What’s Good About Our Economy: The Cubs Are Winning!

I was trying to think of something positive to post today about our economy. Here’s what I came up with:

Now is not the time to panic.

The fundamentals are sound.

10.6 trillion in national debt really isn’t that much per person.

There’s beer in the fridge.

The housing bill raised the debt ceiling by 800 billion so there’s gotta be plenty for bailing out whover needs help.

They’re from the government and they’re here to help us.

I bet that Sarah Palin is an economic whiz, she and McCain will get things back on track.

The Cubs are winning!

So, am I just pessimistic? What good economic news am I missing here?

Financial News

Not much time to write at the moment, but after reading Pastor McAtee’s observations, I’ll throw out a couple of my own:

1) The media uses “the Fed” and “US government” interchangeably to the point where its hard to figure out which entity is doing the bailing out at any given time. The “Fed”, or Federal Reserve Bank, is a privately owned bank. (For a primer, see Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve from the Mises Institute, transcript of the video here.)

2) While the failing institutions are reaping their just desserts, the paranoid cynic in me wonders if this is a leveraged power play by the “Big Boyz” to buy up the smaller players at bargain prices. You see the privately owned FED has unlimited money, thus they can encourage limited runs on the banks, then buy up the failed institutions with freshly printed funny money. (Think Wal-Mart as a bank).

3) Not having much money myself, I don’t have much direct exposure to a bank run. I recommend only keeping enough in the bank to cover the checks you’ll write in the current month.

4) It is sort of funny how remarkably clue-less the presidential candidates are on this whole scenario which is unfolding at breakneck speed.

Financial Sector Employees Getting Tasered

As Lehman Brothers comes completely unraveled, there’s a growing sense of dread for employees in the financial sector:

“Everyone is walking around like they have just been Tasered,” said one Lehman employee, who, like many interviewed for this article, declined to be named because he was not authorized to talk publicly. “Everyone was always hoping we would pull through. Now, that is not really an option.”

On Lehman’s third- and fourth-floor trading floors overlooking Broadway’s lights in Midtown Manhattan, traders continued working at their terminals, or at least were giving the appearance of doing so. At the same time, many polished their résumés and contacted recruiters.

If Lehman is sold — as now appears likely — the buyer will fire many of them. And they know that tens of thousands of other Wall Streeters laid off in the tsunami sweeping the financial industry — including many recently let go from Bear Stearns — are already chasing after too few jobs.

Wall Street is used to ups and downs, but this latest round of cuts brought about by the credit crisis is turning out to be one of the worst in recent memory — a fate compounded by a shrinking economy. As of June, many of the more than 83,000 employees dismissed from banks and brokerage firms worldwide have come from firms based in the New York area.

So many really unprecedented things are happening right now that its hard to parse the effects on the overall economy. But eventually, billions of dollars of “assets” evaporating by the minute are going to cause some serious collateral damage. It would not be out of the realm of possibility to suggest that economic events in the next four years might change our society and way of life more than anything a President could dream of doing.

You’ll Want To Check This Site Frequently For Updates

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Candidate for The Enlightenment Party?

Our Christian friends sent us good wishes and prayers … and our Jewish friends sent good wishes and prayers … and our Muslim friends sent us good wishes and prayers. And, lo and behold, we received a lot of good wishes from some agnostics and atheists and we were delighted to get those as well! It confirms my conviction that freedom brings people together.

~Ron Paul at the Freedom Rally

Thanks to Polites for posting this quote and pointing out the presence of the propositional nation myth. I agree with Elihu that it’s a load of manure.

Its quite backwards, which is the common problem of libertarians of various stripes. True freedom comes from Christ, and therefore can never, in any meaningful sense, unite Christians with non-Christians.

Fr. Hollywood Agrees – That Strategy Is A Failure

Fr. Hoolywood on Abortion and Political Strategy:

Unfortunately, abortion has become a political football, since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that effectively overturned all state regulation and/or abolition of abortion on demand. In essence, the federal courts have seized lawmaking ability from the state legislatures. So, abortion opponents have been pursuing a strategy that involves overturning the decision, either by a Constitutional amendment (which requires too many majorities to make this a likelihood), or the more common strategy of seeking to secure a pro-life president in the hopes that pro-abortion justices will retire or die in office on his watch, so that the pro-life president can appoint pro-life justices in hope of eventually overturning the decision over the course of time.

This strategy has been a failure. Even after decades of pro-life presidents, Roe v. Wade still stands. The states are hamstrung. Babies are slaughtered in the U.S. by the millions – all made legal by less than a dozen individuals.

Don’t throw your vote away on a losing strategy. Vote Pragmatically.

First Ladies of Alaska

Great photo here of Alaska’s “2008 First Ladies Luncheon“:

HT: Vaughnshire Farm

Well, What If?

So many what if’s being thrown around in place of arguments. What if God wants to use so-and-so to do such-and-such?

Well, what if He does? Then He will, regardless of who the Cranky Christian Party votes for. What, you mean God’s going to say to Himself, “OK, I was going to bless America with Sarah Palin, but since all those idiot Christians voted for Baldwin (or Paul, or whoever) I’m going curse them with Obama.”

What would be more surprising, though? That God blesses our country because we voted for McCain, or that He blesses our country because we decided NOT to vote for the guy that voted in favor of anti-Christ judges and give money to baby-killing scientists.

Voting for a Christian man (such as Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin) with a clear political record is not going to make us lose points with God. But that seems to be the implied argument present in all of the “What if Palin can keep us from going off the cliff?”

Because obviously, Alaska is a shining Christian theocracy, albeit somewhat matriarchal. She’s a bulldog that doesn’t take no for an answer (at least, when trying to get federal funding for pet projects). And she loves McCain, so how bad could he be? And he might die in office, so then she could really wear the pants. And to think, all of these blessings could be ours if we just lay aside our quaint ideals about fascism, the sanctity of life, and God’s created order.

The Dinosaur Campaign

NOT OBAMA!

Voting Pragmatically

I’m a strong proponent of voting pragmatically. When it comes to the ballot box, I want to use my vote strategically, and not throw it away.

And that brings us to the choice of McCain/Palin. Each election cycle, we are confronted with candidates which God has sovereignly allowed to rise to the top to accomplish his purposes. Increasingly, those candidates should shock us as Christians. We should look upon the state of our political machinery in horror as we see God’s judgment revealed in which candidates are likely to govern our land. We should, but it seems that we don’t. Instead, we look at it backwards, and act as if God’s judgment is yet on the horizon, and we need to stave it off by voting for the least wicked “electable” candidate. And so the cycle continues, because we imagine that God’s blessings result from voting for “Sodom-Lite”, instead of realizing that voting for “Sodom-Lite” is the very reason that God continues to pour out his judgment upon our land by giving us the candidates we deserve. We imagine it a victory to be led on the slow path to Gomorrah, yet have we slouched in that direction any slower with Bush in the White House than we did with Clinton?

Some Christians paint November’s choice as principles versus strategy. Well quite frankly, if our strategy is putting aside our principles yet again and voting for McCain, then I think our strategy stinks to high heaven. In all honesty the Church appears to have neither principles nor strategy, if its actions in American politics are weighed.

Other Christians employ the logic that while McCain is not a good Presidential candidate, because Palin is a Feminist for Life we should put aside our reservations and vote for the McCain ticket, hoping that she will wear the pants in the White House and make McCain pick a conservative Supreme Court Justice. With all due respect, this is the same sort of logic that led to women leading churches and families. God help us. While I would be more than happy if Palin were to make good choices as Vice-President, my principles are not so cheap that I would lay them aside for such a small carrot dangled by a man that supports killing babies. As Christians, we have the opportunity to hold candidates’ feet to the fire every election, and we consistently fail to do so. They will not do the right thing until we are willing to, as a group, withold our vote from those that kill babies and fail to even make an attempt to govern according to God’s Word.

Now that is a strategy - tellling the politicians that if you vote to confirm liberal judges, if you vote to give money to companies that kill babies for research, if you refuse to support and sign the Sanctity of Life Act, then we will not vote for you even if you pick a nice lady for your runnning mate. Instead, we will give all of our votes to the candidate that vows not to do these things, and we will hold that candidate to the same standards, consistently, without fail. We may lose ground in the short-run, but it is the only way to achieve any long-term victory. The sooner we start, the sooner we can stop infanticide.

I am Floyd R. Turbeville, and that is an incrementalist strategy that I can support. Anything less is simply another wasted vote.