Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, also served as a diplomat to Canada, a U.S. senator and a Maryland state senator. He was the last of the signers of the Declaration to die. Bradley Birzer is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American history and director of American studies at Hillsdale College in Michigan. His book “American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll” is scheduled for release Feb. 15, and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
Q: What role did Charles Carroll’s faith play in his political life?
A: A huge role. Prior to 1774, as a Marylander and a Roman Catholic, he did not have any rights except for economic rights. So his faith had shaped everything in his life. His signing of the Declaration, at least as he saw it, was intimately related to his religious faith. He said in 1829, “When I signed the Declaration of Independence, I had in view not only our independence of England but the toleration of all sects, professing the Christian religion, and communicating to them all great rights.”
Q: How exactly did Colonial Maryland persecute Catholics?
A: In November of 1689, the state’s 1649 law of tolerance was undone. Roman Catholics could practice privately after that, but they could not practice publicly. In 1704, they started closing all Catholic churches in Maryland. I think the craziest law passed in 1715. It said that children who were raised in Roman Catholic fashion could be taken from their parents and be given permanently to Protestants. But all those laws were undone in 1774.
Q: How did Charles Carroll rise to prominence in the midst of that persecution?
A: His family was the single wealthiest family in Maryland. Carroll had been abroad until 1765, being educated in Europe for 17 years. But around the time he returns, there’s a huge debate about whether or not the province of Maryland should have the Church of England as its official religion. Connected to that was whether or not the governor had the right to issue taxes or whether only an assembly had that right.
So Carroll starts writing anonymously. He takes the name First Citizen, which is ironic because he doesn’t even have his citizenship. He takes the side that only assemblies are allowed to tax. And during these debates, his reputation just explodes. And that’s what really changes public perception of Catholics – Carroll’s reputation. He becomes a critical figure. John Adams even goes so far to say that Carroll will always be remembered as one of the greats of the founding.
Q: Carroll was the last of the signers to die. What did he have to say about America at the end of his life?
A: He was so critical of what happened to the republic after the founding. He’s very critical of the democratic element in the American republic – he’s worried that self-interest and greed are replacing republican virtue. So from the late 1700s, Carroll starts being called “the hoary-headed aristocrat.” He starts to be seen as a relic of an older age. But after Carroll dies, there’s a resurgence of his reputation. All across the country, the headlines read, “The last of the Romans is dead.”
And he was one of Alexis de Tocqueville’s main informants. So there are moments in de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” when he is being critical of the democratic spirit, and it seems very clear to me that he is taking that from his interview with Carroll.
Q: What does history get wrong about Carroll?
A: I’m always amazed at how much our own history, especially [in] our textbooks, tends to portray the founders as merely enlightened figures. And there’s no doubt they were. But the vast majority were Christian – Franklin and Jefferson being the exceptions that so many focus on. And the American people were intensely religious, mostly Protestant, at the time of the founding. I think it’s dangerous that we secularize the founding so much. We need to know the context – we need to know what inspired them to fight for liberty.
Q: What lessons does Carroll’s life hold for American citizens today?
A: Probably the most important thing is his understanding of virtue and the necessity of education in the republic. I also think he’s a great example of someone who was raised in a pretty bad situation, at least in terms of culture, since he didn’t have legal and political rights. He turned from that and did not become bitter, but instead, I think he learned the lesson that this is wrong, and once it’s fixed for me it needs to be fixed for everyone.
Liz Essley attends Hillsdale College and was a student of Bradley Birzer’s.
March 6th, 2010
Richard Smith, a London-based capital markets information technology manager, was kind enough to provide an advance copy of his review for the book ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism by Yves Smith, the author of the well-known financial blog Naked Capitalism.
Mr. Smith (real name, and no relation to Yves) helped in the proofing of the copy and fact searches, so he was already well familiar with the text. Perhaps this makes him a not entirely dispassionate source, given the regard that even copy editors can obtain for their associated works. But I thought it was a very nice summary of many of the salient points, and that you would enjoy having the opportunity to read it.
I intend to read the book in order to both learn something, and to be entertained as well. I love reading accounts of this period of time that are both authoritative and well-written, and understandable by the non-expert. Given the author’s performance on her blog, and her detailed industry knowledge and experience, it looks to be a ‘must read’ for those following the financial crisis and its associated developments.
Reading ECONned
By Richard Smith
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/03/guest-post-econned-book-review.html
March 6th, 2010
1. Before Barrack Obama’s next televised speech, prepare your “ObamaBingo” card by drawing a square. I find that 5″ x 5″ is a good size — and dividing it into columns –five across and five down. That will give you 25 1-inch blocks.
Read the instructions at www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/obama/
February 28th, 2010
From the terrible Algerian slaughter, and its terrible silence, comes this small tale, told by an officer of the special forces who broke with “Le Pouvoir” of his own country and sought asylum in France. It is the autumn of 1994, deep into the season of killing. An old and simple Algerian woman, accompanied by two of her children, comes to the army barracks, to the very building where the torturers did their grim work, in search of her husband and her son. The two men were there; they had already endured three days of torture. The woman was quite certain where the men were being held. It was the same place, she told the astonished young Algerian officer, where the French held and tortured their prisoners during the “war of liberation” decades earlier. Her husband had been an old mujahid, a soldier in the holy war, and had known imprisonment under the French–and now again, during this most recent time of horror and sorrow. The old woman was never to see her husband and her son again. They perished in the ordeal of the new Algeria.
Continue reading “The Furrows of Algeria”
February 27th, 2010
Five Threats to the Common Currency
First it was Greece. Then came Portugal and Spain, with Ireland and Italy not far behind. The financial crisis has driven up public debt in Europe’s common currency zone to such heights that many economists fear the euro could collapse. SPIEGEL ONLINE takes a look at the five greatest risks to the future of the euro zone.
February 21st, 2010
American citizens have grown increasingly unhappy with our congressional representatives, and polls show they’re getting disenchanted with the Obama administration in larger numbers. Funny, but before the loss of one Democratic Senate seat with Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, voter’s voices weren’t much heard. Or rather…..not many members of Congress were listening. They are now. Read more…
February 21st, 2010
Were Lloyd and Jamie and the pigmen of Wall Street and Washington taking notes during Tiger Woods’ apology?
Doubtful.
No one is perfect, of course. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone sins. We are all weak, and insufficient in ourselves. And yet we attempt great things, in fear and trembling. The spirit endures and abides.
But there are moments in history that are epidemic with excess, a pathological pursuit of lust, greed, and deceit with a nihilistic determination that is more like a fashion of the age than an aberration. Chic to be above conventional morality and the law, lacking all proportion. Accepted, and even admired.
Tiger himself is what they call ’small potatoes,’ the personal foibles of a star athlete. What is more significant is the festival of fraud going on in the financial world, centered around Chicago and New York.
Tiger’s words could be the new American Anthem for a generation of reckless, selfish, and self-destructive behaviour by those most blessed by its freedom, offered the greatest opportunities and privileges, sometimes undeserved, and most often paid for by the sacrifice of others.
Most of them still have no regrets, except of course for the fear of discovery. They will have to somehow grow a conscience for that. Or face the withdrawal of support by their sponsors. In the case of Tiger it was Nike. In the case of the Banks it is the US government. And in the case of the US government it is a gullible and complacent public.
“Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have cheered for me, have worked with me, always supported me. Now, every one of you has good reason to be critical of me. I want to say to each on of you simply and directly I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behaviour I engaged in. I know people want to find out how i could be so selfish and foolish.
I knew my actions were wrong but I convinced myself that the normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I only thought about myself…
I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt that I was entitled.
Parents used to point to me as a role model for their kids. I owe all those families a special apology. I want to say to them that I am truly sorry.
I recognize I have brought this on myself and I know, above all, I am the one who needs to change.
I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules.”
February 20th, 2010
In the present system, the more unrestricted the banks are, the more money they can generate “out of thin air,” and the more damage they can inflict upon the wealth-generation process. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak
February 20th, 2010
NPR’s Morning Edition had a touching piece the other day that illustrated how great a blessing business can be, and just how terrible things can be when there’s no freedom to innovate, produce, and create wealth. Chana Joffe-Walt and Adam Davidson of Planet Money put together the narrative of George Sassine of Haiti and Fernando Capellan of the Dominican Republic, “Island Of Hispaniola Has Two Varied Economies.”
February 20th, 2010
The Economics of Calvin and Calvinism
by Murray N. Rothbard on February 18, 2010
John Calvin’s social and economic views closely parallel Luther’s, and there is no point in repeating them here. There are only two main areas of difference: their views on usury, and on the concept of the “calling,” although the latter difference is more marked for the later Calvinist Puritans of the 17th century.
Calvin’s main contribution to the usury question was in having the courage to dump the prohibition altogether.
This son of an important town official had only contempt for the Aristotelian argument that money is sterile. A child, he pointed out, knows that money is only sterile when locked away somewhere; but who in their right mind borrows to keep money idle? Merchants borrow in order to make profits on their purchases, and hence money is then fruitful.
As for the Bible, Luke’s famous injunction only orders generosity towards the poor, while Hebraic law in the Old Testament is not binding in modern society. To Calvin, then, usury is perfectly licit, provided that it is not charged in loans to the poor, who would be hurt by such payment. Also, any legal maximum of course must be obeyed. And finally, Calvin maintained that no one should function as a professional moneylender.
The odd result was that hedging his explicit pro-usury doctrine with qualification, Calvin in practice converged on the views of such Scholastics as Biel, Summenhart, Cajetan, and Eck. Calvin began with a sweeping theoretical defense of interest taking and then hedged it about with qualifications; the liberal Scholastics began with a prohibition of usury and then qualified it away. But while in practice the two groups converged and the Scholastics, in discovering and elaborating upon exceptions to the usury ban, were theoretically more sophisticated and fruitful, Calvin’s bold break with the formal ban was a liberating breakthrough in Western thought and practice. It also threw the responsibility for applying teachings on usury from the Church or state to the individual’s conscience. As Tawney puts it, “The significant feature in his [Calvin's] discussion of the subject is that he assumes credit to be a normal and inevitable incident in the life of a society.”[1]
A more subtle difference, but in the long run perhaps having more influence on the development of economic thought, was the Calvinist concept of the “calling.” This new concept was embryonic in Calvin and was developed further by later Calvinists, and especially Puritans, in the late 17th century. Older economic historians, such as Max Weber, made far too much of the Calvinist as against Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of the “calling.” All these religious groups emphasized the merit of being productive in one’s labor or occupation, one’s “calling” in life. But there is, especially in the later Puritans, the idea of success in one’s calling as a visible sign of being a member of the elect. The success is striven for, of course, not to prove that one is a member of the elect destined to be saved but, assuming that one is in the elect by virtue of one’s Calvinist faith, to strive to labor and succeed for the glory of God. A Calvinist emphasis on postponement of earthly gratification led to a particular stress on saving. Labor or “industry” and thrift, almost for their own sake, or rather for God’s sake, were emphasized in Calvinism much more than in the other segments of Christianity.[2]
The focus, then, both in Catholic countries and in Scholastic thought, became very different from that of Calvinism. The Scholastic focus was on consumption, the consumer, as the goal of labor and production. Labor was not so much a good in itself as a means toward consumption on the market. The Aristotelian balance, or golden mean, was considered a requisite of the good life, a life leading to happiness in keeping with the nature of man. And that balanced life emphasized the joys of consumption, as well as of leisure, in addition to the importance of productive effort.
“The Scholastic focus was on consumption, the consumer, as the goal of labor and production.”
In contrast, a rather grim emphasis on work and on saving began to be stressed in Calvinist culture. This de-emphasis on leisure of course fitted with the iconoclasm that reached its height in Calvinism — the condemnation of the enjoyment of the senses as a means of expressing religious devotion. One of the expressions of this conflict came over religious holidays, which Catholic countries enjoyed in abundance. To the Puritans, this was idolatry; even Christmas was not supposed to be an occasion for sensate enjoyment.
There has been considerable dispute over the “Weber thesis,” propounded by the early-20th-century German economic historian and sociologist, Max Weber, which attributed the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution to the late Calvinist concept of the calling and the resulting “capitalist spirit.” For all its fruitful insights, the Weber thesis must be rejected on many levels. First, modern capitalism, in any meaningful sense, begins not with the Industrial Revolution of 18th and 19th centuries but, as we have seen, in the Middle Ages and particularly in the Italian city-states. Such examples of capitalist rationality as double-entry bookkeeping and various financial techniques begin in these Italian city-states as well. All were Catholic.
Indeed, it is in a Florentine account book of 1253 that there is first found the classic procapitalist formula: “In the name of God and of profit.”
No city was more of a financial and commercial center than Antwerp in the 16th century, a Catholic center. No man shone as much as financier and banker as Jacob Fugger, a good Catholic from southern Germany. Not only that: Fugger worked all his life, refused to retire, and announced that “he would make money as long as he could.” A prime example of the Weberian “Protestant ethic” from a solid Catholic! And we have seen how the Scholastic theologians moved to understand and accommodate the market and market forces.
On the other hand, while it is true that Calvinist areas in England, France, Holland, and the North American colonies prospered, the solidly Calvinist Scotland remained a backward and undeveloped area, even to this day.[3]
But even if the focus on calling and labor did not bring about the Industrial Revolution, it might well have led to another outstanding difference between Calvinist and Catholic countries — a crucial difference in the development of economic thought. Professor Emil Kauder’s brilliant speculation to this effect will inform the remainder of this work. Thus Kauder:
Calvin and his disciples placed work at the center of their social theology … All work in this society is invested with divine approval. Any social philosopher or economist exposed to Calvinism will be tempted to give labor an exalted position in his social or economic treatise, and no better way of extolling labor can be found than by combining work with value theory, traditionally the very basis of an economic system. Thus value becomes labor value, which is not merely a scientific device for measuring exchange rates but also the spiritual tie combining Divine Will with economic everyday life.[4]
“A certain balanced hedonism is an integrated part of the Aristotelian theory of the good life.”
In their extolling of work, the Calvinists concentrated on systematic, continuing industriousness, on a settled course of labor. Thus the English Puritan divine Samuel Hieron opined that “He that hath no honest business about which ordinarily to be employed, no settled course to which he may betake himself, cannot please God.”
Particularly influential was the early-17th-century Cambridge University academic, the Rev. William Perkins, who did much to translate Calvinist theology into English practice. Perkins denounced four groups of men who had “no particular calling to walk in”: beggars and vagabonds; monks and friars; gentlemen who “spend their days in eating and drinking”; and servants, who allegedly spent their time waiting. All these were dangerous because unsettled and undisciplined. Particularly dangerous were wanderers, who “avoided the authority of all.” Furthermore, believed Perkins, the “lazy multitude was always inclined … to popish opinions, always more ready to play than to work; its members would not find their way to heaven.”[5]
In contrast to the Calvinist glorification of labor, the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition was quite different:
Instead of work, moderate pleasure-seeking and happiness form the center of economic actions, according to Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy. A certain balanced hedonism is an integrated part of the Aristotelian theory of the good life. If pleasure in a moderate form is the purpose of economics, then following the Aristotelian concept of the final cause, all principles of economics including valuation must be derived from this goal. In this pattern of Aristotelian and Thomistic thinking, valuation has the function of showing how much pleasure can be derived from economic goods.[6]
Hence, Great Britain, heavily influenced by Calvinist thought and culture, and its glorification of the mere exertion of labor, came to develop a labor theory of value, while France and Italy, still influenced by Aristotelian and Thomist concepts, continued the Scholastic emphasis on the consumer and his subjective valuation as the source of economic value. While there is no way to prove this hypothesis conclusively, the Kauder insight has great value in explaining the comparative development of economic thought in Britain and in the Catholic countries of Europe after the 16th century.
Notes
[1] Richard H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1927, New York: New American Library, 1954), p. 95.
[2] In contrast to the Catholics, to Luther, and probably to Calvin (who, however, was ambivalent on the subject), the Puritans were “postmillennialist,” i.e., they believed that human beings would have to establish the Kingdom of God on earth for a thousand years before Christ would return. The others were either “premillennialist” (Christ would return to earth and then set up a thousand years of the Kingdom of God on earth), or, like the Catholics, amillennialist (Christ would return period, and then the world would end). Postmillennialism, of course, tended to induce in its believers eagerness and even haste to get on with their own establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth so that Jesus could eventually return.
[3] The fact that only late Calvinism developed this version of the calling indicates that Weber might have had his causal theory reversed: that the growth of capitalism might have led to a more accommodating Calvinism rather than the other way round. Weber’s approach holds up better in analyzing those societies, such as China, where religious attitudes seem to have crippled capitalist economic development. Thus, see the analysis of religion and economic development in China and Japan by the Weberian Norman Jacobs, The Origin of Modern Capitalism and Eastern Asia (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1958).
[4] Emil Kauder, A History of Marginal Utility Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 5.
[5] Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 216; see also pp. 206–26.
[6] Kauder, op. cit., note 7, p. 9.
February 20th, 2010
I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
by John Lanchester
Simon & Schuster, 272 pp., $25
Among the more trenchant touches in John Lanchester’s study of the financial bust is his framing of the new finance as Wall Street’s answer to post-modernism. Wall Street, too, in Lanchester’s account, engineered “a break with common sense, a turn toward self-referentiality and abstraction, and notions that couldn’t be explained in workaday English.” If post-modern art has often seemed like an arcane conversation among the cognoscenti that was meant more to confuse the onlooker than to satisfy or inform, one could barely say less of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and the welter of alphabet securities that underlay the new finance. The parallel should not be pushed too far, but Lanchester is right that the financial crisis sprang from the esoteric principles and practices of an insulated elite.
Wall Street has been so smitten with itself that it lost sight of the purpose—to provide credit and capital to the rest of us, remember?—that society entrusted to it. Lanchester, a British novelist and a banker’s son, excels at recalling, in comprehensible terms, this original—and betrayed—purpose. If his penchant for metaphor occasionally leads him off the rails, more often he spots latent truths that conventional banking reporters miss. Thus he nicely observes that ATMs, with their creation of “frictionless” and seemingly ownerless money, can induce a frightening vertigo; and that Alan Greenspan was so robotic in his defense of new financial instruments that he sounded like “a computer program written to impersonate [what] Alan Greenspan would have said: Free market good. Trust free market.”
Though he is essentially a tourist to his subject, Lanchester understands perfectly that the man behind the curtain was no wizard—that markets, far from being God-given instruments of perfection, were human constructs. He understands, too, that the precision embedded in financial models was a false precision, and that the idea that risk could be “boiled down to a [single] number” fatally endowed practitioners with an undeserved confidence. And the central error of the era, Lanchester suggests, was cultural. Quoting Senator Byron Dorgan, whose prescient warning went unheeded, “The culture is that Wall Street knows best.” The corollary was that the market was “magically self-regulating,” and thus not in need of government regulation or adult supervision.
Lanchester sees the flaws of bankers in cultural terms as well. They and the other troubadours for the new finance errantly believed that ordinary people thought like experts did—or as they imagined experts did: arithmetically and flawlessly. But since most people are neither experts nor computers, millions of them mortgaged their homes for more than they could afford. He frames the greed of bankers by correctly pointing out that no sooner is a regulation crafted than bankers set to figuring ways around it. This observation is hardly new, but Lanchester delivers it with added force by contrasting financiers with health care workers: “Doctors don’t, for the most part, pride themselves on saying ‘What the hell, nobody’s looking, so I’m just going to reuse this dirty needle.’”
ROGER LOWENSTEIN on WALL STREET’S BREAK WITH COMMON SENSE
February 20th, 2010
As German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, truth is ridiculed, then denied, and then “accepted as having been obvious to everyone from the beginning.” So let’s start with the obvious: There isn’t the slightest possibility that the course laid out by Barack Obama in his Dec. 1 speech will halt or even slow the downward spiral toward defeat in Afghanistan. None. The U.S. president and his advisors labored for three months and brought forth old wine in bigger bottles. The speech contained not one single new idea or approach, nor offered any hint of new thinking about a conflict that everyone now agrees the United States is losing. Instead, the administration deliberated for 94 days to deliver essentially “more men, more money, try harder.” It sounded ominously similar to Mikhail Gorbachev’s “bloody wound” speech that led to a similar-sized, temporary Soviet troop surge in Afghanistan in 1986.
Obama’s Indecent Interval Thomas Johnson, Foreign Policy (hat tip Naked Capitalism)
February 15th, 2010
At Jesse’s Cafe:
Regular readers will be aware of our thesis that the American Wall Street banks have become dominated by a culture of compulsive sociopaths who are incapable of reforming or restraining their greed. Like all addicts, they push the envelope, emboldened by each successful scam, the weakness of regulators, and the craven support of politicians, going further and further until at long last they go one step too far, with spectacularly destructive results.
Goldman Sachs may have reached that point. And as also suggested here, the rebuke may be coming from foreign nations who become weary of the extra-legal antics of the rogue American banks.
In the interests of harmony, the Europeans may once again bow to US pressure and continue to permit the Money Center privateers to roam through the interational financial system wreaking havoc, as they have been doing through the domestic US economy. It will be too bad if they do.
If it ever comes to the light of day, the complicity of a few central banks and governments in the actions of one or two of the money center banks in manipulating several global markets may ignite a firestorm of a political scandal.
At the very least, it remains a practical imperative that the banks be restrained, the financial system reformed, and the economy brought back into balance, before there can be any sustainable recovery and stability.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2010/02/simon-johnson-goldman-faces-special.html
February 15th, 2010
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February 14th, 2010
Like most Volkswagens this car is ugly but it works. I hope!
Volkswagen’s $600 car gets 258 mpg — It looks like Ford, Chrysler and GM
missed the boat again!
China launches $600 car that will get 258 mpg
This $600 car is no toy and is ready to be released in China next year.
The single seater aero car totes VW (Volkswagen) branding.
Volkswagen did a lot of very highly protected testing of this car in
Germany, but it was not announced until now where the car would make it’s
first appearance.
The car was introduced at the VW stockholders meeting as the most economical
car in the world is presented.
The initial objective of the prototype was to prove that 1 liter of fuel
could deliver 100 kilos of travel.
Spartan interior doesn’t sacrifice safety
The aero design proved essential to getting the desired result. The body is
3.47 meters long and just 1.25 meters wide, and a little over a meter high.
The prototype was made completely of carbon fiber and is not painted to save
weight.
The power plant is a one cylinder diesel positioned ahead of the rear axle
and combined with an automatic shift controlled by a knob in the interior.
Safety was not compromised as the impact and roll-over protection is
comparable to the GT racing cars.
$600 car gets 258 mpg
The Most Economic Car in the World will be on sale next year:
Better than Electric Car � 258 miles/gallon: IPO 2010 in Shanghai
This is a single seated car
From conception to production: 3 years and the company is headquartered in
Hamburg , Germany ..
Will be selling for 4000 yuan, equivalent to US$600..
Gas tank capacity = 1.7 gallons
Speed = 62 � 74.6 Miles/hour
Fuel efficiency = 258 miles/gallon
Travel distance with a full tank = 404 miles
Volkswagen 258 mpg car on sale in 2010
February 13th, 2010
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has been held in awe for many years for his business acumen. But since the world’s richest man embarked upon a career change as a global philanthropist his self-importance has blossomed.
On the occasion of the latest global mega gabfest known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Gates granted interviews to two German newspapers to vaunt his foundation’s work, and then to criticize and shame the Prime Minister of another European country – Italy – for not conforming to Gates’ definition of generosity. Such effrontery is almost unheard of. Is Bill Gates so involved in his own version of the finest in philanthropy that he never had time to learn diplomacy, manners or humility?
Mr Berlusconi, who has provided fodder for the prurient international press with his peccadilloes (which occurred on his Sardinian property and not in the government seat of power as with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office), has become the whipping boy of Bill Gates: his is the sole name on Gates’ “List of Shame.” What for? For allegedly reducing foreign aid as part of the Italian government’s budgetary measures to attempt to reduce a government deficit of 5.3 percent of GDP and an official debt of 115 percent of GDP.
Mr Gates chastised Mr Berlusconi because Italy’s foreign aid was 0.21 percent of its GDP in 2008 compared with top-of-the-heap Sweden with a ratio of 0.99 percent. However, Mr Gates gave a pass to the United States which was dead last on the list of 30 OECD countries with 0.19 percent because President Obama “proposed to double giving.”
Bill Gates is a firm believer that official aid is a force for good, ignoring many experts’ claim that foreign aid is significantly wasted and promotes corruption in the poorest of poor countries. Perhaps the decision by the Italian government actually makes more sense.
Regarding the newspaper interviews, the New York Post picked up the two messages and reported that “In a rare public jab” the Microsoft founder “ripped Berlusconi’s ‘stinginess’ with foreign aid and put him at the top of his ‘list of shame.’” Gates went on to further personalize his attack by stating to the Frankfurter Rundschau “Dear Silvio, I am sorry to make things difficult for you, but you are ignoring the poor people of the world.” Gates gave another interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the same theme, embellishing his remarks with additional shamelessness: “Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems – like baldness – than they do to fight malaria” – an apparent reference to Mr Berlusconi’s meticulous attention to personal appearance.
Does being the richest man in the world entitle Bill Gates to humiliate heads of government, duly elected in a democracy?
The verbal assault on Mr Berlusconi was truly inopportune, coming only a few weeks after he was physically attacked by a deranged, hate-filled leftist at a political rally in Milan. While still in the hospital, Mr Berlusconi sent a message expressing gratitude to Pope Benedict XVI and others for their get well wishes, publicly forgave his attacker and stated that “love always triumphs over envy and hatred.” Bill Gates should take note.
In castigating the Prime Minister, Bill Gates cast his aspersion on all of Italy too. But Italians need no lessons in generosity from Bill Gates. One example will illustrate the point. Thousands of Italians have dedicated their lives to alleviating poverty as missionaries who “live where they work” in distant lands helping the poor 24/7 without media attention. Their contribution goes beyond money and is nurtured by Caritas.
Too often Italians at all levels find themselves being humiliated by the “holier than thou” crowd. But there has to be some sense of awe at the contributions of Italians over the centuries. Even on the part of Bill Gates….
In the mid 1990s, Mr Gates made an historical purchase: Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester – the only manuscript of the renowned Italian genius in the United States.
The Italian government museum authorities had bid for the same document, wanting repatriation as a matter of recognition and pride of ownership, but their budget could not match the bottomless money pit of a determined Bill Gates who reportedly paid $31 million. Should Gates look at the complexity of the Codex from time to time, it should give him food for thought: this is only one of the countless works of genius produced by Italians, something he could only buy with money – but never create!
Besides missionaries, who is helping the poor? Surely the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides plenty of assistance through grants. Bill Gates can show lots of personal pictures, balance sheets and even an “Annual Letter” to toot his own horn and chastise those who do not do as he does. His recently released 2010 letter explains how the Gateses have given away millions of dollars for worthy causes especially for disease control and prevention such as malaria.
But the Gates Foundation also provides plenty of financial assistance so that certain nonprofit organizations have all the abortifacients they need, especially in Africa. William H. Gates Sr., Bill’s father, who also is part of the Foundation, was once head of Planned Parenthood. Bill Gates is in bed with the culture of death. He fully embraces the “fewer people, better environment” ideology.
Mr Gates’ 2010 letter includes this line: “… not spending on health is a bad deal for the environment because improvements in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn reduces the strain on the environment.”
This is the arrogance of his kind of philanthropy – a direct contradiction of the word’s true meaning!
On its web site, the Gates Foundation shows a set of 15 “Guiding Principles.” Number 12 on the list states: “We demand ethical behavior of ourselves.” Perhaps Mr Gates should reconsider the order, making this number one – and abiding by it in dealing with others. Even with Prime Ministers.
Vincenzina Santoro is an international economist in New York. She represents the American Family Association of New York at the United Nations.
A geek with cheek
February 10th, 2010
After years of profligate spending, Greece is becoming overwhelmed. Barring some sort of large-scale bailout program, a Greek debt default at this point is highly likely. At this moment, European Central Bank liquidity efforts are probably the only thing holding back such a default. But these are a stopgap measure that can hold only until more important economies manage to find their feet. And Europe’s problems extend beyond Greece. Fundamentals are so poor across the board that any number of eurozone states quickly could follow Greece down.
And so the rest of the eurozone is watching and waiting nervously while casting occasional glances in the direction of Berlin in hopes the eurozone’s leader and economy-in-chief will do something to make it all go away. To truly understand the depth of the crisis the Europeans face, one must first understand Germany, the only country that can solve it.
Germany’s Trap
The heart of Germany’s problem is that it is insecure and indefensible given its location in the middle of the North European Plain. No natural barriers separate Germany from the neighbors to its east and west, no mountains, deserts, oceans. Germany thus lacks strategic depth. The North European Plain is the Continent’s highway for commerce and conquest. Germany’s position in the center of the plain gives it plenty of commercial opportunities but also forces it to participate vigorously in conflict as both an instigator and victim.
Germany’s exposure and vulnerability thus make it an extremely active power. It is always under the gun, and so its policies reflect a certain desperate hyperactivity. In times of peace, Germany is competing with everyone economically, while in times of war it is fighting everyone. Its only hope for survival lies in brutal efficiencies, which it achieves in industry and warfare.
Pre-1945, Germany’s national goals were simple: Use diplomacy and economic heft to prevent multifront wars, and when those wars seem unavoidable, initiate them at a time and place of Berlin’s choosing.
“Success” for Germany proved hard to come by, because challenges to Germany’s security do not “simply” end with the conquest of both France and Poland. An overstretched Germany must then occupy countries with populations in excess of its own while searching for a way to deal with Russia on land and the United Kingdom on the sea. A secure position has always proved impossible, and no matter how efficient, Germany always has fallen ultimately.
During the early Cold War years, Germany’s neighbors tried a new approach. In part, the European Union and NATO are attempts by Germany’s neighbors to grant Germany security on the theory that if everyone in the immediate neighborhood is part of the same club, Germany won’t need a Wehrmacht.
There are catches, of course — most notably that even a demilitarized Germany still is Germany. Even after its disastrous defeats in the first half of the 20th century, Germany remains Europe’s largest state in terms of population and economic size; the frantic mindset that drove the Germans so hard before 1948 didn’t simply disappear. Instead of German energies being split between growth and defense, a demilitarized Germany could — indeed, it had to — focus all its power on economic development. The result was modern Germany — one of the richest, most technologically and industrially advanced states in human history.
Read:
Germany’s awful choice
February 10th, 2010
Among the many books written by Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), one stands out as an enduring little classic, The Wounded Healer. For those who knew him, this book is especially powerful because, without expressly intending to, it describes so well the man himself. It was because of his own wounds that he was able to touch the lives of so many people. “By his wounds we have been healed,” St Peter wrote of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24). However, there was a different reaction to Nouwen’s book from a fundamentalist Christian who reviewed it and announced that a Christian minister should not come before people as a wounded healer but as “a prophet of God and as a helper in their afflictions.” These different reactions show a gulf between Christians that is probably deeper than most of the issues that divide Christians Churches.
Are you helped by someone who defines himself as a helper? Can you feel cared for by someone who defines himself as a prophet? If the Christian life were only a matter of external prescriptions, then probably yes: in the way that you can get help from an accountant or a lawyer. But since it touches the innermost places in us – the very springs of our thoughts and actions – this approach is less than helpful. Hear Nouwen again (in Out of Solitude): “When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares…. By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.”
In the first reading at today’s Mass, God’s call made Isaiah aware of his own weakness and unworthiness, exactly as Jesus’ call to Peter made Peter blurt out, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” If Christians do not carry the precious knowledge of their own weakness and sinfulness, then all their attempts to help you are nothing but an ego-trip: by ‘helping’ you they are feeding on your strength and making you weak; by ‘loving’ you they are seeking ways to snare you and make you dependent on them; by ‘caring’ for you they are preening their own image.
Back to Henri Nouwen: “We tend to look at caring as an attitude of the strong toward the weak, of the powerful toward the powerless, of the have’s toward the have-not’s….[But] the word ‘care’ finds its roots in the Gothic ‘Kara’ which means lament. The basic meaning of care is: to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with.”
February 7th, 2010
“We cannot have reform of the system driven by what each country sees that it needs for itself,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, told the Davos forum on Saturday. “We need to have co-ordination – we cannot afford to have different solutions in different parts of the world.”
Bankers fight controls
As Davos ends, bankers fight to fend off controls on matters ranging from bonuses to proprietary trading and derivatives.
February 7th, 2010
Catholic . . . or not – must see! If you are Catholic, watch it. If not, watch it anyway. I’m sending this video out quickly with the hopes that it will get as far as it can before it is pulled by the “Powers that be.” Please watch this video as soon as you receive it, then forward it, please. It tells all. Turn on the speakers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVN2MMuiedI&feature=sdig
The word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word subsidiarius and has its origins in Catholic social teaching (see Subsidiarity (Catholicism)).[1] The concept or principle is found in several constitutions around the world (for example, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which asserts States rights).
It is presently best known as a fundamental principle of European Union law. According to this principle, the EU may only act (i.e. make laws) where action of individual countries is insufficient. The principle was established in the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht[2]. However, at the local level it was already a key element of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, an instrument of the Council of Europe promulgated in 1985 (see Article 4, Paragraph 3 of the Charter) (which states that the exercise of public responsibilities should be decentralised). Subsidiarity is similar in concept to, but should not be confused with Margin of appreciation
February 6th, 2010
“I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals — too many counterparties, too many lawyers and advisors, too many people from AIG — to keep a determined Congress from the information.” James P. Bergin, NY Fed, in an email to his Fed colleagues
‘Though it is hard to divine much understanding from the unredacted filing, it has become clear that Goldman had more involvement than previously believed: In addition to the credit default swaps it bought from AIG, the filing shows that Goldman Sachs also originated many of the underlying assets that AIG and the New York Fed bought back from Société Générale.
The American people have the right to know how their tax dollars were spent and who benefited most from this back-door bailout,” said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Issa. “Now that it’s public, let’s see if the sky really does fall as the New York Fed said it would to justify its coverup.”
Other lawmakers believed that the New York Fed was trying to hide its ties to Goldman Sachs.’ AIG Reveals the Story – CNN
“Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.
We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system — apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout — deserves further congressional scrutiny…
By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.
This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs. It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank…
New York Fed staff and outside lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardell edited AIG communications to investors and intervened with the Securities and Exchange Commission to shield details about the buyout transactions, according to a report by Issa.
That the New York Fed, a quasi-governmental body, was able to push around the SEC, an executive-branch agency, deserves a congressional hearing all by itself.” Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows – Reilly – Bloomberg
Hat Tip to : Jesse
January 31st, 2010
The Chinese government just did what some Americans would like to do: pull the plug on Avatar and replace it with more patriotic fare. Only in China, “patriotic” means a state-sponsored biopic of Confucius, currently under renovation as an icon of Chinese moral and cultural superiority.
I enjoyed the spectacle of Avatar but like many other Americans was annoyed by its portrayal of my 22nd-century countrymen as ruthless capitalists and mercenaries raping a pure, sylvan planet called Pandora. But of course, it was this aspect that won Avatar a spot on the list of 20 U.S. films allowed into China each year. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) prefers films that show America in a negative light.
Today, rumor has it that SARFT’s selection of Avatar has backfired. Both China Daily and CCTV-International report audiences interpreting the scene where the invaders bulldoze the sacred forest of Pandora as an allegory for forced evictions carried out by ruthless developers in their own country. As one blogger wrote, “I am wondering whether [director James] Cameron lived in China before coming up with such an idea.”
Taken at face value, these reports suggest that Cameron is a hero, not only for sticking it to America but also for striking a blow for free speech in China. But the story is a bit more complicated, because at work here is a calculation by the Chinese Communist Party that is based on a mixture of propaganda and profit motives that is alien to most Americans.
On the propaganda side, Chinese New Year is approaching and millions of ordinary Chinese are about to splurge on movie tickets. So the Party has clearly decided that the best film for the masses to see is the uplifting, patriotic Confucius. At the same time, Avatar continues to play in high-priced 3-D and Imax theaters – no doubt because the Party does not want to deprive affluent elites of the chance to visit Cameron’s extraterrestrial (and anti-American) paradise.
On the profit side, the calculation is probably that Chinese films do well among the masses, so Confucius will hold its own, while Avatar continues to rake it in among the sort of audiences whose property is not being bulldozed. Avatar has grossed $75.6 million in China, breaking all previous box-office records, and some of that goes to the local distributor, China Film Group, which like all Chinese media companies is directed by the Party.
As for the reports of Chinese viewers finding subversive meaning in Avatar, most of these appeared in the outward-facing English-language organs of China’s tightly controlled news media. Here the calculation is more subtle: whenever Chinese censorship hits the global headlines, as it has been doing recently (can you Google “Google”?), the Party tries to distract the foreign press with a carefully orchestrated dust-up that gives the appearance of free speech. And for this purpose, what better topic than the inner meaning of a blockbuster film, about which no one will agree anyway?
More…
January 31st, 2010
Modern man seems to live in a perpetual tug of war between the struggle to make money and the demand to redistribute it. In the United States, this tug of war is more or less accurately represented by two opposing political parties, the Republicans who are more focused on creating wealth, and the Democrats who are more focused on reallocating the wealth we already have. There are many other differences, of course, some more important than money, but I suspect this general dichotomy is similar elsewhere. The tug of war has become a way of life, and we seem to continually shift our weight from one side to the other to tweak the existing system.
I’ve been thinking a good deal about this lately, and whenever I do, I keep hearing a voice in my head, as if from the Son of Man, saying: “The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society.” Perhaps that doesn’t sound like Jesus Christ’s speaking style, but in a very real sense it is, because Benedict XVI said it in his recent great social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (#39). And if the Son of Man speaking through Benedict is right, as we know He is, then all of us need to radically rethink the social order.
Benedict made this particular remark is the context of solidarity. He argued in Caritas in Veritate that if we construe the social order as controlled by impersonal forces—economic laws and government regulations—we inevitably produce a corrosive culture in which the inequities created by involuntary market dynamics depend for their resolution on involuntary government controls after the fact. This rarely works very well, and it is both impersonal and coercive to boot. But when we view the social order as shaped primarily by personal moral decisions, then we have a chance to shape it according to the principle of solidarity—the concern of all for all.
Solidarity Demands Subsidiarity
This leads us once again to the forgotten principle of subsidiarity, because solidarity and subsidiarity are really opposite signs of the same coin. I have said in earlier writings that those in our culture who seem most concerned about social inequities appear to be committed to solidarity without paying the least attention to subsidiarity. On deeper reflection, I would argue a stronger case. The very fact that many people can express deep concern about unfortunate social situations without thinking in terms of subsidiarity is clear evidence that they really don’t understand solidarity at all. Their solutions to social problems almost always involve the expansion of state power to do things for (or perhaps to) those of us, rich and poor, who are not living according to their prescribed vision. To be sure, the careful application of the force of law in such matters is sometime both necessary and salutary, but more often the resort to government power actually represents a failure or even a deliberate bypassing of solidarity, an unwillingness to work shoulder to shoulder with those people who ought to be actively incorporated into proposed solutions to their problems.
When we’re really concerned about persons, and not just about “situations”, we always want to get them involved in the process of making their lives better. We want to explore their concerns, weaknesses and strengths, and find ways for them to participate in the solutions. We want to stimulate effective and voluntary action on the part of all concerned so as to create as many stakeholders as possible in the process of improvement. This simply isn’t possible without subsidiarity, without attempting to create effective mechanisms at the most appropriate levels to address core issues. If we are really moved by the principle of solidarity to be significantly concerned about others, we will always look for ways to build productive, multi-level relationships among the real people who must collaborate to make things better.
Intermediary Institutions
Subsidiarity is closely connected to the role of what we call intermediary institutions. In a medieval monarchy, for example, there was generally far more personal and group freedom with respect to central government than we experience in today’s democracies. This statement may be incomprehensible to the modern mind, but its truth is proved by the existence and operation of the intermediary institutions through which so many divergent aspects of the social order were organized. The most important of these intermediary institutions was the Church, of course, though the Church is only incidentally an intermediary institution between the citizen and the State. In her own sphere the Church is not intermediary but sovereign. But in addition to the Church, the nobility had their traditional rights, privileges and deliberative bodies, as did the free towns, as did the guilds which represented skilled laborers of every kind.
Intermediary institutions contribute greatly to the vibrancy of human culture because they involve human persons in the activities and decisions which affect their destinies precisely at the level at which each solution ought to be decided and implemented. Strong intermediary institutions also serve as a necessary hedge against the tendency of those higher up to grab increasing amounts of power so that they might order the world to suit themselves.
Another and even more remarkable instance of the role of intermediary institutions was evident in the difference between slavery in the United States and in the New World colonies of Spain. While it is obvious that slavery should never have gotten started among Christians in the first place, it was difficult to root out in a New World dominated by large landowners with a strong sense of commercial self-interest. But the Catholic Church was a very strong intermediary institution in both Spain and her colonies. Slaves were recognized as persons and protected from many forms of abuse. They had time off, they could earn money, and they were permitted to purchase their freedom. In addition, the laws of the Spanish Crown, formed over the centuries under the influence of the Church, mitigated slavery in the colonies, and in the end the practice was abandoned under the combined pressures of institutions operating from within the social order.
In the United States, however, the Catholic Church was weak, and the voice of religion was divided among hundreds of differing sects, which were often quite willing to serve the moral convenience of their congregations; nor had the laws of the United States been shaped under the influence of the Church. Therefore, in the United States slavery became what historians can only describe as a Peculiar Institution. Slaves were treated not just as slaves in a traditional sense—human persons in servitude—but as animals, as non-persons. No intermediary institution of any significance was capable of mitigating the horrors of American slavery, still less of converting or pressuring the wealthy landowners who kept the Peculiar Institution in place. In the United States, slavery was a problem that would ultimately be solved through the cataclysm of civil war.
Where We Are Today
Over the past several hundred years, with the rise of the modern nation state, intermediary institutions have become largely non-existent or weak, and the living reality of subsidiarity (with or without formal instruction in the principle) has declined along with them. This goes a long way toward explaining how totalitarianism has become possible. It is true that Western commentators have frequently noticed a far stronger tradition of voluntarism in the United States than in Europe; we do have here a strong tradition of ad hoc organizations, typically non-profits, formed to address a wide variety of social problems and also to influence government policy. The United States also has a stronger tradition of State government than do the provinces of most other Western nations. But even in America, there can be no question both that non-governmental organizations have relatively shallow roots in the social order, and that intermediate levels of government, which theoretically represent a significant level of subsidiarity, have gradually lost more and more of their power and authority. In the West generally, it seems, there is little between the isolated individual and the highest level of government.
Yet it is precisely to the principle of subsidiarity that the West will have to look if it hopes to once again stimulate a strong and creative social order—a social order in which people actively cooperate in solving their own problems, rather than passively looking to take care of everything by funding monstrous top-level bureaucracies through monstrous bottom-level taxes. As I said at the outset, we seem to rely on the market to create wealth and the State to come along later and redistribute it, and the one great political fear on the part of the State is that it might act so aggressively in the redistribution as to kill the market’s Golden Goose. Meanwhile, regardless of how much money is earned and spent, large numbers of social problems continue to worsen.
Perhaps this is because “the exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society.”
“Articulation” in Business and Government
We unwittingly permit this social corrosion to occur because of our unfortuanate cultural blinders. As Benedict puts it, “The continuing hegemony of the binary model of market-plus-State has accustomed us to think only in terms of the private business leader of a capitalistic bent on the one hand, and the State director on the other” (#41)—leaving nearly everyone else out of the picture. In attempting to address this corrosion, the Pope frequently refers to the need for articulation or stratification in the way in which social problems are addressed. Here is a representative passage on the business side of the divide:
In reality, business has to be understood in an articulated way…. It is in response to the needs and the dignity of the worker, as well as the needs of society, that there exist various types of business enterprise, over and above the simple distinction between “private” and “public”. Each of them requires and expresses a specific business capacity. In order to construct an economy that will soon be in a position to serve the national and global common good, it is appropriate to take account of this broader significance of business activity. It favors cross-fertilization between different types of business activity, with shifting of competences from the “non-profit” world to the “profit” world and vice versa, from the public world to that of civil society, from advanced economies to developing countries. (#41)
A little later he uses the same terminology in his discussion of the need for world-wide regulation of international trade and finance:
In order not to produce a dangerous universal power of a tyrannical nature, the governance of globalization must be marked by subsidiarity, articulated into several layers and involving different levels that can work together. Globalization certainly requires authority, insofar as it poses the problem of a global common good that needs to be pursued. This authority, however, must be organized in a subsidiary and stratified way, if it is not to infringe upon freedom and if it is to yield effective results in practice. (#57)
In this passage, it becomes clear that the terms “articulated” and “stratified” refer to a sensible, targeted and effective organization, in different ways and at different levels, of all the roles, purposes, persons and authority necessary to address social problems—in a word, the implementation of subsidiarity through intermediary institutions. In the following passage, Benedict leaves no doubt as to his meaning:
Subsidiarity is first and foremost a form of assistance to the human person via the autonomy of intermediate bodies. Such assistance is offered when individuals or groups are unable to accomplish something on their own, and it is always designed to achieve their emancipation, because it fosters freedom and participation through assumption of responsibility. Subsidiarity respects personal dignity by recognizing in the person a subject who is always capable of giving something to others. By considering reciprocity as the heart of what it is to be a human being, subsidiarity is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state. It is able to take account both of the manifold articulation of plans — and therefore of the plurality of subjects — as well as the coordination of those plans. Hence the principle of subsidiarity is particularly well-suited to managing globalization and directing it towards authentic human development. (#57)
The Problem Implies a Solution
It is probably an oversimplification, but not by much, to say of the two main political parties in the United States that the Republicans talk subsidiarity without solidarity and the Democrats talk solidarity without subsidiarity. I suspect the dichotomy holds true for conservatives and liberals in much of the Western world. In the conservative mind, which is usually market-oriented, the human person is too often reduced to the status of a commodity to be used by those who allegedly understand how to manage market forces. In the liberal mind, which is usually State-oriented, the human person becomes an object of social engineering by those who allegedly understand how to properly regulate all of life.
There are many reasons why it is difficult for significant numbers from both sides to come together through an understanding of the true reciprocity of solidarity and subsidiarity. The most important of these reasons is almost certainly the great division over critical issues involving human life, and I do not for a moment mean to put that in second place. But the need to get solidarity and subsidiarity working together is extremely grave, because neither can exist without the other. Anyone who embraces subsidiarity without solidarity necessarily commits himself to selfishness, while anyone who embraces solidarity without subsidiarity necessarily lies to himself. But at least now we can begin to understand why our social order has so many severe deficiencies; that is, we can begin to understand what is wrong. And what is wrong, at least in this context, is that “the exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society.”
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Jeffrey Mirus – President of CatholicCulture.org |
January 30th, 2010
It may be the start of the biggest oil job in the world. Each day, 20 workers from BP and China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) buckle down to the task of prepping the Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq for rapid development. In industry lingo, Rumaila is a “supergiant”—a 50-mile-long deposit of sweet crude with estimated reserves of 16 billion barrels, whose output may someday rank second only to Saudi Arabia’s vast Ghawar field. The Saudis, though, have carefully managed their oil assets for decades. In contrast, Rumaila, a lightly inhabited expanse of date groves and Bedouin encampments, has not had a proper upgrade since the 1970s. The Iraqis contracted with BP and CNPC last year (BP) to juice Rumaila’s production from 1.06 million barrels a day to 2.85 million, all in seven years. No one has ever tried such a ramp-up at a field as huge as this one. Putting Rumaila back in full working order will take tens of thousands of workers, 1,000 new wells, and billions in investment.
BP is the largest partner in the venture, but only by a dipstick: It has a 38% stake, while the Chinese hold 37% (the rest is owned by an Iraqi company). The media focus has been on BP’s decision to take up the Rumaila challenge for a low fee of only $2 for every barrel the venture produces. But the more important story could be China’s role. “CNPC’s involvement brings together the country with the most rapid growth in energy demand in history with the country that plans the greatest buildup of production capacity ever,” says Alex Munton, an Iraq specialist at Edinburgh-based oil consultants Wood Mackenzie.
China has moved fast. In a little over a year, CNPC, China’s main oil producer with revenues of more than $188 billion and a 1.5 million-worker payroll, has won large stakes in three Iraqi oil fields. The total production target for those fields is around 3.5 million barrels per day—close to China’s domestic output. In two of the ventures, China is the controlling partner. Over two decades or so, CNPC may spend some $20 billion on the fields, the most of any oil company in Iraq since Saddam Hussein fell. For China’s oil industry, “Iraq is a game-changer,” says Wenrang Jiang, an authority on the country’s energy thirst who teaches at Canada’s University of Alberta.
Red Star Over Iraq Business Week (hat tip to Naked Capitalism)
January 24th, 2010
For almost a year now, Democratic pollsters have been pointing out how much the public hates the bank bailout and despises Wall Street. But there was no reason for Democratic leaders in Congress or the White House to pay much attention. After all, it was a Republican president and a Republican Congress that came up with the bank bailout plan to begin with. Some stalwart Republicans had grumbled about it, of course, but Republicans have always been on the side of Wall Street and big business and weren’t likely to call for strong measures to prevent the Street from getting into trouble again.
Larry Summers and Tim Geithner scuttled Paul Volcker’s plan to separate the banks’ commercial and investment functions, and didn’t want to limit the size of banks or the risks they could take on. Summers and Geithner have wanted to get the banks back to profitability as soon as possible. And Dems in Congress have had no stomach to take on Wall Street, a major source of campaign funding.
But suddenly the winds are blowing in a different direction over the Potomac. The 2010 midterms are getting closer, and the Dems are scared. Their polls are plummeting. The upsurge in mad-as-hell populism requires that Democrats become indignant on behalf of Americans, and indignation is meaningless without a target. They can’t target big government because Republicans do that one better, especially when they’re out of power. So what’s the alternative? Wall Street.
Perhaps I’m being too cynical. Maybe the Obama and congressional Democrats are now ready to give up Wall Street trickle-down economics and focus on Main Street trickle-up. “There are two ideas of government,” said William Jennings Bryan at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1896. “There are those who believe that you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.” He couldn’t have said it better.
January 23rd, 2010
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