What is going on in the Just Third Way and related areas around the world? Your guess is as good as ours. We only know what we read in the paper . . . if there are any of those left, that is. Does anyone read newspapers anymore? One news item we would like to see but haven’t yet is to see some country adopt: the Economic Democracy Act:
Paul
Krugman
• Measurably Poorer. It’s a little sobering if you think that what comes out of the mouths of politicians or off the Street (Wall Street) is any indication of the real economic lives of actual people. According to an article in The Business Insider, “Nobel Prize-winning economist [Paul Krugman] thinks Donald Trump's trade policies and aggressive negotiating tactics are spurring global instability that will eventually come back to bite the US. . . . Krugman thinks that Trump's trade maneuvers will harm American consumers who are already struggling. Other economists and market commentators have raised similar alarms. Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi has predicted that tariffs could push the US into a recession, and hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio recently speculated that they could lead to capital wars on the global level.” If the current administration is making America great again, there seems to be something of a lag about the benefits getting to most Americans. Perhaps President Trump should consider adopting the Economic Democracy Act which would be one way of optimizing the possibility, even the probability of the economy working for everyone.
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| Scott Bessent |
• Losing Trust in the Federal Reserve. Although it seems difficult to imagine, according to an article in Yahoo! Finance, Americans have — gasp! — lost their trust in the Federal Reserve!! Can you imagine? An institution that has not done what it was set up to do since the 1930s? And wasn’t doing very well before that? What is the world coming to? In any event, “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday he believes in the independence of the Federal Reserve, but also in accountability for the central bank. ‘The independence of the Fed is based on its trust with the American people, and the Federal Reserve lost the trust of the American people when it created, when it allowed the greatest inflation of 49 years to ravage, ravage working people in this country,’ Bessent said during a hearing Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee.” Well . . . there might be one or two misstatements of fact here. Primarily, the independence of anything is not based on people’s trust in the thing from which is presumed to be independent . . . The so-called “independent” central bank of the United States is wholly dependent on the government from which it is supposed to be independent and has been since the 1930s. The Fed’s “ownership” by its member banks is a meaningless technicality. The solution? Make the central bank directly owned by the citizens and adopt the Economic Democracy Act.
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| Jerome Powell |
• Good News and Bad News. We have stated several times on the blog in these news items that while we don’t agree with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s Keynesian orientation, he is at least consistent in sticking to what he believes to be the correct principles on which to run an economy. We have also implied perhaps once or twice we don’t think the current administration’s monetary and fiscal policies are anything other than baffling, whatever paradigm one is using. That is why when The Motley Fool says there is good news about the economy for Powell and bad news for Trump, we tend to pay attention. As the Fool says (with apologies to the other Mr. T), while Trump has been saying Powell should be canned, “Powell essentially issued positive updates on the strength of the economy, inflation, and the labor market. On inflation, Powell said the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors has observed disinflation in the services sector. However, inflation in the goods sector is still elevated due to tariffs. Long-term inflation expectations are still within the Fed's preferred 2% target. Powell also said that data show solid economic activity continuing to surprise positively. Consumers remain resilient, and businesses are also continuing to boost investments, although Powell noted that housing remains a weak spot. Powell also believes the government shutdown likely weighed on economic activity, but he expects a reversal this quarter.” In other words, what is wrong with the economy can be traced directly to Trump’s activities, while what is right is the result of Powell’s policy. (We disagree about the latter, but not about the former.) Of course, if people — including both Trump and Powell — want a sound economy, they should push for the adoption of the Economic Democracy Act.
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| Elon Musk |
• Savings Equals Investment. Don’t worry. You will own nothing and be happy. Elon Musk says saving for retirement is irrelevant — meaning that ownership is irrelevant, because savings = investment . . . and Musk and the increasingly fewer and fewer rich elite will do everything for you. As reported in an article in Barchart, “Elon Musk is now openly questioning whether saving for retirement will even make sense in the future, and he’s tying that view directly to how fast he believes AI and robotics will dismantle today’s labor market.” In other words, robots will produce everything people need, and the high-income economy will ensure that everyone has everything they want in abundance. And where will the high income come from? Uh, from the people who own the robots. And how long do you think that is going to last? About as long as it takes the people who own the robots they don’t need the useless eaters taking their money. The solution? The same as in the Third Reich when they decided to get rid of “useless eaters”: euthanasia, sterilization, death camps, whatever works to get rid of the “surplus” population. Is there a better answer? Yes. Turn everyone into an owner of robots, making everyone into a producer as well as a consumer, restore Say’s Law, and base the economy on a set of sound and workable principles, moral and practical. This can be done by adopting the Economic Democracy Act.
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| Tony Robbins |
• Yes, But Show Me the Money! According to Tony Robbins, it’s the greatest thing since sliced . . . bologna? Yes, because no matter how you slice it, that’s what it is. As reported in Moneywise by Yahoo! Finance, “For years, some of the most lucrative corners of the investment world were effectively off-limits to ordinary Americans. But according to best-selling author and motivational speaker Tony Robbins, that long-standing divide may soon be starting to close. In a recent appearance on The Iced Coffee Hour podcast, Robbins pointed to a recently passed House bill that he says could open the door to investing strategies once reserved for the country’s “very wealthy.” . . . “It used to have a minimum net worth you have to have, or a minimum income,” he said. “They just changed the rules … all you have to do is take a test.” Under current securities laws, access to many private investments is limited to accredited investors — a designation that generally requires a net worth of at least $1 million (excluding primary residence) or annual income above $200,000 for individuals, or $300,000 for couples. Those thresholds have historically restricted participation in private equity, venture capital and other alternative investments to institutions and high-net-worth households. The INVEST Act includes a provision titled “Equal opportunity for all investors,” which aims to update that framework.” There’s just one tiny little problem. Where are ordinary people without the money supposed to get the money to invest even if the thresholds are lowered? Those terrific yields sound great until you translate them into dollars and cents. If you can only invest $1, even a 100% ROI is going to be . . . $1.00. It’s the same story all over again: it’s the land of opportunity . . . if you have access to the means to take advantage of the opportunity, which most people do not. This problem could easily be solved by making people productive by making money and credit available democratically, as proposed in the Economic Democracy Act.
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| John Luther "Casey" Jones |
• Casey Jones, Where Are You? Maybe some people will regard this as a trivial complaint, but there may be a significant number of other people who don’t want a sitting president’s name plastered everywhere. People should be decently dead before we raise memorials to them. To put them up when someone is alive argues for a bit of . . . insecurity, let us say. That is why the reported desire of President Trump to have Penn Station and Dulles Airport renamed in his honor is a little bit . . . disconcerting, to say the least. Of course, this might just be the current administration’s clever way of convincing average Americans that they should privately own the infrastructure of the country so that politicians can’t go around renaming things, tearing them down, and putting up self-aggrandizing monuments. As the late Eric Sevareid once said when private ownership of the nation’s railroads was being discussed, “Casey Jones, where are you?” Clearly we need the Economic Democracy Act.
• 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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