currency and academic economists justifying it to get government money. Under the Currency Principle, however, manipulating the quantity of money becomes one of the principal tasks of government, willy-nilly, either because they find that the strict laissez faire approach of, e.g., the Austrian School leaves everything in the power of the rich and the economy starts to go downhill, or the politicians have already seized control of the money supply by backing the reserve currency with government debt and have been tying themselves into knots by seeing how much spending they can get away with before inflation causes economic collapse. The realization that people create money by engaging in economic transactions, and that all transactions are ultimately barter doesn’t strike them. That’s why the experts are now terrified that the money supply presumably devoted to investment is being siphoned off into consumption. The experts haven’t realized that commercial and central banks were invented to provide the private sector with money and credit, created out of the present value of existing and future marketable goods and services, not to finance government or lend existing money. That is why the Economic Democracy Act, which would directly match creation of new money to things of value, is so important if people want a sound economy that operates for their benefit, not against them.
• China’s Economy and the United States. As we noted above, the Chinese economy is in serious trouble, with domestic demand falling and foreign capital fleeing the country. This will have serious repercussions in the United States, which has come to rely on China to produce many goods and provide a multitude of services now absent from the domestic American economy. The most immediate danger, of course, is that China will start demanding payment of the U.S. government debt it is holding, and they won’t accept new U.S. government debt for old. The U.S. will either have to provide commodities and products that it doesn’t have and doesn’t produce, or purchase currency that the Chinese will accept, which means simply transferring the libility from China to other countries. Other consequences are that the U.S. won’t be able to buy goods and services the Chinese no longer produce, and must either go to other countries for them, or (gasp) produce them domestically . . . which means rebuilding the U.S. economy and restoring its productive capacity. The only way to pay down outstanding government debt held by other countries and rebuild the U.S. economy is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act, which at the moment does not appear to be on the radar.
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| Well . . . yes and no . . . |
• “Cardboard Box” Recession. In a dramatic demonstration of the bifurcation of the official economy from the real economy, the experts are pointing to the development of a “cardboard box” recession, meaning that demand for cardboard containers and other packaging materials is dropping, signifying a drop in real demand for marketable goods and services . . . yet the stock market is booming, and government debt is at an all-time high, and money is being siphoned out of savings and used for consumption. The experts, of course, are baffled, but all it shows is that the massive amounts of money backed with its own debt the government has been pouring into the economy has not stimulated consumer demand — which always drives demand for new capital and growth of jobs — but gone directly into stock market speculation. The Dow is a hundred times higher than it was in the 1930s, but is everyone a hundred times richer? It could be — and has been — argued that people are much worse off now than they were in the late 1930s and th 1950s when the Dow was in three digits instead of five. Is there a way to put the official economy and the real economy back together? Yes, through the Economic Democracy Act, and it doesn’t have to come packaged in a cardboard box.
• 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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