London, of all places, is leading the battle against exaggerated banker bonuses. And leaders from all over the world are discussing how they can put an end to the banking practices that caused the global economic crisis. They are also considering ways for banks to compensate for the damage they caused.
Water flooded St. Mark’s Square in Venice on Wednesday, the highest level yet for 2009, with 143 centimeters. The flooding has filled more than half of the historical city center with water. The phenomenon of high water, which floods the Venice lagoon, occurs mainly between autumn and spring when tides are reinforced by seasonal winds. But the heavy rain and snowfall which has been hitting most of Italy in the past few days contributed to a rise in the lagoon’s water level. Officials are warning the water could remain until after Christmas and that tourists should be certain to bring along a pair of Wellington boots.
By Frank Thadeusz
It turns out the fall of man probably didn’t begin with an apple. More likely, it was a handful of mushy figs that first led humankind astray.
Here is how the story likely began — a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message — whatever that was, I want more of it!
ALCOHOL’S NEOLITHIC ORIGINS
Brewing Up a Civilization
Amidst all the craziness of l’affaire d’Tigre there are some important questions being raised about the linkage between power, wealth, and faithfulness.
The Wealth Report at The Wall Street Journal asks, “Is it harder to stay faithful with large wealth?”
The initial sociological findings don’t seem to correlate wealth with adultery, at least at any higher rates than the general population of males (interestingly enough, a 2007 survey led to the conclusion, “When it comes to infidelity, money has a bigger impact on women than men.”).
Jesus gives us an apt axiom: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”
And so there’s the corollary question of whether dishonesty in one area of life should lead us to question whether there is dishonesty in other areas. Tiger Woods’ apparent and alleged marital infidelities might make us wonder about his emotional control, for instance. Does his robot-like and highly-controlled exterior hide deeper emotional turmoil, as his outbursts on the golf course (both positive and negative) suggest?
And should we wonder whether Tiger would cheat on the golf course? If he’s willing to cheat on his wife, would he cheat at golf? Or does his great love and respect for golf, the ultimate gentleman’s sport, exclude that possibility? And if so, what does that say about his love and respect for his wife?
On the one hand it is clear that one need not be prosperous to be adulterous, greedy, or dishonest. But wealth can sometimes help to insulate us from the common consequences of these sins, and perhaps make facilitate their commission, while at the same time potentially exacerbating the fallout if and when it does come during this life.
Update: A timely word on the economic implications of recent events from SNL, “The PGA Tour: No Tiger, no problem!”
Wealth and Fidelity, Golf and Marriage
Dec 192009
“Restraint would offer the opportunity to reinvigorate the foundations of America’s strength. Foreign distractions, among other causes, have led the United States to neglect its transportation infrastructure, its educational system, its finances, and its technology base. If we were to restrain the global interventionism that has become our second nature since the end of World War II, we could ensure our safety while preserving our power to deal more precisely with threats that may materialize in an uncertain future.”
Dec 122009
It’s getting more and more obvious. Last week, in two separate incidents, those favoring abortion set forth their goals and services in religious language. During a December 2nd “Stop Pitts” rally in Washington and in new video advertisements for a Michigan abortuary religious language was used to seize the moral high ground. Clearly, we are dealing with something spiritual. But what is really being championed here is the work of the devil.
The final speaker at the “Stop Pitts” rally was Rev. Carlton Veazy, head of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Veazy encouraged the few hundred rally participants to take on the Catholic bishops “because no one religion, no theological perspective should get the kind of weight that they can [to] put pressure on the Congress.” This is admittedly an odd argument for a religious coalition aiming at political influence, especially since Veazy’s message was deliberately religious: “Don’t let anybody tell you that religious people don’t support choice. You not only have a constitutional right for abortion, but you have a God-given right.”
But perhaps Veazy is consistent after all. Perhaps it is only true theological perspectives (as in deriving from the study of God) that shouldn’t carry any weight. But what if Veazy’s god is really the devil, and Veazy’s position is really a demonic suggestion. After all, nobody has said demonic suggestion shouldn’t be a potent political force. Indeed, Veazy’s program is reminiscent of child sacrifice to Ba’al, the “god” worshipped by the Phoenicians at Carthage. In return for future favors, parents sacrificed their babies on the arms of a bronze statue over burning coals in a ritual that even other pagans in the region identified as demonic. This is one reason Cato always ended his speeches with the statement “Carthago delenda est”—Carthage must be destroyed.
Then there was the video advertisement put out by the Northland Family Planning Centers of Michigan. In this ad, a spokeswoman points to a sign hanging in their abortion facility which reads: “We do sacred work that honors women and the circle of life and death. When you come here bring only love.” But whom should we love? The concept of the circle of life and death is primarily associated with Hindu reincarnation and Wicca, both of which are rooted in polytheism, the worship of multiple gods or “forces”. Universalists, who have emptied Christian doctrine of as much meaning as possible, tend also to go down this road (and I emphasize the word “down”).
In any legitimate Christian theology, and indeed in any world-view derived even remotely from the natural law, these “sacred” powers—these bloodthirsty recipients of our love—can only be construed as demons. Pro-lifers have long realized that the fight over abortion was a fight with principalities and powers, as St. Paul said: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:1). But it is one thing to know this is so and another actually to see the culture of death take an overtly religious form. It is yet a third thing to call these gods of death by their right names.
Jeff Mirus at Catholic Culture
Japan’s new government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, seems to be taking its population problem seriously. The world’s number two economy is set to shrink from about 127 million to 95 million by 2050. This means that the number of workers available to support retirees will fall from 3 to 1.5. Unfortunately, because Japanese are notoriously hostile towards increased immigration, the government’s options are limited. It is racking its brains for schemes to increase the birth rate. Here are some mentioned in an article by AFP:- The new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has appointed Mizuho Fukushima, leader of a junior coalition partner, as his State Minister for the Declining Birthrate and Gender Equality
- robots to care for the elderly
- increasing the number of daycare centres and boosting financial aid for women on maternity leave.
- Encouraging women to work throughout their actives lives. Most women leave the workforce when they marry or become mothers.
- Cash for families – 26,000 yen (US$290) per month for every child until middle school, the abolition of high school enrolment fees, and new benefits for single-parent families.
- Reducing the stigma of out-of-wedlock births. Only 3% of Japanese babies are born to unmarried mothers, compared to 40% in the US and 50% in Sweden and France. Under Japanese law, illegitimate children have rights to only half of the parental inheritance of their “legitimate” siblings. The minister for declining birthrate is working to change that.
Obama’s Big Sellout
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected.
What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.
How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?
Whatever the president’s real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial “reforms” that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street’s political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama’s top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals.
How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed.
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