In recent times nothing has raised political passions in UK as much as Brexit. I observe four kinds of people. The first two have in common their votes are cast on the basis of ideology.
1. Brexiters. I cannot speak for all but I voted Brexit because I have always opposed being ruled by a foreign power which could override our common law heritage. We were undemocratically taken into the Common Market by traitor Heath and the other contemporary parties who lying through their teeth told sit was all about economics, not political involvement. They knew it was a lie and gave the electorate no choice.
2. Remoaners - the ideological remoaners, like Cable, want a re-run of the referendum because they are not democrats. Their basic ideology is for us to be subsumed into a federal E.U. If you gave me the choice between a federal E.U. and being part of the U.S. I should choose the latter on the basis of a common cultural heritage no/t shared by the E.U. lot.
3. The economic pundits - Brexit is doom and gloom. Trade will suffer. Jobs will be lost. The pound decline. They have their crystal balls and perhaps tarot cards and astrologers with all the accuracy of economists.
4. The indifferent. - The non-voters. I shall ignore them as they ignored the most important vote in my lifetime. They did not speak and now should keep silent.
Most of my family are 1. A minority are 3 and 4.
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Monday, July 24, 2017
A hard Brexit
As someone opposed to the European project since before traitor Heath took us in (in more ways than one) I am under no illusions as to how hard it will be to Brexit.
The reasons are external and internal. Extreme pressure will be brought to bear by EU states so that we do not Brexit. The reason is simple. Not malice but economics. UK and Germany are the two net contributors to the EU. They cannot afford to lose us.
The internal opposition comes from the vocal remoaners, the fifth column from among the 48% who did not want out. They are exemplified by Vince Cable the new leader off the Lib (non) Dems. If at first you don't get the result you want, try try again. He wants another referendum following best EU practice. They did it over a past Irish referendum. The result was not what Brussels wanted so another vote was held and produced the desired result. Of course you do not need to be a Brussels fan to do this. Red Ken when London mayor wanted to put a tram down the Uxbridge Road in Ealing. We the locals said it was a ridiculous idea and would cause chaotic displacement of traffic. Not liking that, Livingstone called for another 'consultation'. He got his desired vote but it cost Labour control of Ealing council at the next election and the tram was off the rails.
So Brexit faces the twin challenges of economics and pseudo-democracy. 'Put not your trust in princes, especially not europhicic ones'
The reasons are external and internal. Extreme pressure will be brought to bear by EU states so that we do not Brexit. The reason is simple. Not malice but economics. UK and Germany are the two net contributors to the EU. They cannot afford to lose us.
The internal opposition comes from the vocal remoaners, the fifth column from among the 48% who did not want out. They are exemplified by Vince Cable the new leader off the Lib (non) Dems. If at first you don't get the result you want, try try again. He wants another referendum following best EU practice. They did it over a past Irish referendum. The result was not what Brussels wanted so another vote was held and produced the desired result. Of course you do not need to be a Brussels fan to do this. Red Ken when London mayor wanted to put a tram down the Uxbridge Road in Ealing. We the locals said it was a ridiculous idea and would cause chaotic displacement of traffic. Not liking that, Livingstone called for another 'consultation'. He got his desired vote but it cost Labour control of Ealing council at the next election and the tram was off the rails.
So Brexit faces the twin challenges of economics and pseudo-democracy. 'Put not your trust in princes, especially not europhicic ones'
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Books read in October 2012
1. A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle
A murderously violent hero is not one to endear him to the reader unless I suppose you share his brand of Irish republicanism. We do not seem to be given the historic context which produced such nationalism, only the outworkings of it. But as the author tells us that the 1916 captured rebels were jeered by the Dublin populace, I think I am not alone in my dislike of how Henry fought.
2. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes: by Peter D. Schiff
Believing that government has a duty to give us sound money and prevent that legalised theft called inflation I enjoyed this cleverly told tale of the folly that is Keynsian economics. Here is the Austrian school for dummies. In an era when our government loves to print money and call it quantitive easing not inflation, we need the message of this book as we continue to speed to an even bigger crash than the last one. One interesting but undeveloped theme in the book is that universal suffrage could be held to blame for our parlous economic state.
A murderously violent hero is not one to endear him to the reader unless I suppose you share his brand of Irish republicanism. We do not seem to be given the historic context which produced such nationalism, only the outworkings of it. But as the author tells us that the 1916 captured rebels were jeered by the Dublin populace, I think I am not alone in my dislike of how Henry fought.
2. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes: by Peter D. Schiff
Believing that government has a duty to give us sound money and prevent that legalised theft called inflation I enjoyed this cleverly told tale of the folly that is Keynsian economics. Here is the Austrian school for dummies. In an era when our government loves to print money and call it quantitive easing not inflation, we need the message of this book as we continue to speed to an even bigger crash than the last one. One interesting but undeveloped theme in the book is that universal suffrage could be held to blame for our parlous economic state.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Socialism
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equaliser.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism." All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.
Read the following:
These are 5 sentences applicable to this experiment:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they have worked for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Can you think of a reason for not sharing this ? Neither could I.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Buy British
I found this on Facebook and contextualised.
ALWAYS READ THE LABELS ON THE FOODS YOU BUY--NO MATTER WHAT THE FRONT OF THE BOX OR PACKAGE SAYS, TURN IT OVER AND READ THE BACK---CAREFULLY!
With all the food and pet products now coming from China , it is best to make sure you read label at the grocery store.
Many products no longer show where they were made, only give where the distributor is located.
It is important to read the bar code to track it's origin.
How to read Bar Codes .... interesting!
This may be useful to know when grocery shopping, if it's a concern to you.
GREAT WAY TO BUY UK AND NOT FROM EUSSR!!
If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690 691 or 692, the product is MADE IN CHINA.
471 is Made in Taiwan .
This is our right to know, but the government and related departments never educate the
public, therefore we have to RESCUE ourselves.
Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that consumers do not prefer products "MADE IN CHINA ", so they don't show from which country it is made.
However, you may now refer to the barcode - remember if the first 3 digits are:
690-692 ... then it is MADE IN CHINA
00 - 09 ... USA & CANADA
30 - 37 FRANCE
40 - 44 GERMANY
471 .... Taiwan
49 ... JAPAN
50 ... UK
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
'Long live immigration!' ???????????????
Long live immigration! wrote a friend
I would temper my enthusiasm for missionary opportunity and varied cuisine with some statistics.
From the last 200 prescription forms I dispensed, non-indigenees are 76%. One week I counted 50 different etnicities.
10.5% of forms were from people with low income or benefits. ( This % is low because most prescriptions are exempt from paying on age or other grounds)
Of these 21 forms all but one were from immigrants.
Most immigration throughout the ages has been motivated by economics. From the above count, IMO, it is the immigrants who benefit economically more than this host country.
I would temper my enthusiasm for missionary opportunity and varied cuisine with some statistics.
From the last 200 prescription forms I dispensed, non-indigenees are 76%. One week I counted 50 different etnicities.
10.5% of forms were from people with low income or benefits. ( This % is low because most prescriptions are exempt from paying on age or other grounds)
Of these 21 forms all but one were from immigrants.
Most immigration throughout the ages has been motivated by economics. From the above count, IMO, it is the immigrants who benefit economically more than this host country.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
An open letter Cameron and Clegg
This is one of my articles on iuhuru.com
The UK is experiencing something new – a real coalition in government. It is producing some interesting ideas and initiatives after so many years of New Labour, the party now in search of a leader. Before the election we knew that the real problem was the budget deficit.
Economies are necessary. Government borrowing is out of control. We even subsidised banks for fear of financial collapse. The big battle as ever is where the cuts come and who is to pay more. With an increase in VAT we will all pay more in indirect taxes. My pay slip shows I pay over a quarter of my income in direct taxation. Nearly another quarter is taken by indirect taxation.
Two areas for economies I favour have yet to be tackled. First, the growth of the public sector. People want the state to take care of them and provide public services. They would rather rely on the state than trust in God for security and take personal responsibility. The state encourages this idolatry. It grows and grows, controlling just about every aspect of life and encouraging dependency. Shrink the state, encourage people to work and the economy will be transformed.
But asking politicians to shrink the state and curtail its interference in all of life is asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas. We do not need the ridiculous expense of devolved government in Scotland and Wales. Get rid of it. Leave the European Union, a leviathan not to be trusted for it has no audited accounts. Let Westminster take full responsibility and get back to governing the UK on its own. If the Celtic fringes do not like this, let England give them their freedom and be economically richer for it. (Apologies to Her Majesty for suggesting this diminution of the last remnants of empire).
So, get rid of devolved government and back to being a sovereign state instead of a province of the EU. Shrink the public sector, all those unnecessary bums on public seats enforcing myriad regulations and collecting statistics. First of all, sack anyone who tells a poor person they will be better off out of work and on benefits. Of course, if you are to do this you will have to radically reform the system so that people realise that work is better than dependency. I speak from personal experience. I have had two employees, both single mothers, who were informed that the way out of their financial difficulties was not to earn more and manage their debts better but simply to stop working and take the hand outs on offer. One left my employ. One has gone part time and joined the black economy on the side. Neither of them wanted this advice. Both of them wanted to work for me full time. The system stinks. Reform it. Of course we must take care of those in real need but too many people play a system, which does not encourage them to take responsibility for their own finances.
Next, reform housing benefits. The neighbouring house to ours is newly enlarged so that the owner can get more rent from his property. Tenants are always on housing benefit. He can charge them a commercial rent. I am enriching this landlord through my taxes when the state subsidises his tenants. This is a factor in the increase of house prices over the years. Our property is now worth ten times what we paid for it in 1984 but my salary has only risen nearly five fold in that time. High rents are a factor in our shortage of affordable accommodation. Reform this subsidy of rented housing and rents will be reduced and housing prices fall making housing more affordable. So I suggest for starters a big increase in the taxation of the landlords’ rental income and property taxes on houses that are not owner occupied.
Do I ever expect this to happen? Of course not. Not when our politicians often come from that small proportion of the population who have more than one property to call home. Members of Parliament get the biggest housing benefits of all.
The UK is experiencing something new – a real coalition in government. It is producing some interesting ideas and initiatives after so many years of New Labour, the party now in search of a leader. Before the election we knew that the real problem was the budget deficit.
Economies are necessary. Government borrowing is out of control. We even subsidised banks for fear of financial collapse. The big battle as ever is where the cuts come and who is to pay more. With an increase in VAT we will all pay more in indirect taxes. My pay slip shows I pay over a quarter of my income in direct taxation. Nearly another quarter is taken by indirect taxation.
Two areas for economies I favour have yet to be tackled. First, the growth of the public sector. People want the state to take care of them and provide public services. They would rather rely on the state than trust in God for security and take personal responsibility. The state encourages this idolatry. It grows and grows, controlling just about every aspect of life and encouraging dependency. Shrink the state, encourage people to work and the economy will be transformed.
But asking politicians to shrink the state and curtail its interference in all of life is asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas. We do not need the ridiculous expense of devolved government in Scotland and Wales. Get rid of it. Leave the European Union, a leviathan not to be trusted for it has no audited accounts. Let Westminster take full responsibility and get back to governing the UK on its own. If the Celtic fringes do not like this, let England give them their freedom and be economically richer for it. (Apologies to Her Majesty for suggesting this diminution of the last remnants of empire).
So, get rid of devolved government and back to being a sovereign state instead of a province of the EU. Shrink the public sector, all those unnecessary bums on public seats enforcing myriad regulations and collecting statistics. First of all, sack anyone who tells a poor person they will be better off out of work and on benefits. Of course, if you are to do this you will have to radically reform the system so that people realise that work is better than dependency. I speak from personal experience. I have had two employees, both single mothers, who were informed that the way out of their financial difficulties was not to earn more and manage their debts better but simply to stop working and take the hand outs on offer. One left my employ. One has gone part time and joined the black economy on the side. Neither of them wanted this advice. Both of them wanted to work for me full time. The system stinks. Reform it. Of course we must take care of those in real need but too many people play a system, which does not encourage them to take responsibility for their own finances.
Next, reform housing benefits. The neighbouring house to ours is newly enlarged so that the owner can get more rent from his property. Tenants are always on housing benefit. He can charge them a commercial rent. I am enriching this landlord through my taxes when the state subsidises his tenants. This is a factor in the increase of house prices over the years. Our property is now worth ten times what we paid for it in 1984 but my salary has only risen nearly five fold in that time. High rents are a factor in our shortage of affordable accommodation. Reform this subsidy of rented housing and rents will be reduced and housing prices fall making housing more affordable. So I suggest for starters a big increase in the taxation of the landlords’ rental income and property taxes on houses that are not owner occupied.
Do I ever expect this to happen? Of course not. Not when our politicians often come from that small proportion of the population who have more than one property to call home. Members of Parliament get the biggest housing benefits of all.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
An open letter to UK’s Cameron and Clegg
My weekly opinion article in the on line African magazine. Link in title above.
The UK is experiencing something new – a real coalition in government. It is producing some interesting ideas and initiatives after so many years of New Labour, the party now in search of a leader. Before the election we knew that the real problem was the budget deficit.
Economies are necessary. Government borrowing is out of control. We even subsidised banks for fear of financial collapse. The big battle as ever is where the cuts come and who is to pay more. With an increase in VAT we will all pay more in indirect taxes. My pay slip shows I pay over a quarter of my income in direct taxation. Nearly another quarter is taken by indirect taxation.
Two areas for economies I favour have yet to be tackled. First, the growth of the public sector. People want the state to take care of them and provide public services. They would rather rely on the state than trust in God for security and take personal responsibility. The state encourages this idolatry. It grows and grows, controlling just about every aspect of life and encouraging dependency. Shrink the state, encourage people to work and the economy will be transformed.
But asking politicians to shrink the state and curtail its interference in all of life is asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas. We do not need the ridiculous expense of devolved government in Scotland and Wales. Get rid of it. Leave the European Union, a leviathan not to be trusted for it has no audited accounts. Let Westminster take full responsibility and get back to governing the UK on its own. If the Celtic fringes do not like this, let England give them their freedom and be economically richer for it. (Apologies to Her Majesty for suggesting this diminution of the last remnants of empire).
So, get rid of devolved government and back to being a sovereign state instead of a province of the EU. Shrink the public sector, all those unnecessary bums on public seats enforcing myriad regulations and collecting statistics. First of all, sack anyone who tells a poor person they will be better off out of work and on benefits. Of course, if you are to do this you will have to radically reform the system so that people realise that work is better than dependency. I speak from personal experience. I have had two employees, both single mothers, who were informed that the way out of their financial difficulties was not to earn more and manage their debts better but simply to stop working and take the hand outs on offer. One left my employ. One has gone part time and joined the black economy on the side. Neither of them wanted this advice. Both of them wanted to work for me full time. The system stinks. Reform it. Of course we must take care of those in real need but too many people play a system, which does not encourage them to take responsibility for their own finances.
Next, reform housing benefits. The neighbouring house to ours is newly enlarged so that the owner can get more rent from his property. Tenants are always on housing benefit. He can charge them a commercial rent. I am enriching this landlord through my taxes when the state subsidises his tenants. This is a factor in the increase of house prices over the years. Our property is now worth ten times what we paid for it in 1984 but my salary has only risen nearly five fold in that time. High rents are a factor in our shortage of affordable accommodation. Reform this subsidy of rented housing and rents will be reduced and housing prices fall making housing more affordable. So I suggest for starters a big increase in the taxation of the landlords’ rental income and property taxes on houses that are not owner occupied.
Do I ever expect this to happen? Of course not. Not when our politicians often come from that small proportion of the population who have more than one property to call home. Members of Parliament get the biggest housing benefits of all.
The UK is experiencing something new – a real coalition in government. It is producing some interesting ideas and initiatives after so many years of New Labour, the party now in search of a leader. Before the election we knew that the real problem was the budget deficit.
Economies are necessary. Government borrowing is out of control. We even subsidised banks for fear of financial collapse. The big battle as ever is where the cuts come and who is to pay more. With an increase in VAT we will all pay more in indirect taxes. My pay slip shows I pay over a quarter of my income in direct taxation. Nearly another quarter is taken by indirect taxation.
Two areas for economies I favour have yet to be tackled. First, the growth of the public sector. People want the state to take care of them and provide public services. They would rather rely on the state than trust in God for security and take personal responsibility. The state encourages this idolatry. It grows and grows, controlling just about every aspect of life and encouraging dependency. Shrink the state, encourage people to work and the economy will be transformed.
But asking politicians to shrink the state and curtail its interference in all of life is asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas. We do not need the ridiculous expense of devolved government in Scotland and Wales. Get rid of it. Leave the European Union, a leviathan not to be trusted for it has no audited accounts. Let Westminster take full responsibility and get back to governing the UK on its own. If the Celtic fringes do not like this, let England give them their freedom and be economically richer for it. (Apologies to Her Majesty for suggesting this diminution of the last remnants of empire).
So, get rid of devolved government and back to being a sovereign state instead of a province of the EU. Shrink the public sector, all those unnecessary bums on public seats enforcing myriad regulations and collecting statistics. First of all, sack anyone who tells a poor person they will be better off out of work and on benefits. Of course, if you are to do this you will have to radically reform the system so that people realise that work is better than dependency. I speak from personal experience. I have had two employees, both single mothers, who were informed that the way out of their financial difficulties was not to earn more and manage their debts better but simply to stop working and take the hand outs on offer. One left my employ. One has gone part time and joined the black economy on the side. Neither of them wanted this advice. Both of them wanted to work for me full time. The system stinks. Reform it. Of course we must take care of those in real need but too many people play a system, which does not encourage them to take responsibility for their own finances.
Next, reform housing benefits. The neighbouring house to ours is newly enlarged so that the owner can get more rent from his property. Tenants are always on housing benefit. He can charge them a commercial rent. I am enriching this landlord through my taxes when the state subsidises his tenants. This is a factor in the increase of house prices over the years. Our property is now worth ten times what we paid for it in 1984 but my salary has only risen nearly five fold in that time. High rents are a factor in our shortage of affordable accommodation. Reform this subsidy of rented housing and rents will be reduced and housing prices fall making housing more affordable. So I suggest for starters a big increase in the taxation of the landlords’ rental income and property taxes on houses that are not owner occupied.
Do I ever expect this to happen? Of course not. Not when our politicians often come from that small proportion of the population who have more than one property to call home. Members of Parliament get the biggest housing benefits of all.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Credit Crunch
A Korean church asked me to preach on this.
Ex. 20:1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. Ex. 20:1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
God was Israel’s saviour who had brought them out of Egypt. Would they now trust in Him to keep them, to provide for them? He is the Lord. He is their covenant God. Will they trust him? Sadly they often trusted in idols, false gods who were no gods but because they were the gods of powerful nations around them, God’s people were often led astray. Only exile cured them.
Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols. John Calvin
Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain. JOHN CALVIN
What are the idols people forge today?
Matt. 6:19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matt. 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Money is the number one idol of today’s world. There are others like the state which many look to for their care, or career, or family.
But the message from God is that the idol has feet of clay. It will fall. We have recently been seeing how this is true of our wealth. It promised so much but has failed. Ten years ago I started saving 100 ukp a month with a fund that promised much based on its track record. But when the investment matures, the 12k I had put in had become 10.5k. The idol not only has feet of clay. It may also shrink.
Jesus warned that if you rely on earthly treasure, you may lose it, Moth and rust destroy not your money but other things you treasure. In Africa he would have said white ants. Thieves break in and steal. The original means to dig through a house wall. Today you have more subtle thieves. A Madof may make off with your money. The pension fund may go bust or under perform or government may steal your money through inflation. We in fact have a much worse problem with this than the people of Jesus day. If they hid away their treasured shekels, they were made of silver and gold. What is our money made from? Paper. Our bank notes say, ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of XX pounds”. Well try taking your note to the bank of England and see if they keep their promise. No. Since the 1930s there has been no gold to back the notes. Our money is a mere invention by the state. First they removed the gold as backing, then later the silver from the coins. All our wealth is based on promises which may not be kept. Our financial system is based on trust and that trust is very fragile, hence the massive government intervention to save failing banks.
I am not an economist. An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.--Laurence J. Peter
I am not an economist so I do not come with financial expertise. Who does?
Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, "on one hand... on the other." --Harry Truman
We may scorn fortune tellers but spend a fortune on economists. Things are uncertain in this world. In Ps 73 we hear how the Psalmist envied the rich. I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. 5 They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills. …This is what the wicked are like — always carefree, they increase in wealth
l I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. 18 Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. 19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! 20 As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.
The rich and their riches will perish. Do not base your life on earthly treasure. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
1Pet. 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
Here is the true prosperity gospel. If we belong to God through Christ, we have been born again to an inheritance our father has set aside for us in heaven, an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
Have you such an inheritance kept by God for you through his son ar are you trying to line your own nest for the future.
A rich man died and someone asked what he left. ‘All of it’ came the reply.
This does not mean you do not care about money and how you use or save it. It does not mean you do not buy insurance or provide for your family. It means you put God not money first.
I t means that you commit your future to God, for his provision. It seems to be no no random co-incidence that this command to put God not possessions first is followed by the admonition not to worry.
Matt. 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.
We all tend to worry for the future is uncertain . But here Jesus gives us reasons not to be anxious about earthly things. How wil we get buy we worry, enough to eat drink, take care of life’s necessities. Jesus says get these things in perspective. Are they the really important things in life? Is there not something more fundamental, your relationship with God, his kingdom and his righteousness? Get your priorities right. Are you right with God? Are you putting him first? Worry puts self first. Worry is another form of idolatry. Instead of God at the centre of your life it is you and your needs. If you know who God is and he is at the centre of your like you do not need to worry. You can cast all your cares on him for you know he cares for you. He will provide.
An undivided heart, which worships God alone and trusts him as it should, is raised above all anxiety for earthly wants. Geikie
Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short God and His will for us.--Billy Graham
Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
Matt. 6:28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
You are precious to him. He is the God who provides for and cares for his creation. Why do you not trust him. Why so little faith in him? Luther said he learned about faith from his dog. His dog did not know how he would get his food but he knew who provided it. Luther said if only he trusted God like his dog trusted him, God could do great things with him. We
need a dogged trusting relationship with a heavenly father.
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. --George Mueller (1805-1898) _Sign of the Times_
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
Your father knows and cares. I was brought up in a working class home. My father lost his job through illness and could never return to his trade. Was I worried? No. I trusted my father. Was he worried? Perhaps. But he had faith in our heavenly father who provided a new and better earning career for him. My point is I the boy was not worried because I trusted my father. Do you trust your heavenly one? That is the way to be rid of anxiety.
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of faggots, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to the load, before we are required to bear it. -- John Newton (1725-1807)
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of faith. You can't change the past, but you can ruin a perfectly good present by worrying about the future.
There are two days in every week we should never worry about, two days that should be kept free from fear and apprehension. One is yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its aches and pains, its faults and blunders.Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.All the money in the world cannot bring back yesterday.We cannot undo a single act we performed, nor erase a single word we've said Yesterday is gone. The other day we should not worry about is tomorrow, with its impossible adversaries, its burden, its hopeful promise and unknown performance.Tomorrow is beyond our control.Tomorrow's sun will rise either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds ...but it will rise ... and until it does.We have no stake in tomorrow, for it is as yet unborn.This leaves only one day: TODAY! Anyone can fight the battles of just one day.It is only when we add the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow that we break down. It is not the experience of today that drives people mad.It is the remorse of bitterness for something that happened yesterday, and the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Make TODAY the best day it can be, and live one day at a time!
O Lord! how happy should we be, If we could leave our cares to Thee, If we from self could rest; And feel at heart that One above, In perfect wisdom, perfect love, Is working for the best.
For when we kneel and cast our care Upon our God in humble prayer, With strengthened souls we rise, Sure that our Father Who is nigh, To hear the ravens when they cry, Will hear His children's cries.
O may these anxious hearts of ours The lesson learn from birds and flowers, And learn from self to cease, Leave all things to our Father's will, And in His mercy trusting still, Find in each trial peace! Joseph Anstice (1808-1836)
Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.-- Ps. 55:22
Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared. --Proverbs 3:25-26
Be anxious for nothing- but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. -Phil. 4: 6-7
I have a better Caretaker than you and all the angels. He it is who lies in a manger ... but at the same time sits at the right hand of God, the almighty Father. Therefore be at rest. -- Martin Luther , letter to his wife Kate: 1546, eleven days before his death.
Pray, and let God worry. -Martin Luther [b. 11/10/1483], in the last letter written to his wife Katy, before his death on 2/18/1546]
Ex. 20:1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. Ex. 20:1 And God spoke all these words: 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
God was Israel’s saviour who had brought them out of Egypt. Would they now trust in Him to keep them, to provide for them? He is the Lord. He is their covenant God. Will they trust him? Sadly they often trusted in idols, false gods who were no gods but because they were the gods of powerful nations around them, God’s people were often led astray. Only exile cured them.
Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols. John Calvin
Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain. JOHN CALVIN
What are the idols people forge today?
Matt. 6:19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matt. 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Money is the number one idol of today’s world. There are others like the state which many look to for their care, or career, or family.
But the message from God is that the idol has feet of clay. It will fall. We have recently been seeing how this is true of our wealth. It promised so much but has failed. Ten years ago I started saving 100 ukp a month with a fund that promised much based on its track record. But when the investment matures, the 12k I had put in had become 10.5k. The idol not only has feet of clay. It may also shrink.
Jesus warned that if you rely on earthly treasure, you may lose it, Moth and rust destroy not your money but other things you treasure. In Africa he would have said white ants. Thieves break in and steal. The original means to dig through a house wall. Today you have more subtle thieves. A Madof may make off with your money. The pension fund may go bust or under perform or government may steal your money through inflation. We in fact have a much worse problem with this than the people of Jesus day. If they hid away their treasured shekels, they were made of silver and gold. What is our money made from? Paper. Our bank notes say, ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of XX pounds”. Well try taking your note to the bank of England and see if they keep their promise. No. Since the 1930s there has been no gold to back the notes. Our money is a mere invention by the state. First they removed the gold as backing, then later the silver from the coins. All our wealth is based on promises which may not be kept. Our financial system is based on trust and that trust is very fragile, hence the massive government intervention to save failing banks.
I am not an economist. An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.--Laurence J. Peter
I am not an economist so I do not come with financial expertise. Who does?
Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, "on one hand... on the other." --Harry Truman
We may scorn fortune tellers but spend a fortune on economists. Things are uncertain in this world. In Ps 73 we hear how the Psalmist envied the rich. I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. 5 They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills. …This is what the wicked are like — always carefree, they increase in wealth
l I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. 18 Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. 19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! 20 As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.
The rich and their riches will perish. Do not base your life on earthly treasure. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
1Pet. 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
Here is the true prosperity gospel. If we belong to God through Christ, we have been born again to an inheritance our father has set aside for us in heaven, an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
Have you such an inheritance kept by God for you through his son ar are you trying to line your own nest for the future.
A rich man died and someone asked what he left. ‘All of it’ came the reply.
This does not mean you do not care about money and how you use or save it. It does not mean you do not buy insurance or provide for your family. It means you put God not money first.
I t means that you commit your future to God, for his provision. It seems to be no no random co-incidence that this command to put God not possessions first is followed by the admonition not to worry.
Matt. 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.
We all tend to worry for the future is uncertain . But here Jesus gives us reasons not to be anxious about earthly things. How wil we get buy we worry, enough to eat drink, take care of life’s necessities. Jesus says get these things in perspective. Are they the really important things in life? Is there not something more fundamental, your relationship with God, his kingdom and his righteousness? Get your priorities right. Are you right with God? Are you putting him first? Worry puts self first. Worry is another form of idolatry. Instead of God at the centre of your life it is you and your needs. If you know who God is and he is at the centre of your like you do not need to worry. You can cast all your cares on him for you know he cares for you. He will provide.
An undivided heart, which worships God alone and trusts him as it should, is raised above all anxiety for earthly wants. Geikie
Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short God and His will for us.--Billy Graham
Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
Matt. 6:28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
You are precious to him. He is the God who provides for and cares for his creation. Why do you not trust him. Why so little faith in him? Luther said he learned about faith from his dog. His dog did not know how he would get his food but he knew who provided it. Luther said if only he trusted God like his dog trusted him, God could do great things with him. We
need a dogged trusting relationship with a heavenly father.
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety. --George Mueller (1805-1898) _Sign of the Times_
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
Your father knows and cares. I was brought up in a working class home. My father lost his job through illness and could never return to his trade. Was I worried? No. I trusted my father. Was he worried? Perhaps. But he had faith in our heavenly father who provided a new and better earning career for him. My point is I the boy was not worried because I trusted my father. Do you trust your heavenly one? That is the way to be rid of anxiety.
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of faggots, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to the load, before we are required to bear it. -- John Newton (1725-1807)
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of faith. You can't change the past, but you can ruin a perfectly good present by worrying about the future.
There are two days in every week we should never worry about, two days that should be kept free from fear and apprehension. One is yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its aches and pains, its faults and blunders.Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.All the money in the world cannot bring back yesterday.We cannot undo a single act we performed, nor erase a single word we've said Yesterday is gone. The other day we should not worry about is tomorrow, with its impossible adversaries, its burden, its hopeful promise and unknown performance.Tomorrow is beyond our control.Tomorrow's sun will rise either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds ...but it will rise ... and until it does.We have no stake in tomorrow, for it is as yet unborn.This leaves only one day: TODAY! Anyone can fight the battles of just one day.It is only when we add the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow that we break down. It is not the experience of today that drives people mad.It is the remorse of bitterness for something that happened yesterday, and the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Make TODAY the best day it can be, and live one day at a time!
O Lord! how happy should we be, If we could leave our cares to Thee, If we from self could rest; And feel at heart that One above, In perfect wisdom, perfect love, Is working for the best.
For when we kneel and cast our care Upon our God in humble prayer, With strengthened souls we rise, Sure that our Father Who is nigh, To hear the ravens when they cry, Will hear His children's cries.
O may these anxious hearts of ours The lesson learn from birds and flowers, And learn from self to cease, Leave all things to our Father's will, And in His mercy trusting still, Find in each trial peace! Joseph Anstice (1808-1836)
Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.-- Ps. 55:22
Have no fear of sudden disaster or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being snared. --Proverbs 3:25-26
Be anxious for nothing- but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. -Phil. 4: 6-7
I have a better Caretaker than you and all the angels. He it is who lies in a manger ... but at the same time sits at the right hand of God, the almighty Father. Therefore be at rest. -- Martin Luther , letter to his wife Kate: 1546, eleven days before his death.
Pray, and let God worry. -Martin Luther [b. 11/10/1483], in the last letter written to his wife Katy, before his death on 2/18/1546]
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Books read in March 2009 (5)
1. What Is a True Calvinist? (Basics of the Reformed Faith) by Philip Graham Ryken
Not according to the author, one who holds five particular doctrines. Ryken says the true Calvinist has a God centered mind, a penitent spirit, a grateful heart, a submissive will, a holy life and a glorious purpose. A warm, easy to read bookl
2. What Is the Christian Worldview? (Basics of the Reformed Faith) by Philip Graham Ryken
The author tells us a worldview is the way we look at all of life to make sense of the world. His Christian perspective is centered on the God who is there and is not silent. Crearion tells us the way we were. The fall tells us we live in paradise lost. Grace is a work in progress from God. There is glory to come, paradise consummated Gospel good tidings are no matter of mere religion but all of life is lived under God's rule.
3. What Is a Reformed Church? (Basics of the Reformed Faith) by Stephen Smallman
This booklet gives the historic reformation roots of Protestant churches of the Calvinist tradition. he gives six themes. Scripture, the sovereignty of God, the covenant, the law of God, church government and sacraments and the kingdom of God. It is unashamedly Presbyterian in its understanding of what it means to be reformed so would serve as a good introductory booklet for any such church.
4. What Is Biblical Preaching? by Eric J. Alexander
The writer sees no more urgent priority than to summon the church to a restoration of the place biblical expository preaching should hold. He teaches that biblical preaching is fundamental in importance, spiritual in essence, didactic in nature, expository, systematic, pastoral, clear in structure and with relevant contemporary application. It was taught at a conference of ministers but is suitable for all Christians to understand what id true preaching.
5. Honest Money: The Biblical Blueprint for Money and Banking by Gary North
This is the best book I have read on money and economics. It is also one of the most depressing. North gives a history of money and establishes that the state is the real counterfeiter with unbacked currency. He gives simle explanations of money and economics particularly the bad consequences of our fractional reserve banking. It may be 23 years old but it is still up to date in critical analysis.
Not according to the author, one who holds five particular doctrines. Ryken says the true Calvinist has a God centered mind, a penitent spirit, a grateful heart, a submissive will, a holy life and a glorious purpose. A warm, easy to read bookl
2. What Is the Christian Worldview? (Basics of the Reformed Faith) by Philip Graham Ryken
The author tells us a worldview is the way we look at all of life to make sense of the world. His Christian perspective is centered on the God who is there and is not silent. Crearion tells us the way we were. The fall tells us we live in paradise lost. Grace is a work in progress from God. There is glory to come, paradise consummated Gospel good tidings are no matter of mere religion but all of life is lived under God's rule.
3. What Is a Reformed Church? (Basics of the Reformed Faith) by Stephen Smallman
This booklet gives the historic reformation roots of Protestant churches of the Calvinist tradition. he gives six themes. Scripture, the sovereignty of God, the covenant, the law of God, church government and sacraments and the kingdom of God. It is unashamedly Presbyterian in its understanding of what it means to be reformed so would serve as a good introductory booklet for any such church.
4. What Is Biblical Preaching? by Eric J. Alexander
The writer sees no more urgent priority than to summon the church to a restoration of the place biblical expository preaching should hold. He teaches that biblical preaching is fundamental in importance, spiritual in essence, didactic in nature, expository, systematic, pastoral, clear in structure and with relevant contemporary application. It was taught at a conference of ministers but is suitable for all Christians to understand what id true preaching.
5. Honest Money: The Biblical Blueprint for Money and Banking by Gary North
This is the best book I have read on money and economics. It is also one of the most depressing. North gives a history of money and establishes that the state is the real counterfeiter with unbacked currency. He gives simle explanations of money and economics particularly the bad consequences of our fractional reserve banking. It may be 23 years old but it is still up to date in critical analysis.
Friday, February 27, 2009
A Jubilee Year?
The Jubill Centre's Alan White writes on 24 February 2009
A couple of times in the last month or so it's been suggested that we comment on a call for a worldwide Jubilee Year to resolve the current financial crisis.
The first published call seems to have been an article by Niall Ferguson in the Financial Times of 18 December '08. He suggests a conversion of homeowners' mortgage debts 'could be wholly or partly converted into long-term, low and fixed interest loans' and quotes Harvard's Martin Feldstein's proposal that the US government offer 'any homeowner with a mortgage the option to replace 20% of the mortgage with a low-interest loan from the government, subject to a maximum of $80,000. The annual interest rate could be as low as 2% and the loan would be amortised over 30 years'.
Niall points out that this would represent a loss for creditors, 'notably the holders of mortgage-backed securities and bank bonds' but that this would be 'a less extreme solution than the general debt cancellation envisaged in the Old Testament'.
(A much less comprehensive version of the Feldstein approach was announced by President Obama on February 18th when he pledged $75 billion to reduce the mortgage payments of homeowners at risk of default. And the UK government has schemes which offer assistance to some categories of people struggling with repayments.)
Another correspondent with the Jubilee Centre suggested that a year of Jubilee to cancel all debts could also be used to include the cancellation of the 'third world debt'. He queried whether 'surely the cost of giving the poor people in the USA their homes as a gift must be less than the money pledges being considered to overcome the banking problems created'.
Declaring a Jubilee Year in the sense of forgiving all debt would not be the solution to our current crisis. Paul Mills, who wrote the excellent chapters on Finance and The Economy in Jubilee Manifesto and eight Cambridge Papers, commented that the problem 'is that, in a highly-leveraged financial system, it takes very few debt write-offs to lead to the failure of many banks and some insurance companies, and large write-downs in pension fund assets'.
He explains that 'rather than allowing large banks to become insolvent and impose losses on bank creditors (bondholders and depositors), governments are borrowing to inject capital, buy assets, and inflate demand. As a result, total indebtedness is likely to rise (when it would otherwise be falling) because governments believe the economic consequences of immediate loss recognition are too severe'.
The way our debt-based economic system is structured means that from time to time the amount of debt accrued by households, companies and governments exceeds the economy's ability to service the debt. Paul Mills points out that 'bankruptcies, inflation, default or debt:equity swaps (in corporate restructurings) are then needed to rebalance the two (usually in the context of a banking/financial crisis)'.
In contrast, the biblical economic model maintains this balance through reliance on rental and equity contracts ('I share in the risk and get a share of the profit' arrangements) coupled with the periodic and predictable debt cancellation.
To be clear, the provisions of Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25 have debt forgiveness (amongst the people of Israel) every 7 years while the year of Jubilee every 50 years focuses on the return of land to the families that were allotted it on entering the promised land. No matter what economic hardships were got into, even becoming a bondservant, the Jubilee ensured that subsequent generations were not cut off from their roots through the loss of the family land in a particular generation. This safeguarded identity, rootedness and access to the land as means of production. In this sense, loans, selling (or more accurately leasing) land and bonded servitude were last resorts.
Thus the Jubilee is just part (albeit a key part) of the biblical economic model that Will Hutton said 'makes Das Kapital look tame'. Forgiveness of debt might seem a radical suggestion but the truth is we need an even more fundamental and biblical reorientation of our economic principles to avoid another 'credit crunch' in the future.
To explore with us some of what such a reorientation might realistically look like, be sure to join us in Cambridge for our Open Day on Monday 4th May, when Dr Mills will be speaking on 'The Economy in Crisis: A Biblical Diagnosis and Foundation for Recovery' - For further details, visit the News section of our website.
A couple of times in the last month or so it's been suggested that we comment on a call for a worldwide Jubilee Year to resolve the current financial crisis.
The first published call seems to have been an article by Niall Ferguson in the Financial Times of 18 December '08. He suggests a conversion of homeowners' mortgage debts 'could be wholly or partly converted into long-term, low and fixed interest loans' and quotes Harvard's Martin Feldstein's proposal that the US government offer 'any homeowner with a mortgage the option to replace 20% of the mortgage with a low-interest loan from the government, subject to a maximum of $80,000. The annual interest rate could be as low as 2% and the loan would be amortised over 30 years'.
Niall points out that this would represent a loss for creditors, 'notably the holders of mortgage-backed securities and bank bonds' but that this would be 'a less extreme solution than the general debt cancellation envisaged in the Old Testament'.
(A much less comprehensive version of the Feldstein approach was announced by President Obama on February 18th when he pledged $75 billion to reduce the mortgage payments of homeowners at risk of default. And the UK government has schemes which offer assistance to some categories of people struggling with repayments.)
Another correspondent with the Jubilee Centre suggested that a year of Jubilee to cancel all debts could also be used to include the cancellation of the 'third world debt'. He queried whether 'surely the cost of giving the poor people in the USA their homes as a gift must be less than the money pledges being considered to overcome the banking problems created'.
Declaring a Jubilee Year in the sense of forgiving all debt would not be the solution to our current crisis. Paul Mills, who wrote the excellent chapters on Finance and The Economy in Jubilee Manifesto and eight Cambridge Papers, commented that the problem 'is that, in a highly-leveraged financial system, it takes very few debt write-offs to lead to the failure of many banks and some insurance companies, and large write-downs in pension fund assets'.
He explains that 'rather than allowing large banks to become insolvent and impose losses on bank creditors (bondholders and depositors), governments are borrowing to inject capital, buy assets, and inflate demand. As a result, total indebtedness is likely to rise (when it would otherwise be falling) because governments believe the economic consequences of immediate loss recognition are too severe'.
The way our debt-based economic system is structured means that from time to time the amount of debt accrued by households, companies and governments exceeds the economy's ability to service the debt. Paul Mills points out that 'bankruptcies, inflation, default or debt:equity swaps (in corporate restructurings) are then needed to rebalance the two (usually in the context of a banking/financial crisis)'.
In contrast, the biblical economic model maintains this balance through reliance on rental and equity contracts ('I share in the risk and get a share of the profit' arrangements) coupled with the periodic and predictable debt cancellation.
To be clear, the provisions of Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25 have debt forgiveness (amongst the people of Israel) every 7 years while the year of Jubilee every 50 years focuses on the return of land to the families that were allotted it on entering the promised land. No matter what economic hardships were got into, even becoming a bondservant, the Jubilee ensured that subsequent generations were not cut off from their roots through the loss of the family land in a particular generation. This safeguarded identity, rootedness and access to the land as means of production. In this sense, loans, selling (or more accurately leasing) land and bonded servitude were last resorts.
Thus the Jubilee is just part (albeit a key part) of the biblical economic model that Will Hutton said 'makes Das Kapital look tame'. Forgiveness of debt might seem a radical suggestion but the truth is we need an even more fundamental and biblical reorientation of our economic principles to avoid another 'credit crunch' in the future.
To explore with us some of what such a reorientation might realistically look like, be sure to join us in Cambridge for our Open Day on Monday 4th May, when Dr Mills will be speaking on 'The Economy in Crisis: A Biblical Diagnosis and Foundation for Recovery' - For further details, visit the News section of our website.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
‘Ten Commandments’ of avoiding the debt trap
A brilliant article from The Times, Zambia by Madoda Milazi Published:Jan 21, 2009
Find out the 10 basic personal finance rules to keep the debt collector far from your front-door.
The Ten Commandments feature prominently in Christianity and Judaism as moral imperatives to save believers from falling into sin.
Similarly, financial advisers say consumers should swear by the “ten commandments of staying out of debt” to avoid falling into the debt trap. Luke Hirst, managing director of debt counselling firm Debtbusters, shared with Business Times the 10 basic rules of keeping debt collectors at bay.
1 THOU SHALL BUDGET
If you know how much you spend and where you spend it, you are less likely to fall behind on any payments that you may owe.
2 THOU SHALL NOT RIDE AN EXPENSIVE DONKEY
Driving a car you cannot afford is just plain stupid. It’s great to drive a flashy sports car and wear designer labels. But if you are worried about looking good in front of the neighbours, think about how silly you will look when the bank repossesses your car in the driveway while the Joneses are watching.
3 THOU SHALL INVEST SPARE COINS WISELY
For most people, being unable to pay their mortgage is one of their greatest fears. To decrease the total cost of your home loan, pay extra when you can to save on overall interest costs — over a 20- or 30-year loan, the saving can be astronomical.
4 THOU SHALL NOT SWIPE NOW AND PAY LATER
Credit cards are great when you can’t find an ATM, but relying on them to provide you with cash you don’t actually have can be catastrophic. With credit card interest rates as high as 27percent, a simple shopping spree could cost you dearly.
5 RENTING IS NOT A SIN
“South Africans have a mentality that renting is a sin, but in times of rising interest rates and high food costs, the knowledge that your rent is fixed for the term of your lease is a source of great comfort,” says Hirst.
6 THOU SHALL TAKE CONTROL
The minute you think you may be in financial trouble, take control of the situation. Contact your creditors, get hold of a debt counsellor or re-evaluate your budget before it gets too late.
7 THOU SHALL NOT FOLLOW THE HERD
With so much financial advice available, it becomes easy to read generic solutions and tailor them to your own financial situation. Get advice from a qualified expert.
8 THOU SHALL SHOP AROUND
Most people have been with their banks so long that they have no idea what competitive interest rates other institutions might offer. Don’t be a passive passenger in financing your home; shop around.
9 THOU SHALL EAT AT HOME
Everybody likes to eat out, but it’s the little things that add up when you are under pressure.
10 THOU SHALL NOT OVERPAY ON THY INSURANCE
You need insurance, but you should not be paying excessive amounts for it. With so many options available, take your time to shop around. Remember, the big names don’t always provide the most cost effective cover.
Find out the 10 basic personal finance rules to keep the debt collector far from your front-door.
The Ten Commandments feature prominently in Christianity and Judaism as moral imperatives to save believers from falling into sin.
Similarly, financial advisers say consumers should swear by the “ten commandments of staying out of debt” to avoid falling into the debt trap. Luke Hirst, managing director of debt counselling firm Debtbusters, shared with Business Times the 10 basic rules of keeping debt collectors at bay.
1 THOU SHALL BUDGET
If you know how much you spend and where you spend it, you are less likely to fall behind on any payments that you may owe.
2 THOU SHALL NOT RIDE AN EXPENSIVE DONKEY
Driving a car you cannot afford is just plain stupid. It’s great to drive a flashy sports car and wear designer labels. But if you are worried about looking good in front of the neighbours, think about how silly you will look when the bank repossesses your car in the driveway while the Joneses are watching.
3 THOU SHALL INVEST SPARE COINS WISELY
For most people, being unable to pay their mortgage is one of their greatest fears. To decrease the total cost of your home loan, pay extra when you can to save on overall interest costs — over a 20- or 30-year loan, the saving can be astronomical.
4 THOU SHALL NOT SWIPE NOW AND PAY LATER
Credit cards are great when you can’t find an ATM, but relying on them to provide you with cash you don’t actually have can be catastrophic. With credit card interest rates as high as 27percent, a simple shopping spree could cost you dearly.
5 RENTING IS NOT A SIN
“South Africans have a mentality that renting is a sin, but in times of rising interest rates and high food costs, the knowledge that your rent is fixed for the term of your lease is a source of great comfort,” says Hirst.
6 THOU SHALL TAKE CONTROL
The minute you think you may be in financial trouble, take control of the situation. Contact your creditors, get hold of a debt counsellor or re-evaluate your budget before it gets too late.
7 THOU SHALL NOT FOLLOW THE HERD
With so much financial advice available, it becomes easy to read generic solutions and tailor them to your own financial situation. Get advice from a qualified expert.
8 THOU SHALL SHOP AROUND
Most people have been with their banks so long that they have no idea what competitive interest rates other institutions might offer. Don’t be a passive passenger in financing your home; shop around.
9 THOU SHALL EAT AT HOME
Everybody likes to eat out, but it’s the little things that add up when you are under pressure.
10 THOU SHALL NOT OVERPAY ON THY INSURANCE
You need insurance, but you should not be paying excessive amounts for it. With so many options available, take your time to shop around. Remember, the big names don’t always provide the most cost effective cover.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Drivers urged against fuel rush
BBC says,"Ministers and trade bodies have urged motorists not to panic-buy fuel, as some petrol stations across Scotland reported shortages."
I can think of no better way to encourage people to fill up their cars with fuel,
BTW, can one find out the source of the fuel one has to buy? I have a desire to stop financing Saudi, Iran and other Arab oil producers with the exception of Iraq.
I can think of no better way to encourage people to fill up their cars with fuel,
BTW, can one find out the source of the fuel one has to buy? I have a desire to stop financing Saudi, Iran and other Arab oil producers with the exception of Iraq.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Advanced
Back from two weeks in N France and Belgium I note it is warmer here and spring more advanced like other things in England.
Shop opening hours.
Service culture.
Nanny state.
Surveillance by cameras.
A proper understanding of who won at Waterloo. All the souveniers there are of Nappy the loser.
Numbers of immigrants.
No so advanced here are,
Prices except for booze and tobacco but not food and fuel.
The natives ability to speak other languages.
Viewing football without Sky high prices on TV.
The strength of beer.
Roman Catholicism.
Health care.
Shop opening hours.
Service culture.
Nanny state.
Surveillance by cameras.
A proper understanding of who won at Waterloo. All the souveniers there are of Nappy the loser.
Numbers of immigrants.
No so advanced here are,
Prices except for booze and tobacco but not food and fuel.
The natives ability to speak other languages.
Viewing football without Sky high prices on TV.
The strength of beer.
Roman Catholicism.
Health care.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Books read in March 2008 (4)
1. The War on Terror: How Should Christians Respond? by Nick Solly Megoran
This is an eirenic, challenging and informative book. Though the author identifies himself as a pacifist he does faith fully give other views. He also has a very good survey of political analyses of the current situation. One cannot argue with the command to love our enemies. We should certainly show love to those Muslims around us. But I fear pacifism does not have a good track record in halting Islam. I think the author may be naive about the intentions of Islam as a religion for world domination. He often quotes Lloyd-Jones but does not relate how The Doctor firmly placed the Sermon on the Mount in the realm of personal ethics, not political or military. He also seems to be factually in error thinking American bombing destroyed Kabul. it was the Muhjadeen fighting one another after the Russians left that destroyed the city. In citing John Paton as one who loved his enemies he appears ignorant of Paton supporting and directing gun boat diplomacy, the shelling of cannibals who killed missionaries. Paton supported thi rightlys believing it would protect missionaries from further attacks.
2. Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism by Daniel Day Williams
I confess that I have always found patristics a dull subject and this book by a professor of the subject is no exception. As far as i am concerned he is preaching to the converted too. His target seems to be American free church people not those of us who put themselves in the reformed camp. The author believes that most Protestants have thrown out the baby of tradition with the Sola Scriptura bath water. But Scripture does teach about a tradition being handed on and there is much to learn from early church councils. Coming from a church that is confessional and not anti-creedal I do not need to be convinced that one's faith is catholic. The author gives us some good accounts of the early church leaders and denies that everything went downhill from Constantine.
3. On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke
O'Rourke is easier to read and shorter than Smith buy he is still not easy going. You need to pay good attention to the arguments. They did indeed influence the world and we are given good information on the historical context of Smith's writing. What I missed was any reference to the origin of Smith's title. It is a biblical quotation. O'Rourke is guilty of the occasional inaccuracy and non sequitur. It was the city council of Geneva, not Calvin who had Servetus executed.
4. Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam by Patrick Sookhdeo
This book is aimed at politicians and the military to show the aggressive nature of Islam. The author's contention is that classical Islam is inherently a religion which must dominate the whole world and it will do so by jihad. He shows that violence has characterised Islam ever since Mohammed was in Medina. He paints a disturbing picture as he analyses Islam ancient and modern. The main hope for a peaceful future he believe lies in encouraging moderate elements to reform their religion but the problem here is that by Islamic standards, it is wanting the bad guys, the compromisers with liberal democracy, to take the lead in reformation. The history of jihad is horrible in terms of the slaughter involved. Even more disturbing is the doctrine of taqiyya, dissimulation, where the end, promoting Islam, justifies the means, deceiving non-Muslims. He shows how Muslims often have one message for their own and another for outsiders. One can but conclude that the only Muslim testimony to be trusted is the one from your Muslim friend whose veracity is established. This book is a warning call to the West that it is under threat from islam ideologically and demographically. it is a stern wake up call. It shows the religion of peace only brings peace a peace when you submit to Allah. There is clear and present danger. It includes the nuclear ambitions of Iran as well as popular support for terrorism. The author is involved in Christian misssion though his book is silent on the Christian hope that transformation comes when Muslims see the way of Christ, not that of Mohammed is the only true way to know God.
This is an eirenic, challenging and informative book. Though the author identifies himself as a pacifist he does faith fully give other views. He also has a very good survey of political analyses of the current situation. One cannot argue with the command to love our enemies. We should certainly show love to those Muslims around us. But I fear pacifism does not have a good track record in halting Islam. I think the author may be naive about the intentions of Islam as a religion for world domination. He often quotes Lloyd-Jones but does not relate how The Doctor firmly placed the Sermon on the Mount in the realm of personal ethics, not political or military. He also seems to be factually in error thinking American bombing destroyed Kabul. it was the Muhjadeen fighting one another after the Russians left that destroyed the city. In citing John Paton as one who loved his enemies he appears ignorant of Paton supporting and directing gun boat diplomacy, the shelling of cannibals who killed missionaries. Paton supported thi rightlys believing it would protect missionaries from further attacks.
2. Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism by Daniel Day Williams
I confess that I have always found patristics a dull subject and this book by a professor of the subject is no exception. As far as i am concerned he is preaching to the converted too. His target seems to be American free church people not those of us who put themselves in the reformed camp. The author believes that most Protestants have thrown out the baby of tradition with the Sola Scriptura bath water. But Scripture does teach about a tradition being handed on and there is much to learn from early church councils. Coming from a church that is confessional and not anti-creedal I do not need to be convinced that one's faith is catholic. The author gives us some good accounts of the early church leaders and denies that everything went downhill from Constantine.
3. On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke
O'Rourke is easier to read and shorter than Smith buy he is still not easy going. You need to pay good attention to the arguments. They did indeed influence the world and we are given good information on the historical context of Smith's writing. What I missed was any reference to the origin of Smith's title. It is a biblical quotation. O'Rourke is guilty of the occasional inaccuracy and non sequitur. It was the city council of Geneva, not Calvin who had Servetus executed.
4. Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam by Patrick Sookhdeo
This book is aimed at politicians and the military to show the aggressive nature of Islam. The author's contention is that classical Islam is inherently a religion which must dominate the whole world and it will do so by jihad. He shows that violence has characterised Islam ever since Mohammed was in Medina. He paints a disturbing picture as he analyses Islam ancient and modern. The main hope for a peaceful future he believe lies in encouraging moderate elements to reform their religion but the problem here is that by Islamic standards, it is wanting the bad guys, the compromisers with liberal democracy, to take the lead in reformation. The history of jihad is horrible in terms of the slaughter involved. Even more disturbing is the doctrine of taqiyya, dissimulation, where the end, promoting Islam, justifies the means, deceiving non-Muslims. He shows how Muslims often have one message for their own and another for outsiders. One can but conclude that the only Muslim testimony to be trusted is the one from your Muslim friend whose veracity is established. This book is a warning call to the West that it is under threat from islam ideologically and demographically. it is a stern wake up call. It shows the religion of peace only brings peace a peace when you submit to Allah. There is clear and present danger. It includes the nuclear ambitions of Iran as well as popular support for terrorism. The author is involved in Christian misssion though his book is silent on the Christian hope that transformation comes when Muslims see the way of Christ, not that of Mohammed is the only true way to know God.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Northern Rock to be nationalised
BBC says, "Northern Rock hit difficulties because of the credit crisis Northern Rock is to be nationalised as a temporary measure, Chancellor Alistair Darling has said. A consortium led by the Virgin group was leading bids to run the beleaguered bank, while a management buyout had also been considered. But ministers have decided that nationalisation - the first such move since the 1970s - was the only option."They felt that the offers on the table did not offer enough to the taxpayer," BBC business editor Robert Peston said. The decision will be a blow to the bank's shareholders - who will receive next-to-nothing in the short term for their shares "It's a momentous moment. Nationalisation has become a dirty word associated with industrial failures of the past," Mr Peston went on. "Financial services, by contrast, have been considered the great British success story - so for such a seemingly growing bank to end up being nationalised is a big moment for the City and a big moment for the government."Northern Rock got itself into financial difficulties last year because its business model left it ill-prepared for the global credit crunch. It was forced to ask the Bank of England for emergency funding, triggering the first run on a British bank in more than a century. Nationalisation will be pushed though parliament with emergency legislation on Monday. Shares in Northern Rock will be suspended on Monday morning. Under nationalisation rules, shareholders will be offered compensation for their holding, at a level set by a Government-appointed panel. Investors could begin legal action if they are unhappy with the amount offered. UK taxpayers are now subsidising the bank in loans and guarantees to other lenders to the tune of about £55bn. The Treasury now feels that nationalisation offers the most certainty of securing these guarantees, Mr Peston said. It is thought that the business model it proposes will be similar to those put forward by the Virgin Group and the in-house management consortium. These were likely to see a downsizing of the bank, with job cuts likely, observers say The Treasury had already recruited the former boss of the Lloyd's of London insurance market, Ron Sandler, to lead Northern Rock, in case the bank were nationalised. Mr Sandler is widely regarded as having restored confidence in Lloyd's after its years in financial disarray. He is well known to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and worked for the Treasury in developing the so-called stakeholder pension and investment products that were intended to help those on lower incomes save for retirement. Chairman of the Commons Treasury Select Committee John McFall said that he welcomed the Government's decision to nationalise."They have explored every avenue. At the end of the day the biggest issue is the safeguarding of taxpayers' money. If nationalisation saves that money, that has to be the correct step in the long term." Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable said that the right deicison had been taken, though "belatedly", and that the government should have walked away from the prospect of a private takeover some time ago. "The important thing now is to do the right thing and the government has got to immediately establish what the problems are with this bank.""
Is this the first step backwards to old Labour red in tooth and claw? Why should billions of our money have been put in this black hole unless the government is worried that a collapse would bring down the whole house of cards that is our the financial base of the West built on the flood plain of fractional reserve banking, a system of trust in thin air?
Adam Smith Institute says, "Tuesday, 19 February 2008
Anatole Kaletsky's take on the Northern Rock nationalization in yesterday's Times was spot-on:
Nationalisation... made sense only as a necessary legal stepping-stone to the orderly liquidation that Northern Rock required as soon as it ran out of money in September... To use nationalisation to keep the bank in business and its staff in state-subsidised employment would be a travesty of all the economic principles that “new” Labour has claimed to believe in.
His final paragraph is particularly telling:
All in all, what Mr Darling announced yesterday was a financial and political disaster of almost unimaginable proportions. The Northern Rock saga did not end yesterday; the fiasco has only just started, with the Government now officially in charge."
Is this the first step backwards to old Labour red in tooth and claw? Why should billions of our money have been put in this black hole unless the government is worried that a collapse would bring down the whole house of cards that is our the financial base of the West built on the flood plain of fractional reserve banking, a system of trust in thin air?
Adam Smith Institute says, "Tuesday, 19 February 2008
Anatole Kaletsky's take on the Northern Rock nationalization in yesterday's Times was spot-on:
Nationalisation... made sense only as a necessary legal stepping-stone to the orderly liquidation that Northern Rock required as soon as it ran out of money in September... To use nationalisation to keep the bank in business and its staff in state-subsidised employment would be a travesty of all the economic principles that “new” Labour has claimed to believe in.
His final paragraph is particularly telling:
All in all, what Mr Darling announced yesterday was a financial and political disaster of almost unimaginable proportions. The Northern Rock saga did not end yesterday; the fiasco has only just started, with the Government now officially in charge."
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Economics-christiansquoting.org.uk
He who teaches his child to live on a small means has left him a fortune.
You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. --Isa. 61:6
A little is as much as a lot, if it is enough. --Steve Brown
Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
Winston Churchill
To the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about the merits of the world economic system. -- Vassilis Epaminondou
Necessity never made a good bargain.--Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) _Poor Richard's Almanac_ [1735], "April"
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. -- Richard Feynman
He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation. -- President James Garfield 1881
The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market- triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed... The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's. --Alan Greenspan _The Objectivist_ (1966)
If anything is evident it should be that, while nations might abide by formal rules on which they have agreed, they will never submit to the direction which international economic planning involves - that while they may agree on the rules of the game, they will never agree on the order of preference in which the rank of their own needs and the rate at which they are allowed to advance is fixed by majority vote. Even if, at first, the peoples should, under some illusion about the meaning of such proposals, agree to transfer such powers to an international authority, they would soon find out that what they have delegated is not merely a technical task, but the most comprehensive power over their very lives. -- Friedrich Hayek, _The Road to Serfdom_
Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed. This is what the Dosadi say: Greed sets its own limits, its self-regulation. --Frank Herbert, -The Dosadi Analysis -- a Bureau of Sabatoge Text
In the long run, free trade benefits everyone; in the short run it is bound to produce much pain. -- Henry Hobhouse
Give me control over a nations economy, and I care not who writes its laws."
Meyer Amschel Rothschild. Quoted in The Federal Reserve Bank by H.S. Kenan.
If patriotism is, as Dr. Johnson used to remark, the last refuge of the scoundrel, wrapping outdated industry in the mantle of national interest is the last refuge of the economically dispossessed. In economic terms, pleading national interest is the declining cottage industry of those who have been bypassed by the global economy.-- Kenichi Ohmae
America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.-- Ayn Rand
Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the market-place will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process. --Ronald W. Reagan
When everything that matters can be bought and sold,when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advanrage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroting the very virtues on which it depends. That, not the return of socialism, is the danger that advanced economies now face. Jonathan Sacks, Markets and Morals, First Things, August 2000.
Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.--Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. --Thomas Sowell
The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.-- Thomas Sowell
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.-- Thomas Sowell
Government is the only agency which can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless. --Von Mises
It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.-- Ludwig von Mises
\
You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. --Isa. 61:6
A little is as much as a lot, if it is enough. --Steve Brown
Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
Winston Churchill
To the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about the merits of the world economic system. -- Vassilis Epaminondou
Necessity never made a good bargain.--Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) _Poor Richard's Almanac_ [1735], "April"
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. -- Richard Feynman
He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation. -- President James Garfield 1881
The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market- triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed... The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's. --Alan Greenspan _The Objectivist_ (1966)
If anything is evident it should be that, while nations might abide by formal rules on which they have agreed, they will never submit to the direction which international economic planning involves - that while they may agree on the rules of the game, they will never agree on the order of preference in which the rank of their own needs and the rate at which they are allowed to advance is fixed by majority vote. Even if, at first, the peoples should, under some illusion about the meaning of such proposals, agree to transfer such powers to an international authority, they would soon find out that what they have delegated is not merely a technical task, but the most comprehensive power over their very lives. -- Friedrich Hayek, _The Road to Serfdom_
Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed. This is what the Dosadi say: Greed sets its own limits, its self-regulation. --Frank Herbert, -The Dosadi Analysis -- a Bureau of Sabatoge Text
In the long run, free trade benefits everyone; in the short run it is bound to produce much pain. -- Henry Hobhouse
Give me control over a nations economy, and I care not who writes its laws."
Meyer Amschel Rothschild. Quoted in The Federal Reserve Bank by H.S. Kenan.
If patriotism is, as Dr. Johnson used to remark, the last refuge of the scoundrel, wrapping outdated industry in the mantle of national interest is the last refuge of the economically dispossessed. In economic terms, pleading national interest is the declining cottage industry of those who have been bypassed by the global economy.-- Kenichi Ohmae
America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.-- Ayn Rand
Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the market-place will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process. --Ronald W. Reagan
When everything that matters can be bought and sold,when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advanrage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroting the very virtues on which it depends. That, not the return of socialism, is the danger that advanced economies now face. Jonathan Sacks, Markets and Morals, First Things, August 2000.
Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.--Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. --Thomas Sowell
The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.-- Thomas Sowell
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.-- Thomas Sowell
Government is the only agency which can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless. --Von Mises
It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.-- Ludwig von Mises
\
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Two million 'wrongly get benefit'
BBC reports "...most claimants should be looking for workFewer than a third of the 2.7 million or so people claiming incapacity benefit are legitimate claimants, a government welfare adviser has said. David Freud, an investment banker hired by Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, said up to 185,000 claimants work illegally while on the benefit. He told the Daily Telegraph it was "ludicrous" that medical checks were carried out by a claimant's own GP. The system was "a recipe for getting people on to IB", he said. Mr Freud, whose report on welfare last year was highly influential on the reforms set out by Mr Purnell on Monday, has recommended that private firms be paid "bounties" to get claimants off incapacity benefit and into jobs. He said there was a "classic conflict of interest" embodied in the system of GPs carrying out claimants' medical checks, saying: "They're frightened of legal action."
He said that, compared with unemployment benefit, incapacity claimants received more money and did not get "hassled". "The system we have at the moment sends 2.64 million people into a form of economic house arrest and encourages them to stay at home and watch daytime TV. We're doing nothing for these people," he told the paper.
Since the 1980s, there have been claims that successive governments have allowed the IB roll to grow in order to keep down the more politically sensitive count of the unemployed. "When the whole rot started in the 1980s we had 700,000 (claimants). I suspect that's much closer to the real figure than the one we have now, Mr Freud said.
Recent figures showed that more than 500,000 young people under 35 are now claiming incapacity benefit. About 40% of recipients are claiming for mental health problems, some 250,000 because of stress-related illness, while others cite alcoholism, obesity or eating disorders. Mr Freud said a new system, with private firms and voluntary organisations paid by results in getting claimants into lasting jobs and those who refuse to co-operate having benefits docked, could be in place within five years. He told the paper it would be "economically rational" to pay as much as £62,000 to a company which managed to place an incapacity benefit claimant in a job which lasted three years or more. Incapacity benefit costs the Treasury about £12bn a year. "
No. It costs me the tax payer. Welcome though it is there is no tackling the roots of dependency culture in the thousands of civil servants whose jobs depend on it and who may encourage people to be dependent.
He said that, compared with unemployment benefit, incapacity claimants received more money and did not get "hassled". "The system we have at the moment sends 2.64 million people into a form of economic house arrest and encourages them to stay at home and watch daytime TV. We're doing nothing for these people," he told the paper.
Since the 1980s, there have been claims that successive governments have allowed the IB roll to grow in order to keep down the more politically sensitive count of the unemployed. "When the whole rot started in the 1980s we had 700,000 (claimants). I suspect that's much closer to the real figure than the one we have now, Mr Freud said.
Recent figures showed that more than 500,000 young people under 35 are now claiming incapacity benefit. About 40% of recipients are claiming for mental health problems, some 250,000 because of stress-related illness, while others cite alcoholism, obesity or eating disorders. Mr Freud said a new system, with private firms and voluntary organisations paid by results in getting claimants into lasting jobs and those who refuse to co-operate having benefits docked, could be in place within five years. He told the paper it would be "economically rational" to pay as much as £62,000 to a company which managed to place an incapacity benefit claimant in a job which lasted three years or more. Incapacity benefit costs the Treasury about £12bn a year. "
No. It costs me the tax payer. Welcome though it is there is no tackling the roots of dependency culture in the thousands of civil servants whose jobs depend on it and who may encourage people to be dependent.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Communism- christiansquoting.org.uk
Christian love, which applies to all, even to one's enemies, is the worst adversary of Communism. --Nikolai Bukharin, _Pravda_, March 30, 1934
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent ... The Dark Ages may return on the gleaming wings of science. Beware, I say. Time may be short.--Winston Churchill speaks at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946
Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit," Ignazio Silone wrote, and this is the standard the authors apply to the Communist experience--in the China of "the Great Helmsman," Kim Il Sung's Korea, Vietnam under "Uncle Ho" and Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah. The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the widescale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards. As the death toll mounts--as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on--the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century. -- review of The Black Book of Communism Crimes, Terror, Repression Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin Edited by Mark Kramer Translated by Jonathan Murphy
The real "opium of the people", distracting men's minds from their essential task, is the communist myth of an earthly paradise.
Jean Danielou, _The Lord of History_, 1958
One thing about Ronald Reagan that struck me time and again was his obvious, visceral loathing of communism. For him it wasn't just a difference of opinion about economics or governance: he saw through the whole thing to its essentially anti-human nature. And this was at a time, we all too easily forget, when plenty of people in the West -- I think a majority of the intellectual classes even as late as the 1980s -- didn't mind communism at all, thought in fact that it was just the ticket, if perhaps not for the USA, at least for poor counties like Nicaragua. Reagan had the firmest, clearest, truest moral compass of any modern President. May he rest in peace. -- John Derbyshire, http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_30_corner-archive.asp#033228
We deny all morality taken from super-human or non-class conceptions. We say that this is a deception, a swindle, a befogging of the minds of the workers and peasants in the interests of the landlords and capitalists. --Lenin, speech, October 2, 1920
We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.--Lenin, 1908
Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice. We repudiate all morality which proceeds from supernatural ideas or ideas which are outside the class conception. In our opinion, morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of the class war. Everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting order and for uniting the proletariat. Our morality consists solely in close discipline and conscious warfare against the exploiters. --V.I. Lenin
From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need. --Karl Marx
Communism will probably disappear altogether when the Russian experiment comes to a climax, and Bolshevism either converts itself into a sickly imitation of capitalism or blows itself up with a bang. The former issue seems much more likely. ---H. L. Mencken, Baltimore _Evening Sun_, July 14, 1930
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.~H.L. Mencken
Communist atheism denies any transcendent dimension to being,any call to which humans must freely respond, any standard of truth, evidence, moral integrity, and goodness by which humans are every moment being judged. For the Communist, all is nothingness except the Dialectic of History, before which and in whose name he prostrates himself. The Communist borrows from Christianity and Judaism a comfort, viz. that his prostration places him on the side of justice and compassion. Yet his comfort is unwarranted because it rests on ideas in which his premises forbid him to believe. For the Communist has only one moral principle: the Collective Will of the Party. All else can be done in that name: murder, torture, imprison, exterminate, assassinate. No other moral question can be scientifically raised. There is in man no internal source of dignity. Personal liberty and personal responsibility cannot be honored in theory, although of course they continued to live on among individuals. In theory, these realities are dismissed as bourgeois affectations. The Communist's moral comforts are stolen from elsewhere. --Michael Novak, "The Godlessness That Failed", _First Things_, June/July, 2000
Communism...is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and, if once adopted, would utterly destroy the rights, property, and possessions of all men, and even society itself. --Pope Pius IX, _Qui Pluribus_, 1846
Marxism is a perfect example of the chimeras that fuelled the sixties. And it was probably the most potent one. Albeit, much of this Marxism would have been unrecognisable to Marx. It was Marxism watered down, Marxism spiked with LSD and Marxism adulterated with mystical food colouring. But it was Marxism nonetheless because the wildest hippie and the sternest member of the Politburo shared the same daydream, the daydream that underlies all Marxism: _that a thing might be somehow worth other than what people will give for it. This is just not true. And any system that bases itself on such a will-o'-the-wisp is bound to fail. Communes don't work. Cuba doesn't either. --P. J. O'Rourke
"All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?" - Victor Lvovich Khibalchich ,(1890-1947) (better known as Victor Serge)
Note: This statement was made after visiting Russia, to the pro-Leninist sentiment in the global left. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Victor_Serge
Nearly 20 years ago, confined to an 8-by-10 cell in a prison on the border of Siberia, I was granted by my Soviet jailers the 'privilege' of reading the latest copy of Pravda, the official mouthpiece of the Communist regime. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an 'evil empire.' Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, prisoners quickly spread the word of Reagan's 'provocation' throughout the prison. The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us. --Natan Sharansky, "Afraid of the Truth", _The Washington Post_, October 12, 2000
Class is a communist concept. It groups people in bundles, and sets them against one another. Margaret Thatcher in Brenda Maddox, Maggie the First Lady,
Communism was the regime for the priveleged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man..- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p156
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.--Frank Zapp
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent ... The Dark Ages may return on the gleaming wings of science. Beware, I say. Time may be short.--Winston Churchill speaks at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946
Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit," Ignazio Silone wrote, and this is the standard the authors apply to the Communist experience--in the China of "the Great Helmsman," Kim Il Sung's Korea, Vietnam under "Uncle Ho" and Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah. The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the widescale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards. As the death toll mounts--as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on--the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century. -- review of The Black Book of Communism Crimes, Terror, Repression Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin Edited by Mark Kramer Translated by Jonathan Murphy
The real "opium of the people", distracting men's minds from their essential task, is the communist myth of an earthly paradise.
Jean Danielou, _The Lord of History_, 1958
One thing about Ronald Reagan that struck me time and again was his obvious, visceral loathing of communism. For him it wasn't just a difference of opinion about economics or governance: he saw through the whole thing to its essentially anti-human nature. And this was at a time, we all too easily forget, when plenty of people in the West -- I think a majority of the intellectual classes even as late as the 1980s -- didn't mind communism at all, thought in fact that it was just the ticket, if perhaps not for the USA, at least for poor counties like Nicaragua. Reagan had the firmest, clearest, truest moral compass of any modern President. May he rest in peace. -- John Derbyshire, http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_30_corner-archive.asp#033228
We deny all morality taken from super-human or non-class conceptions. We say that this is a deception, a swindle, a befogging of the minds of the workers and peasants in the interests of the landlords and capitalists. --Lenin, speech, October 2, 1920
We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.--Lenin, 1908
Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice. We repudiate all morality which proceeds from supernatural ideas or ideas which are outside the class conception. In our opinion, morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of the class war. Everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting order and for uniting the proletariat. Our morality consists solely in close discipline and conscious warfare against the exploiters. --V.I. Lenin
From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need. --Karl Marx
Communism will probably disappear altogether when the Russian experiment comes to a climax, and Bolshevism either converts itself into a sickly imitation of capitalism or blows itself up with a bang. The former issue seems much more likely. ---H. L. Mencken, Baltimore _Evening Sun_, July 14, 1930
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.~H.L. Mencken
Communist atheism denies any transcendent dimension to being,any call to which humans must freely respond, any standard of truth, evidence, moral integrity, and goodness by which humans are every moment being judged. For the Communist, all is nothingness except the Dialectic of History, before which and in whose name he prostrates himself. The Communist borrows from Christianity and Judaism a comfort, viz. that his prostration places him on the side of justice and compassion. Yet his comfort is unwarranted because it rests on ideas in which his premises forbid him to believe. For the Communist has only one moral principle: the Collective Will of the Party. All else can be done in that name: murder, torture, imprison, exterminate, assassinate. No other moral question can be scientifically raised. There is in man no internal source of dignity. Personal liberty and personal responsibility cannot be honored in theory, although of course they continued to live on among individuals. In theory, these realities are dismissed as bourgeois affectations. The Communist's moral comforts are stolen from elsewhere. --Michael Novak, "The Godlessness That Failed", _First Things_, June/July, 2000
Communism...is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and, if once adopted, would utterly destroy the rights, property, and possessions of all men, and even society itself. --Pope Pius IX, _Qui Pluribus_, 1846
Marxism is a perfect example of the chimeras that fuelled the sixties. And it was probably the most potent one. Albeit, much of this Marxism would have been unrecognisable to Marx. It was Marxism watered down, Marxism spiked with LSD and Marxism adulterated with mystical food colouring. But it was Marxism nonetheless because the wildest hippie and the sternest member of the Politburo shared the same daydream, the daydream that underlies all Marxism: _that a thing might be somehow worth other than what people will give for it. This is just not true. And any system that bases itself on such a will-o'-the-wisp is bound to fail. Communes don't work. Cuba doesn't either. --P. J. O'Rourke
"All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette of yours?" - Victor Lvovich Khibalchich ,(1890-1947) (better known as Victor Serge)
Note: This statement was made after visiting Russia, to the pro-Leninist sentiment in the global left. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Victor_Serge
Nearly 20 years ago, confined to an 8-by-10 cell in a prison on the border of Siberia, I was granted by my Soviet jailers the 'privilege' of reading the latest copy of Pravda, the official mouthpiece of the Communist regime. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an 'evil empire.' Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, prisoners quickly spread the word of Reagan's 'provocation' throughout the prison. The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us. --Natan Sharansky, "Afraid of the Truth", _The Washington Post_, October 12, 2000
Class is a communist concept. It groups people in bundles, and sets them against one another. Margaret Thatcher in Brenda Maddox, Maggie the First Lady,
Communism was the regime for the priveleged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man..- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p156
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.--Frank Zapp
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Put not your trust in shares
BBC reports, "Recession fears weigh on markets
Most stock market indexes are having a second day of losses
Evan Davis analysis
Asian and European share indexes have continued to fall sharply on Tuesday amid fears of a recession in the US leading to a global economic slowdown.
London's FTSE 100 index has had a bumpy day, falling more than 3% at the open. It has since recovered and was recently trading between 1% higher and 1% lower.
Earlier, Asian markets had tumbled with Japan's Nikkei index closing down 5.7%, taking its decline this year to 18%.
Many analysts are predicting indexes could fall further in coming weeks."
It is all built on trust and when trust goes markets collapse. That is why the government backed Northern Rock when it should have gone to the wall as in inefficient bank. There is no solid foundation. Thanks to fractional reserve banking the money does not exist. It is not there. The book says,"Put not your trust in princes." It applies to economies and shares too.
Most stock market indexes are having a second day of losses
Evan Davis analysis
Asian and European share indexes have continued to fall sharply on Tuesday amid fears of a recession in the US leading to a global economic slowdown.
London's FTSE 100 index has had a bumpy day, falling more than 3% at the open. It has since recovered and was recently trading between 1% higher and 1% lower.
Earlier, Asian markets had tumbled with Japan's Nikkei index closing down 5.7%, taking its decline this year to 18%.
Many analysts are predicting indexes could fall further in coming weeks."
It is all built on trust and when trust goes markets collapse. That is why the government backed Northern Rock when it should have gone to the wall as in inefficient bank. There is no solid foundation. Thanks to fractional reserve banking the money does not exist. It is not there. The book says,"Put not your trust in princes." It applies to economies and shares too.
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