Special Report
The Law of Malignant Enlightenment
29/March/2010 11:00
Our friend Et Tu Brute’ early Friday morning showed his wisdom on how the passage of ObamaCare would be greatly altered over time by the Law of Unintended Consequences. Following Brute’s post it was truly amazing how often this generally undefined law was mentioned in the world of more traditional news media and commentary. This was generally rebutted by a more liberal response, “Yah, but, just wait until it takes effect and everyone understands this evolving opportunity.” The definition of opportunity left to those less infected (sic).
Cutting through all the composting entropy, the rhetoric revolves basically around two mutually exclusive loci. A traditional or conservative spin states, “With the passage of ObamaCare the path to mutually assured destruction has been coated with black ice.” On the other side, now spun in the leftist or liberal construct, “America has now reached Beulah Land and the shining eternal city is just across the Serendipity Plain.”
Furthermore a little research into the Law of Unintended Consequences shows that the abstract is probably the best usage, since in that form the law can be used whenever one would like to make a point without really needing to rely on any points at all. “Essentially, in time the spectrum of unintended consequences will become clear, and I am just focusing on a few that fit my talking points, for talking points after all, is why I make the big bucks.”
Along that line, the talking points tend to focus on specifics of the actual ObamaCare bill such as, its size, cost, repeal, or replace, the list being very vendor specific. What all this tends to show is that the shallow shortsightedness that gave us the bill in the first place, will be used in the opposite direction to make it much better. With all these ignored, but now so plainly unforeseen and unintended consequences so apparent, the truth seems to be that ObamaCare must either be in its current form, created through intelligent design, or something, or some other unseen natural law must be working its magic.
This brings us to a more refined, contemporary, and previously undiscovered natural law: The Law of Malignant Enlightenment. Departing from the unintended law, we shall briefly define the Law of Malignant Enlightenment and then give three examples on how the law allows its applications to reach beyond the specifics of ObamaCare and touch the universal attributes that can be altered to achieve positive results in a world of limited resources and unlimited possibilities.
Read More...
Cutting through all the composting entropy, the rhetoric revolves basically around two mutually exclusive loci. A traditional or conservative spin states, “With the passage of ObamaCare the path to mutually assured destruction has been coated with black ice.” On the other side, now spun in the leftist or liberal construct, “America has now reached Beulah Land and the shining eternal city is just across the Serendipity Plain.”
Furthermore a little research into the Law of Unintended Consequences shows that the abstract is probably the best usage, since in that form the law can be used whenever one would like to make a point without really needing to rely on any points at all. “Essentially, in time the spectrum of unintended consequences will become clear, and I am just focusing on a few that fit my talking points, for talking points after all, is why I make the big bucks.”
Along that line, the talking points tend to focus on specifics of the actual ObamaCare bill such as, its size, cost, repeal, or replace, the list being very vendor specific. What all this tends to show is that the shallow shortsightedness that gave us the bill in the first place, will be used in the opposite direction to make it much better. With all these ignored, but now so plainly unforeseen and unintended consequences so apparent, the truth seems to be that ObamaCare must either be in its current form, created through intelligent design, or something, or some other unseen natural law must be working its magic.
This brings us to a more refined, contemporary, and previously undiscovered natural law: The Law of Malignant Enlightenment. Departing from the unintended law, we shall briefly define the Law of Malignant Enlightenment and then give three examples on how the law allows its applications to reach beyond the specifics of ObamaCare and touch the universal attributes that can be altered to achieve positive results in a world of limited resources and unlimited possibilities.
Read More...
The ObamaCare wildfire
22/March/2010 10:46
Late last evening the United States of America passed an ObamaCare reform law and simultaneously unleashed a wildfire in the country that will affect the country for years if not decades to come. A wildfire, many times human caused or even designed is an uncontrollable reordering of the future by destroying the past and creating opportunities for new growth to rapidly occur out of the ashes of the old. Many times human started controlled burns suddenly erupt into uncontrollable wildfires and greatly change an environment, well beyond the carefully laid plans of the fire planners. Welcome to healthcare reform circa 2010.
For over a year, off and on the healthcare debate has slowly intensified and generally revolves around both the cost and the constitutional question, if human governments can create rights, rather than being a gift of Natural Law given to humans by God. As of yesterday the debate was codified into law and started the wildfire which we will discuss briefly.
There are those who will continue to fight the hot spot battles related to human rights, the American federal government’s ability to create and to tax, and the continued desire to live beyond our means. Just as in a wildfire you will be able to tune to your favorite news channel, talk radio, or podcast and hear the yin and yang to support or defame your paradigms, but Washington DC this time next year will be a very different place than it is today. It will look like a wildfire passed through the capitol and there will be new shoots of growth beginning to sprout from the ashes, but still a lot of dead wood around, some of it standing some not. When you get out into the country those changes will begin to be seen also, but not the effects that the ObamaCare supporters had hoped.
Wildfires are frightening things, extremely rapidly they can change what has stood strong and relentless for centuries, and in a few minutes it is all gone. But if you look beyond the visual changes, what a wildfire does is fundamentally change the energetics of the ecosystem, including human ecosystems. You probably will only hear about the energetics of the ObamaCare wildfire here at Wonder Springs, so pass this to others.
Wildfires are only controlled when they run out of fuel and the winds and or dryness that feed their destruction are calmed and quenched. Keeping with our wildfire analogy the dryness is the entropy of party politics and the fuel is a whole world filled with excessive, essentially worthless money. The winds of change are blowing so strong that the wildfire will quickly jump the Atlantic and Pacific and destroy all efforts there to not only combat their regional wildfires, but add debt fuel to the flames.
Read More...
For over a year, off and on the healthcare debate has slowly intensified and generally revolves around both the cost and the constitutional question, if human governments can create rights, rather than being a gift of Natural Law given to humans by God. As of yesterday the debate was codified into law and started the wildfire which we will discuss briefly.
There are those who will continue to fight the hot spot battles related to human rights, the American federal government’s ability to create and to tax, and the continued desire to live beyond our means. Just as in a wildfire you will be able to tune to your favorite news channel, talk radio, or podcast and hear the yin and yang to support or defame your paradigms, but Washington DC this time next year will be a very different place than it is today. It will look like a wildfire passed through the capitol and there will be new shoots of growth beginning to sprout from the ashes, but still a lot of dead wood around, some of it standing some not. When you get out into the country those changes will begin to be seen also, but not the effects that the ObamaCare supporters had hoped.
Wildfires are frightening things, extremely rapidly they can change what has stood strong and relentless for centuries, and in a few minutes it is all gone. But if you look beyond the visual changes, what a wildfire does is fundamentally change the energetics of the ecosystem, including human ecosystems. You probably will only hear about the energetics of the ObamaCare wildfire here at Wonder Springs, so pass this to others.
Wildfires are only controlled when they run out of fuel and the winds and or dryness that feed their destruction are calmed and quenched. Keeping with our wildfire analogy the dryness is the entropy of party politics and the fuel is a whole world filled with excessive, essentially worthless money. The winds of change are blowing so strong that the wildfire will quickly jump the Atlantic and Pacific and destroy all efforts there to not only combat their regional wildfires, but add debt fuel to the flames.
Read More...
Three Word Transitions
15/March/2010 10:25
"How's that hopey, changey stuff workin' out for ya?"
Well Sarah, it ain’t workin’ that well right now and come to think of it things haven’t worked all that well for quite a while.”
As we have been promoting in our Wonder Springs weekly articles for a number of weeks, change we can believe in is really change we can understand and makes us comfortable. However, if change really is the only constant in the world, then real stupendous change is truly freakin’ scary and it makes us withdraw further into our old sense of security, and we exacerbate the problems. Hence in real reality “Change we can believe in.” is really the enigma of continual angst. To question whether how much of this current change is by design or chance only magnifies the apprehension?
Last week in the Chronicle we looked at a number of religious antitheses to New England Calvinism. Calvinism defines the prime concept of its theology in three words that begin with the letter “G” standing for “Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. In this week’s “Why Me?” article we will look at similar three word theses, these non-Calvinist and other religious expressions use to express their believe systems.
Watching Glenn Beck last Friday, he unveiled a similar progression to use in his work as he attempts to encourage others to begin to move beyond change we can believe in, as this country attempts to reset the nation on our constitutional foundation. Those three words were “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” These of course come from the old King James - American Revolution era translation of 1 Corinthians 13. Our modern versions use love instead of charity and consequently lose the true perspective of what the Apostle Paul was really saying.
As a Mormon, Beck uses the term charity in its proper context, but I question whether it works with modern American Christian evangelicals who generally think of charity has getting something for nothing, generally from the government, or an NGO (non government organization. Charity in the true sense works within the LDS church because they tithe, consequently there is money to help out those in need, not just as a handout, but also a hand-up.
The average American Christian does not tithe, and the average giving runs about two percent rather than ten. If you factor out the minority of those real tithe givers that probably brings the average offering down to a level God only knows. That amount being just enough to most of the time pay the church staff and the mortgage on the church building. True charity in the New Testament Biblical sense is an impossibility. Read More...
Well Sarah, it ain’t workin’ that well right now and come to think of it things haven’t worked all that well for quite a while.”
As we have been promoting in our Wonder Springs weekly articles for a number of weeks, change we can believe in is really change we can understand and makes us comfortable. However, if change really is the only constant in the world, then real stupendous change is truly freakin’ scary and it makes us withdraw further into our old sense of security, and we exacerbate the problems. Hence in real reality “Change we can believe in.” is really the enigma of continual angst. To question whether how much of this current change is by design or chance only magnifies the apprehension?
Last week in the Chronicle we looked at a number of religious antitheses to New England Calvinism. Calvinism defines the prime concept of its theology in three words that begin with the letter “G” standing for “Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. In this week’s “Why Me?” article we will look at similar three word theses, these non-Calvinist and other religious expressions use to express their believe systems.
Watching Glenn Beck last Friday, he unveiled a similar progression to use in his work as he attempts to encourage others to begin to move beyond change we can believe in, as this country attempts to reset the nation on our constitutional foundation. Those three words were “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” These of course come from the old King James - American Revolution era translation of 1 Corinthians 13. Our modern versions use love instead of charity and consequently lose the true perspective of what the Apostle Paul was really saying.
As a Mormon, Beck uses the term charity in its proper context, but I question whether it works with modern American Christian evangelicals who generally think of charity has getting something for nothing, generally from the government, or an NGO (non government organization. Charity in the true sense works within the LDS church because they tithe, consequently there is money to help out those in need, not just as a handout, but also a hand-up.
The average American Christian does not tithe, and the average giving runs about two percent rather than ten. If you factor out the minority of those real tithe givers that probably brings the average offering down to a level God only knows. That amount being just enough to most of the time pay the church staff and the mortgage on the church building. True charity in the New Testament Biblical sense is an impossibility. Read More...
Green Vitriol
14/February/2010 19:06
Record snow falls in the eastern United States and in Europe, and again we see an exponential growth in vitriol revolving around the global warming or climate change debate. This really looks backward to the Enlightenment birth of what we call science, that originally went under the term natural philosophy, which grew out of the discussions between applied and theoretical theology. So we hear some people calling global warming a religion and others calling it settled science. The truth is that none of us now alive will be around when it makes all that much difference, but that sure doesn’t keep pundits and know-it-alls from making popish balderdash.
Back in the 1970s when the fear that the world was known to be heading towards another ice age, one of the discussions against cleaning up the air, was that it may lead to global warming. What we are now told in essence, when we saved the world from dirty pollution, we condemned the world to invisible pollution. So the cheap and simple solution should be let’s get dirty again. Of course that is really just a straight-forward fix that doesn’t fit within our self-righteousness coin flipping to save the planet — get rich.
If we could ask the Wooly Mammoths they would tell us to watch those ocean effect snowfalls because they could cause you to freeze to death in the stupendous snowy change that would start an ice age. Of course they did freeze to death during the start of an ice age. So in all our human smarts we know that we really don’t want to have that enter into our frigid natural philosophy discussions.
Now when we talk about green vitriol we are not talking about crystalline ferrous sulfate, but rather a vitriolic discussion about green energy and how it is going to save us from global warming and at the same time allow us to continue our gluttonous energetic lifestyle. That just isn’t going to happen, no matter what religious mantras we invoke, incantate, or resuscitate. There are a number reasons for that.
First of all our current technologies to provide green energy are just technological refinements of the stuff we had a generation ago. The reason the world does not run on windmills, solar panels and other similar technologies, is that they are not cost effective in comparison to fossil fuels and hydropower. Back in the last potential green revolution, the effective costs for these green energy solutions were about fifty percent higher than their vitriolic competitors. So to be an energetic solution the price of crude oil needed to be in excess of about $60 a barrel. For a short time that happened, but that was not a window, but more a freakish event.
Today we really don’t know what that break even number is, but just factoring in inflation that would probably put the energetic push with oil at from $80 — $90. The problem is the current price of oil is just below those figures, and has traded in that $70 — $80 range for about a year now since the Saudis stated that the world price of oil should be at least $70. Of course there is no market making manipulation there, just a simple commodity trading program, access to a whole lot of free money from saving the world from financial collapse, and someone with an Internet connection writing oil industry press releases such as:
Furthermore, we really don’t know how much oil is available in the less than $90 range. Back when peak oil competed with global cooling for environmental headlines we would have learned by now we would all be riding bicycles.
So if we really want good clean green technology what we really need to do is tax oil products so that the effective price of oil is say $100 a barrel. Then we could produce a market for all that green technology, except we really could not make enough solar panels and windmills to make a dent in our need for fossil fuel energy, and what would all that green energy do to the local environments, with windmills killing birds and solar panels covering hundreds to thousands of square miles? Then of course if we really want to be green, we must look at the total carbon footprint for those windmills and solar panels, including their design, manufacture, installation, maintenance, and distribution system.
Then, of course, it would help our save the world dreams if we replaced our current stupid electrical grid, with a smart grid. That would be a smart thing to do, because we now waste about 62% of the electrical energy generate according to the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Of course if we do that we should look at the total carbon footprint of that endeavor also. Furthermore if we eliminated all the energy wastes, that would also eliminate the need for cap and trade or energy taxes.
This discussion is especially important because most of the new green energy works just as well or better without a grid tie. Could it be that Thomas Edison was right about DC (direct current) and Nikola Tesla was wrong with AC (alternating current)? Of course without grid ties the land we sacrifice of green energy could be used for something else, but then our cities would grow dark, unless we build some other type of really green centralized power plants, with a much better spin on the technology that is now viewed with vitriol. But just look at the opportunities that would allow for the collusion between the big government and the big crony global corporations.
So what we briefly see is saving the world from ourselves really is not as simple as it comes out in the talking points and well edited speeches. Perhaps if we could find a way to harness all the green, political, and wasted energy in the country, we could find ways to live together with energy independence for all. But lighting those light bulbs in our minds could not be done with compact fluorescents, for the mercury poisoning would effect our already demented intelligence.
Back in the 1970s when the fear that the world was known to be heading towards another ice age, one of the discussions against cleaning up the air, was that it may lead to global warming. What we are now told in essence, when we saved the world from dirty pollution, we condemned the world to invisible pollution. So the cheap and simple solution should be let’s get dirty again. Of course that is really just a straight-forward fix that doesn’t fit within our self-righteousness coin flipping to save the planet — get rich.
If we could ask the Wooly Mammoths they would tell us to watch those ocean effect snowfalls because they could cause you to freeze to death in the stupendous snowy change that would start an ice age. Of course they did freeze to death during the start of an ice age. So in all our human smarts we know that we really don’t want to have that enter into our frigid natural philosophy discussions.
Now when we talk about green vitriol we are not talking about crystalline ferrous sulfate, but rather a vitriolic discussion about green energy and how it is going to save us from global warming and at the same time allow us to continue our gluttonous energetic lifestyle. That just isn’t going to happen, no matter what religious mantras we invoke, incantate, or resuscitate. There are a number reasons for that.
First of all our current technologies to provide green energy are just technological refinements of the stuff we had a generation ago. The reason the world does not run on windmills, solar panels and other similar technologies, is that they are not cost effective in comparison to fossil fuels and hydropower. Back in the last potential green revolution, the effective costs for these green energy solutions were about fifty percent higher than their vitriolic competitors. So to be an energetic solution the price of crude oil needed to be in excess of about $60 a barrel. For a short time that happened, but that was not a window, but more a freakish event.
Today we really don’t know what that break even number is, but just factoring in inflation that would probably put the energetic push with oil at from $80 — $90. The problem is the current price of oil is just below those figures, and has traded in that $70 — $80 range for about a year now since the Saudis stated that the world price of oil should be at least $70. Of course there is no market making manipulation there, just a simple commodity trading program, access to a whole lot of free money from saving the world from financial collapse, and someone with an Internet connection writing oil industry press releases such as:
- Oil rises on fears snow will increase heating oil demand.
- Oil falls because record snows keep people at home and off the road.
Furthermore, we really don’t know how much oil is available in the less than $90 range. Back when peak oil competed with global cooling for environmental headlines we would have learned by now we would all be riding bicycles.
So if we really want good clean green technology what we really need to do is tax oil products so that the effective price of oil is say $100 a barrel. Then we could produce a market for all that green technology, except we really could not make enough solar panels and windmills to make a dent in our need for fossil fuel energy, and what would all that green energy do to the local environments, with windmills killing birds and solar panels covering hundreds to thousands of square miles? Then of course if we really want to be green, we must look at the total carbon footprint for those windmills and solar panels, including their design, manufacture, installation, maintenance, and distribution system.
Then, of course, it would help our save the world dreams if we replaced our current stupid electrical grid, with a smart grid. That would be a smart thing to do, because we now waste about 62% of the electrical energy generate according to the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Of course if we do that we should look at the total carbon footprint of that endeavor also. Furthermore if we eliminated all the energy wastes, that would also eliminate the need for cap and trade or energy taxes.
This discussion is especially important because most of the new green energy works just as well or better without a grid tie. Could it be that Thomas Edison was right about DC (direct current) and Nikola Tesla was wrong with AC (alternating current)? Of course without grid ties the land we sacrifice of green energy could be used for something else, but then our cities would grow dark, unless we build some other type of really green centralized power plants, with a much better spin on the technology that is now viewed with vitriol. But just look at the opportunities that would allow for the collusion between the big government and the big crony global corporations.
So what we briefly see is saving the world from ourselves really is not as simple as it comes out in the talking points and well edited speeches. Perhaps if we could find a way to harness all the green, political, and wasted energy in the country, we could find ways to live together with energy independence for all. But lighting those light bulbs in our minds could not be done with compact fluorescents, for the mercury poisoning would effect our already demented intelligence.
The Audacity of Wrong
13/February/2010 11:57
This past Wednesday Glenn Beck had a segment on the Cure Worse Than Disease, in which he discussed the depression of 1920-21. As Glenn mentioned himself, I also had never heard much about that time in United States history. What I had heard was something about continuing booms and busts of the economy as America closed the western frontier, became a world power through WWI, and had the Roaring ’20s ,which ended in the Great Depression. Then thankfully the New Deal was issued in by FDR, America was saved from total anarchy until we were forced to fight Japan and those terrible Nazis.
I had begun to question this whole New Deal salvation when I read the “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” by Amity Shales, earlier this year, So I wondered what I might find online, to increase my knowledge of this unknown earlier depression that Glenn had used as a model for fixing our country’s and the world’s economic mess. After some searching I came across “The U. S. Economy in the 1920s” an article by Gene Smiley of Marquette University. This is a very thorough discussion of that decade of almost twenty six thousand words and graphs that took up sixty four pages in my computer’s PDF format. A link to the article is also found under our Resources Tab.
What the Smiley article showed, and as Beck addressed, the Depression that began in 1920 was much more severe that anything we have faced in the current meltdown and bailouts. Furthermore the fix of letting the markets work to rebuild, or as Glenn said, “reboot the system” accomplished an economic miracle in which unemployment fell from over 11% to less than 2% in short order.
As with our current situation, speculation in securities coupled with tight money policies, was a correct but simplistic description of the beginning of the Great Depression. However if you link the growth of the 1920s followed by the Depression of the 1930s, this broader historical context more vividly displays the reality pointed out so well in “The Forgotten Man.” In this larger context Roosevelt’s New Deal was truly the antithesis of what the economy really needed.
If looked at in a global perspective, the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic happened essentially concurrently with the 1920s depression. While Germany’s problems were related to reparations required under terms of the War’s armistice for payment in gold, Hitler himself attributed much of that period’s instability to the success of his ability to bring National Socialism to Germany, which began in 1925 through 1933 when Nazi power was finally established.
Just as with the Great Depression, the current Obama Administration is determined to save the country and by extension the world, by a bigger and better New Deal. Ben Bernanke has been put in charge of the Federal Reserve for another four years because he saved the universe from another Great Depression, when he was Alan Greenspan’s easy money debt lieutenant as this totally unforeseen economic catastrophe developed? So now we are just beginning to see that United States program of huge governmental spending, coupled with creation of essentially worthless money, is quickly becoming the Audacity of Wrong.
What makes this so serious is that the economic recovery during the 1920s and thwarted during the 1930s Great Depression, was essentially get out of the way and let the market system work, while a broad spectrum of economic opportunities became reality. The problem we face today is that those growth industries and services are not only mature but beyond their prime.
The political leadership of the United States in both political parties are basically saying, “Don’t worry, be happy, the 1990s (1920s) will be here again.” Surely this is the Audacity of Wrong, there are currently no quantum leaps in either energetics or information to carry us forward, In fact much of that mature infrastructure is in the way of producing a new economy. Government bureaucrats, big unions, and crony capitalists all want the status quo to continue because they have their piece of the pie and they are unwilling to share that shrinking pie with what is generally called the folks, or the American people. This problem is even more pronounced now in the eurozone where you add the reality of crony nation states.
The first step in economic rebooting the United States, and the world for that matter, is the realization that debt doesn’t create wealth, all it can do is shuffle or reshuffle the deck chairs on the global economic Titanic now that it has hit an iceberg. There are some life rafts that can get some to shore, and thereby use the knowledge we have gained to build some newly designed economic ships, but the major problem is the great flood of the ocean of non energetic debt money that has covered all the dry land. For those who only have life jackets, they must realize they cannot borrow their way to shore, but must tread water looking for emerging sprouts on the slowly reemerging land. The allegory of the Noah flood in the Bible comes to mind. Soon dry land will emerge from the sea, and the seeds and sprouts of new opportunties will appear.
The moral to the story is that as much as we think we control the world, and have a plan to save the world, new opportunities of growth will come from reclaimed liquidity water that will irrigate a dry land, not from human wishful thinking. The basis for that new land and the irrigation system in the United States, was and is the vision of our Founders, and the documents that they produced. In short, wealth production needs real equity liquidity to grow, not quick sprinkling economic debt stimulus. That new equity will in short order change the Audacity of Wrong into the Promise of New Real Wealth.
I had begun to question this whole New Deal salvation when I read the “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” by Amity Shales, earlier this year, So I wondered what I might find online, to increase my knowledge of this unknown earlier depression that Glenn had used as a model for fixing our country’s and the world’s economic mess. After some searching I came across “The U. S. Economy in the 1920s” an article by Gene Smiley of Marquette University. This is a very thorough discussion of that decade of almost twenty six thousand words and graphs that took up sixty four pages in my computer’s PDF format. A link to the article is also found under our Resources Tab.
What the Smiley article showed, and as Beck addressed, the Depression that began in 1920 was much more severe that anything we have faced in the current meltdown and bailouts. Furthermore the fix of letting the markets work to rebuild, or as Glenn said, “reboot the system” accomplished an economic miracle in which unemployment fell from over 11% to less than 2% in short order.
As with our current situation, speculation in securities coupled with tight money policies, was a correct but simplistic description of the beginning of the Great Depression. However if you link the growth of the 1920s followed by the Depression of the 1930s, this broader historical context more vividly displays the reality pointed out so well in “The Forgotten Man.” In this larger context Roosevelt’s New Deal was truly the antithesis of what the economy really needed.
If looked at in a global perspective, the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic happened essentially concurrently with the 1920s depression. While Germany’s problems were related to reparations required under terms of the War’s armistice for payment in gold, Hitler himself attributed much of that period’s instability to the success of his ability to bring National Socialism to Germany, which began in 1925 through 1933 when Nazi power was finally established.
Just as with the Great Depression, the current Obama Administration is determined to save the country and by extension the world, by a bigger and better New Deal. Ben Bernanke has been put in charge of the Federal Reserve for another four years because he saved the universe from another Great Depression, when he was Alan Greenspan’s easy money debt lieutenant as this totally unforeseen economic catastrophe developed? So now we are just beginning to see that United States program of huge governmental spending, coupled with creation of essentially worthless money, is quickly becoming the Audacity of Wrong.
What makes this so serious is that the economic recovery during the 1920s and thwarted during the 1930s Great Depression, was essentially get out of the way and let the market system work, while a broad spectrum of economic opportunities became reality. The problem we face today is that those growth industries and services are not only mature but beyond their prime.
The political leadership of the United States in both political parties are basically saying, “Don’t worry, be happy, the 1990s (1920s) will be here again.” Surely this is the Audacity of Wrong, there are currently no quantum leaps in either energetics or information to carry us forward, In fact much of that mature infrastructure is in the way of producing a new economy. Government bureaucrats, big unions, and crony capitalists all want the status quo to continue because they have their piece of the pie and they are unwilling to share that shrinking pie with what is generally called the folks, or the American people. This problem is even more pronounced now in the eurozone where you add the reality of crony nation states.
The first step in economic rebooting the United States, and the world for that matter, is the realization that debt doesn’t create wealth, all it can do is shuffle or reshuffle the deck chairs on the global economic Titanic now that it has hit an iceberg. There are some life rafts that can get some to shore, and thereby use the knowledge we have gained to build some newly designed economic ships, but the major problem is the great flood of the ocean of non energetic debt money that has covered all the dry land. For those who only have life jackets, they must realize they cannot borrow their way to shore, but must tread water looking for emerging sprouts on the slowly reemerging land. The allegory of the Noah flood in the Bible comes to mind. Soon dry land will emerge from the sea, and the seeds and sprouts of new opportunties will appear.
The moral to the story is that as much as we think we control the world, and have a plan to save the world, new opportunities of growth will come from reclaimed liquidity water that will irrigate a dry land, not from human wishful thinking. The basis for that new land and the irrigation system in the United States, was and is the vision of our Founders, and the documents that they produced. In short, wealth production needs real equity liquidity to grow, not quick sprinkling economic debt stimulus. That new equity will in short order change the Audacity of Wrong into the Promise of New Real Wealth.
New Leadership Tab
11/February/2010 13:01
In our effort to create more effective resources here at Wonder Springs, we have deleted the Phylogenesis Tab and replaced it with an off site link under a new Leadership Tab. This link will take you to The Creation Leadership Center we are developing using our Wonder Springs Chronicle Archives as well as other teaching resources we have developed over the years. Eventually The Creation Leadership Center will be offering hands on learning experiences in Business Ecology, Leadership, Economic and Personal Survival, as well as other programs to allow you to understand the growth opportunities, that times of stupendous change create.
Haiti Reflections
16/January/2010 08:00
by Jerry Bannon
We began this year in our original installment of “Why Me?” with a brief discussion of survival. For the last few days and for weeks and months forward we will see real life survival situations playing out on our televisions and featuring the people of Haiti. I used the term “playing out,” because when the video and the commentary are combined, we really cannot comprehend the reality of the situation. But it is reality.
The projected death toll continues to rise. News I heard last evening stated that the total deaths might reach two hundred thousand, with other casualties reaching three million. This within a country with a total population of eight to nine million, depending upon the source, which compares well with New York City.
How do you survive a situation like that?
The reality, after you subtract the death toll, is that you are almost totally dependent upon the good will of external aid and the grace of God. In the case of Haiti crushing poverty, before the quake, exacerbates those problems.
In the still richest country in the world, the effects of hurricane Katrina are still present in the city of New Orleans, as today their National Football League team battles to continue the city’s mental recovery.
Survival is essentially a mental and spiritual happening. Right now in Haiti and in all our other catastrophic recovery efforts, we focus upon immediate material aid, and once the crisis is over, survivors are pretty much on their own to answer the stupendous challenge of “Why Me?”
Our global economy essentially says, “It is not our problem, survival of the fittest is the supreme natural law.” Then they move their consumer kitsch factory to some other place.
Religion in common and specific senses, typified by the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian values, are the only support that will remain, but those efforts will be greatly hindered by the lack of capital to rebuild and restore human lives. The people of the United States will lead in that rebuilding effort, because they still are the most religious and graceful people in the history of the world. That is simply because the American ethos, really hasn’t changed, as it also has been pillaged by the global reach of what is beginning to be feely called “crony capitalism.”
As the United States moves forward, we too will be making survival decisions. God willing, those changes will not be as stupendous as now being forced upon the people of Haiti. In the battle of morals and morale, we will hear many words of our founding fathers, one of the most quotable being Thomas Jefferson. Let those words not neglect Jefferson’s vision of a nation of self-sufficiency in the form of yeoman farmers, freeholders, not of a mortgaged suburban home, but owners and stewards of their natural subsistence.
These diverse opportunities are in direct opposition to the attempts to create urban monocultures of consuming union factory and service workers. Extreme specialization is a genetic agenda that attempts to create dependency at the expense of common sense. In that comparison, the currently struggling people of Haiti, have been given an opportunity to rebuild, a more just and sustainable society than they have had in their history.
We the people and citizens of the United States of America, face a very different challenge. Our challenge is not to return to our roots that made the American Dream, the great hope of mankind, but instead to prune the tree of the excesses of all consuming material prosperity.
Contrary to what we are now being told that cannot come from governmental regulations and the redistribution of wealth. Nor can that change come from individual initiative without respecting the divine creation of all of humanity and the initial goodness of all of God’s creation.
Survival from stupendous change takes many forms on this small blue globe, orbiting in the universe of space. But we are not alone, we have a God that sustains it all and created us in his image, and we have each other, which reflects the unity and diversity of the Trinity, through individuals, tribes, and nations. So instead of believing that we have all the answers, we must go back to the fundamental common questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What are we to do?
Where will we go when we die?
In God’s common grace if we work to understand the life questions in the middle, he will take care of the bookends.
We began this year in our original installment of “Why Me?” with a brief discussion of survival. For the last few days and for weeks and months forward we will see real life survival situations playing out on our televisions and featuring the people of Haiti. I used the term “playing out,” because when the video and the commentary are combined, we really cannot comprehend the reality of the situation. But it is reality.
The projected death toll continues to rise. News I heard last evening stated that the total deaths might reach two hundred thousand, with other casualties reaching three million. This within a country with a total population of eight to nine million, depending upon the source, which compares well with New York City.
How do you survive a situation like that?
The reality, after you subtract the death toll, is that you are almost totally dependent upon the good will of external aid and the grace of God. In the case of Haiti crushing poverty, before the quake, exacerbates those problems.
In the still richest country in the world, the effects of hurricane Katrina are still present in the city of New Orleans, as today their National Football League team battles to continue the city’s mental recovery.
Survival is essentially a mental and spiritual happening. Right now in Haiti and in all our other catastrophic recovery efforts, we focus upon immediate material aid, and once the crisis is over, survivors are pretty much on their own to answer the stupendous challenge of “Why Me?”
Our global economy essentially says, “It is not our problem, survival of the fittest is the supreme natural law.” Then they move their consumer kitsch factory to some other place.
Religion in common and specific senses, typified by the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian values, are the only support that will remain, but those efforts will be greatly hindered by the lack of capital to rebuild and restore human lives. The people of the United States will lead in that rebuilding effort, because they still are the most religious and graceful people in the history of the world. That is simply because the American ethos, really hasn’t changed, as it also has been pillaged by the global reach of what is beginning to be feely called “crony capitalism.”
As the United States moves forward, we too will be making survival decisions. God willing, those changes will not be as stupendous as now being forced upon the people of Haiti. In the battle of morals and morale, we will hear many words of our founding fathers, one of the most quotable being Thomas Jefferson. Let those words not neglect Jefferson’s vision of a nation of self-sufficiency in the form of yeoman farmers, freeholders, not of a mortgaged suburban home, but owners and stewards of their natural subsistence.
These diverse opportunities are in direct opposition to the attempts to create urban monocultures of consuming union factory and service workers. Extreme specialization is a genetic agenda that attempts to create dependency at the expense of common sense. In that comparison, the currently struggling people of Haiti, have been given an opportunity to rebuild, a more just and sustainable society than they have had in their history.
We the people and citizens of the United States of America, face a very different challenge. Our challenge is not to return to our roots that made the American Dream, the great hope of mankind, but instead to prune the tree of the excesses of all consuming material prosperity.
Contrary to what we are now being told that cannot come from governmental regulations and the redistribution of wealth. Nor can that change come from individual initiative without respecting the divine creation of all of humanity and the initial goodness of all of God’s creation.
Survival from stupendous change takes many forms on this small blue globe, orbiting in the universe of space. But we are not alone, we have a God that sustains it all and created us in his image, and we have each other, which reflects the unity and diversity of the Trinity, through individuals, tribes, and nations. So instead of believing that we have all the answers, we must go back to the fundamental common questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What are we to do?
Where will we go when we die?
In God’s common grace if we work to understand the life questions in the middle, he will take care of the bookends.
New Year Adaptations
04/January/2010 17:41
By Jerry Bannon
Updated January 5, 2010, 9:30 AM
The year 2010 begins the twelfth year of publishing The Wonder Springs Chronicle or the predecessor The Chronicles of Diversity. Over that time and on this website you have free access to over two million words which are amazingly consistent in their context. Since that 1999 beginning we have seen some remarkable changes in this country and around the world.
There are those who say that the recent Great Recession is over and now heaven on earth is just a few legislative maneuvers, bureaucratic assumptions, and hopeful hype spin away. The unique position of Wonder Springs stems from a paradigm that the Natural Laws of God’s creation are Absolute Truths which governs all of man’s aspirations. If our endeavors or enterprises are going to provide long term growth in all diverse aspects, then the wisdom that we use gathered from what we can learn from God’s living reality, forces us to model our limited and simplistic struggles utilizing those Truths to find meaning and purpose in life.
This concept began in the early 1980s when I began a business management model called Business Ecology. The essentials of those simple principles and graphic illustrations are found in various places in the archives. Some of the ways we have described these concepts in addition to Business Ecology are Enterprise Symbiosis, Stupendous Change, Fractured Rapture Tales, and probably the most scientific description: Métis Phylogenesis.
During the years following the development of the Business Ecology concept, through some more technical consulting work I was given the rights to redevelop a Great Depression successful, air concentrating technology for precious metals. To that was added an environmentally sound refining process. These technologies formed a basis for a company I tried and failed to get funded during that time when all the worldly buzz related to the Internet and something called dot-com. In October of last year I was contacted by some potential mine developers I had briefly known after I had actively closed the company. They wanted to know if I was still interested in going ahead with that work now that the price of gold had exceeded $1000 per ounce.
I scraped together enough funds to reestablish the company as PREFER Ltd in the State of Washington and began to assemble infrastructure pieces that had not been utilized for probably twenty years. PREFER stands for the acrostic: Providing Resourceful Energetics For Economic Renaissance. One of the problems with the original air tables was that it did not scale beyond a piece of equipment that could process more than five tons per hour of properly crushed ore. Furthermore changes of the particle size of the desired precious metals fraction required a complete reworking of the air fluidizing screens.
Early one morning just before Christmas I awoke with an idea for a new design without the above limitations. With some sketches of this new equipment design, understood in the science of small particle physics we will begin to enrich the whole process stream as we design, build and test this new equipment. We also have obtained another client with a property that would fit well with the PREFER emphasis on small scale environmentally sound mining and refining.
There still is the distinct need to find investors that believe in the truth that a significant portion of America’s new wealth producing enterprises need to be directly tied to the land. For it is that natural wealth together with the American people’s constitutional inalienable rights that provided for the development of the greatest nation in all of human history. Furthermore that symbiosis is the mechanism by which we will again prosper.
Combining the precious metals with Business Ecology and placing it within a human environment in which our money has no basis in reality, it logically follows that we should again look to God’s creation for the knowledge and wisdom to again provide a mechanism to produce new wealth not only from the ground, but also to help others manage their current wealth in a means that will minimize the effects of higher taxes, currency devaluations, and inflation.
So on New Year’s Eve we began a new website called Deep Woods Moola which will function as a subsidiary adventure of PREFER Ltd. The slogan for the Deep Woods Moola website is, Innovatively Creating Sustaining Wealth. As yet there is nothing there beyond a domain name, but over time the goal is to separate The Wonder Springs Chronicle to enhance its Christian emphasis and develop Deep Woods Moola into a mechanism to address in a secular manner the challenges that now face all of humanity.
When I began this regular writing in 1999 it was under the web banner of Createleaders.org. As with Deep Woods Moola, we again established The Creation Leadership Center utilizing our old URL on New Year’s Eve. Over the years, as with many other organizations, we fully understand the potential of nature to teach the basics of leadership, integrity, humility, teamwork and many other priceless life principles. Actual training programs in the Deep Woods, gives us a perspective of all life and our place within our natural world, as well as within human culture.
The unique nature of the Biblical Creation Worldview demonstrates the diversity of all life, and the function of mankind as stewards and gardeners, as we seek to develop prosperous human communities. For only by understanding that we humans are not just part of creation, as creatures, but set apart in the image of God, to inherit his special goodness, can we truly understand the potential for Wonder Springs in not just a physical Death Valley, but more importantly our eternally spiritual Death Valley, without the grace of God offered to us through Jesus Christ.
Updated January 5, 2010, 9:30 AM
The year 2010 begins the twelfth year of publishing The Wonder Springs Chronicle or the predecessor The Chronicles of Diversity. Over that time and on this website you have free access to over two million words which are amazingly consistent in their context. Since that 1999 beginning we have seen some remarkable changes in this country and around the world.
There are those who say that the recent Great Recession is over and now heaven on earth is just a few legislative maneuvers, bureaucratic assumptions, and hopeful hype spin away. The unique position of Wonder Springs stems from a paradigm that the Natural Laws of God’s creation are Absolute Truths which governs all of man’s aspirations. If our endeavors or enterprises are going to provide long term growth in all diverse aspects, then the wisdom that we use gathered from what we can learn from God’s living reality, forces us to model our limited and simplistic struggles utilizing those Truths to find meaning and purpose in life.
This concept began in the early 1980s when I began a business management model called Business Ecology. The essentials of those simple principles and graphic illustrations are found in various places in the archives. Some of the ways we have described these concepts in addition to Business Ecology are Enterprise Symbiosis, Stupendous Change, Fractured Rapture Tales, and probably the most scientific description: Métis Phylogenesis.
During the years following the development of the Business Ecology concept, through some more technical consulting work I was given the rights to redevelop a Great Depression successful, air concentrating technology for precious metals. To that was added an environmentally sound refining process. These technologies formed a basis for a company I tried and failed to get funded during that time when all the worldly buzz related to the Internet and something called dot-com. In October of last year I was contacted by some potential mine developers I had briefly known after I had actively closed the company. They wanted to know if I was still interested in going ahead with that work now that the price of gold had exceeded $1000 per ounce.
I scraped together enough funds to reestablish the company as PREFER Ltd in the State of Washington and began to assemble infrastructure pieces that had not been utilized for probably twenty years. PREFER stands for the acrostic: Providing Resourceful Energetics For Economic Renaissance. One of the problems with the original air tables was that it did not scale beyond a piece of equipment that could process more than five tons per hour of properly crushed ore. Furthermore changes of the particle size of the desired precious metals fraction required a complete reworking of the air fluidizing screens.
Early one morning just before Christmas I awoke with an idea for a new design without the above limitations. With some sketches of this new equipment design, understood in the science of small particle physics we will begin to enrich the whole process stream as we design, build and test this new equipment. We also have obtained another client with a property that would fit well with the PREFER emphasis on small scale environmentally sound mining and refining.
There still is the distinct need to find investors that believe in the truth that a significant portion of America’s new wealth producing enterprises need to be directly tied to the land. For it is that natural wealth together with the American people’s constitutional inalienable rights that provided for the development of the greatest nation in all of human history. Furthermore that symbiosis is the mechanism by which we will again prosper.
Combining the precious metals with Business Ecology and placing it within a human environment in which our money has no basis in reality, it logically follows that we should again look to God’s creation for the knowledge and wisdom to again provide a mechanism to produce new wealth not only from the ground, but also to help others manage their current wealth in a means that will minimize the effects of higher taxes, currency devaluations, and inflation.
So on New Year’s Eve we began a new website called Deep Woods Moola which will function as a subsidiary adventure of PREFER Ltd. The slogan for the Deep Woods Moola website is, Innovatively Creating Sustaining Wealth. As yet there is nothing there beyond a domain name, but over time the goal is to separate The Wonder Springs Chronicle to enhance its Christian emphasis and develop Deep Woods Moola into a mechanism to address in a secular manner the challenges that now face all of humanity.
When I began this regular writing in 1999 it was under the web banner of Createleaders.org. As with Deep Woods Moola, we again established The Creation Leadership Center utilizing our old URL on New Year’s Eve. Over the years, as with many other organizations, we fully understand the potential of nature to teach the basics of leadership, integrity, humility, teamwork and many other priceless life principles. Actual training programs in the Deep Woods, gives us a perspective of all life and our place within our natural world, as well as within human culture.
The unique nature of the Biblical Creation Worldview demonstrates the diversity of all life, and the function of mankind as stewards and gardeners, as we seek to develop prosperous human communities. For only by understanding that we humans are not just part of creation, as creatures, but set apart in the image of God, to inherit his special goodness, can we truly understand the potential for Wonder Springs in not just a physical Death Valley, but more importantly our eternally spiritual Death Valley, without the grace of God offered to us through Jesus Christ.
The Christmas Hunt
14/December/2009 10:06
Today the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen focuses upon “Earth Journalism Awards” among other interesting topics. In efforts to provide a little “fresh insight” into this unique conference in human history the Wonder Springs Chronicle would like to post this little contribution. We don’t claim that it is journalism, nor even a good story, probably more of a simple fairy tale, concocted not by climate change skeptics, but true believers, in this continuing universal principle. It however, probably doesn’t spin this reality in a way that would find a wide audience among our Copenhagen friends.
We live in troubling times, and readers of knuckle dragging blogs such as the Wonder Springs Chronicle and other publications and programs are being told they are unenlightened, stupid, naysayers, who only believe in some fictional deity, guns, and real money. Therefore for our loyal readers please understand that this really is a tale of real fiction and worldly wisdom, which you might fully not understand. It attempts mythically to bring together for a hunting trip in the backwoods two of the most enlightened progressives of all time, namely Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt and Albert (Al) Gore. It must be pointed out that these two men lived a century apart, we therefore need some license with reality to make this fictional trip happen, so we have creatively decided to have this trip begin today, December 14, 2009, but to focus upon the technology of a century ago, that would be December 14, 1909.
Our story is set in a hunting camp in Northwestern Montana, at one of President Roosevelt’s favorite hunting spots. He has been camping at the location a couple of days before Vice President Gore arrives, by horseback, sometime in the evening before our story begins.
Teddy: Good morning Al, Merry Christmas. How did you sleep?
Al: Happy Holidays Teddy. Dang, I almost froze to death, I mean the ten wool blankets you gave me to keep warm just didn’t seem to do the job. And did you realize the fire in the tent stove went out about midnight. Why didn’t you get up and feed the fire, that canvas tent was as cold as that eternal hotspot, if you catch my drift?
Teddy: Well Al, you see it is this way, I was President of these here United States and you were just a Vice President. I think that means you work for me, not the other way around. More to the point if you had not spent the whole night whining about being cold and gotten up and stoked the fire yourself, you might have gotten your blood circulating and not have been so cold. More to the point, the canvas tent, the wool blankets, and the wood stove are about as carbon neutral as you can get. I thought you believed in that sort of thing.
Al: You’re right Ted, I’m just not acclimatized to this rapid cold change from staying in five star hotels, traveling on my private jet, and my home back in Tennessee. Also you know methane flatulence is produced by the sheep that was the source of the wool, why didn’t you have some modern petroleum based sleeping bags, I’m sure I would have slept very toasty in a nice synthetic bag?
Read More...
We live in troubling times, and readers of knuckle dragging blogs such as the Wonder Springs Chronicle and other publications and programs are being told they are unenlightened, stupid, naysayers, who only believe in some fictional deity, guns, and real money. Therefore for our loyal readers please understand that this really is a tale of real fiction and worldly wisdom, which you might fully not understand. It attempts mythically to bring together for a hunting trip in the backwoods two of the most enlightened progressives of all time, namely Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt and Albert (Al) Gore. It must be pointed out that these two men lived a century apart, we therefore need some license with reality to make this fictional trip happen, so we have creatively decided to have this trip begin today, December 14, 2009, but to focus upon the technology of a century ago, that would be December 14, 1909.
Our story is set in a hunting camp in Northwestern Montana, at one of President Roosevelt’s favorite hunting spots. He has been camping at the location a couple of days before Vice President Gore arrives, by horseback, sometime in the evening before our story begins.
Teddy: Good morning Al, Merry Christmas. How did you sleep?
Al: Happy Holidays Teddy. Dang, I almost froze to death, I mean the ten wool blankets you gave me to keep warm just didn’t seem to do the job. And did you realize the fire in the tent stove went out about midnight. Why didn’t you get up and feed the fire, that canvas tent was as cold as that eternal hotspot, if you catch my drift?
Teddy: Well Al, you see it is this way, I was President of these here United States and you were just a Vice President. I think that means you work for me, not the other way around. More to the point if you had not spent the whole night whining about being cold and gotten up and stoked the fire yourself, you might have gotten your blood circulating and not have been so cold. More to the point, the canvas tent, the wool blankets, and the wood stove are about as carbon neutral as you can get. I thought you believed in that sort of thing.
Al: You’re right Ted, I’m just not acclimatized to this rapid cold change from staying in five star hotels, traveling on my private jet, and my home back in Tennessee. Also you know methane flatulence is produced by the sheep that was the source of the wool, why didn’t you have some modern petroleum based sleeping bags, I’m sure I would have slept very toasty in a nice synthetic bag?
Read More...
The Advent Season
04/December/2009 12:58
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
At Wonder Springs we normally give Brute’ his day, but with the United States jobless rate declining last month to an even 10 percent, it is generally assumed that most of the MSM, or the LSM (Lame Stream Media) will be reporting that “Happy Days are Here Again.”
The reality of the so called good news is really confined to pretty much those who have had access to the government’s free (funny) monetary expansion policies. The truth is that there are many Americans and citizens in other countries around the world are facing hardships stemming from the Great Recession, that they have never experienced before. Some of them have been in that rut and somehow survived now longer than they thought possible.
The opportunity that we can gain from these life trials is that “faith, hope and love,” are unique assets of all our human personalities. They are gifts of God, given to us in unique ways, we are however much of the time to busy understand not only their unique nature, but also our own.
Their have been those, in relatively recent human history, who have tried to change these gifts of God into a force that can be manipulated by human efforts. Many times these faux conversions were attempted for lofty reasons.
Love is probably the most abused of these three. “I (heart design) something,” being the most common attempt to make the supernatural gift of God, subject to human depravity. “All you need is love” as well as “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” are not examples of true love, but really narcissism.
Making you healthy, wealthy, and wise through your faith, was and still is part of the reason Christianity continues to be considered ridiculous, by many people, some who have tried the to plant their seed of faith and found it bought someone a new house and corporate jet, while their faith had to make the choice between food, and utilities, while old time necessities came to look like totally vanquished dreams.
Finally, we have succeeded in turning hope into a force also. Hope in hope and we can change the world and the United States will obey also. Truthfully I have little hope that the breathing period will last all that long, but I am grateful for at least a little reprise for this Christmas season.
Therefore during the rest of this year the Wonder Springs Chronicle will focus upon how God uses our difficult circumstances to reveal His nature in our lives and how Godly faith, hope, and love, are able to sometimes overcome our circumstances, but also provide are deepest needs when we have forced to take steps beyond our understanding
C. S. Lewis has said that the greatest miracle was not in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but that He was willing to become human at all.” The Christmas season is that time when most of the world celebrates that miracle. Let those of us who truly believe in that miracle take the time to share historical reasons for our faith, hope and love and the material gifts will take care of themselves.
Advent is the first period of the church year in which Christians around the world look forward to the birth of a Jewish baby who was also God incarnate. That condescending act of God has become the basis of our redemption, real Good News, and the true reason for the season.
Merry Christmas
Jerry
At Wonder Springs we normally give Brute’ his day, but with the United States jobless rate declining last month to an even 10 percent, it is generally assumed that most of the MSM, or the LSM (Lame Stream Media) will be reporting that “Happy Days are Here Again.”
The reality of the so called good news is really confined to pretty much those who have had access to the government’s free (funny) monetary expansion policies. The truth is that there are many Americans and citizens in other countries around the world are facing hardships stemming from the Great Recession, that they have never experienced before. Some of them have been in that rut and somehow survived now longer than they thought possible.
The opportunity that we can gain from these life trials is that “faith, hope and love,” are unique assets of all our human personalities. They are gifts of God, given to us in unique ways, we are however much of the time to busy understand not only their unique nature, but also our own.
Their have been those, in relatively recent human history, who have tried to change these gifts of God into a force that can be manipulated by human efforts. Many times these faux conversions were attempted for lofty reasons.
Love is probably the most abused of these three. “I (heart design) something,” being the most common attempt to make the supernatural gift of God, subject to human depravity. “All you need is love” as well as “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” are not examples of true love, but really narcissism.
Making you healthy, wealthy, and wise through your faith, was and still is part of the reason Christianity continues to be considered ridiculous, by many people, some who have tried the to plant their seed of faith and found it bought someone a new house and corporate jet, while their faith had to make the choice between food, and utilities, while old time necessities came to look like totally vanquished dreams.
Finally, we have succeeded in turning hope into a force also. Hope in hope and we can change the world and the United States will obey also. Truthfully I have little hope that the breathing period will last all that long, but I am grateful for at least a little reprise for this Christmas season.
Therefore during the rest of this year the Wonder Springs Chronicle will focus upon how God uses our difficult circumstances to reveal His nature in our lives and how Godly faith, hope, and love, are able to sometimes overcome our circumstances, but also provide are deepest needs when we have forced to take steps beyond our understanding
C. S. Lewis has said that the greatest miracle was not in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but that He was willing to become human at all.” The Christmas season is that time when most of the world celebrates that miracle. Let those of us who truly believe in that miracle take the time to share historical reasons for our faith, hope and love and the material gifts will take care of themselves.
Advent is the first period of the church year in which Christians around the world look forward to the birth of a Jewish baby who was also God incarnate. That condescending act of God has become the basis of our redemption, real Good News, and the true reason for the season.
Merry Christmas
Jerry
Repairing the roads by forcing everyone into the ditches?
06/June/2009 10:21
Back in “America’s Tensioned Prosperity” we pointed out that the greatness of the United States has always been associated with the somewhat tensioned symbiosis between government programs, especially federal government programs, creating incentives by which enterprise innovation provides economic growth and wealth creation, pretty much through free market capital.
Since the 1970s that model has shifted dramatically towards leveraged debt consumerism, at the expense of both required government programs and sustainable wealth creation. That has shifted that historic tension to the not “fair and balanced” but to policies of the extremes.
In a recent article in the “Washington Monthly,” entitled “Introduction: The Next Frontier,” Paul Kedrosky, Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation fills in the gaps of our tensioned blog.
President Obama has taken the United States in short order to the left big government ditch of the road, from the right laissez faire ditch of the Bush Administration. However neither seemed or seems to realize that current American problems really don’t have much to do with the ditches and their current state, but rather the state of the Interstate, highway, road, path, and trail. Relying on fixing the current debt consumerism model is not going to help, no matter how much money is thrown or wasted on the ill-fated attempts.
Entrepreneurial enterprises require a garden in which financial liquidity is timely and sustainable, in a soil in which economic conditions can and will be sustained until such time new wealth can be harvested.
So far the Obama Administration has not even given lip service to this reality. Especially when this is compared to what he has spoken obtusely about Iran’s right to nuclear power. We must note new growth opportunities in nuclear power have been taken off the American agenda, along with domestic oil drilling, clean coal carbon sequestering, and low head small hydro,
Instead he has nationalized the domestic auto industry and will force it to build small cars, thereby eventually cutting new auto sales by 75% from 2007 levels, This while he attempts to institute a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie, that will attempt to micromanage, through cap and trade taxation, twentieth century corporate behemoths and dinosaurs. All the while true sustainable energy innovation languishes from deficit and debt burdens which surpass the totality of all human historic development.
Since the 1970s that model has shifted dramatically towards leveraged debt consumerism, at the expense of both required government programs and sustainable wealth creation. That has shifted that historic tension to the not “fair and balanced” but to policies of the extremes.
In a recent article in the “Washington Monthly,” entitled “Introduction: The Next Frontier,” Paul Kedrosky, Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation fills in the gaps of our tensioned blog.
President Obama has taken the United States in short order to the left big government ditch of the road, from the right laissez faire ditch of the Bush Administration. However neither seemed or seems to realize that current American problems really don’t have much to do with the ditches and their current state, but rather the state of the Interstate, highway, road, path, and trail. Relying on fixing the current debt consumerism model is not going to help, no matter how much money is thrown or wasted on the ill-fated attempts.
Entrepreneurial enterprises require a garden in which financial liquidity is timely and sustainable, in a soil in which economic conditions can and will be sustained until such time new wealth can be harvested.
So far the Obama Administration has not even given lip service to this reality. Especially when this is compared to what he has spoken obtusely about Iran’s right to nuclear power. We must note new growth opportunities in nuclear power have been taken off the American agenda, along with domestic oil drilling, clean coal carbon sequestering, and low head small hydro,
Instead he has nationalized the domestic auto industry and will force it to build small cars, thereby eventually cutting new auto sales by 75% from 2007 levels, This while he attempts to institute a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie, that will attempt to micromanage, through cap and trade taxation, twentieth century corporate behemoths and dinosaurs. All the while true sustainable energy innovation languishes from deficit and debt burdens which surpass the totality of all human historic development.
The next generation of solar cells
06/June/2009 09:17
Solar energy, especially photovoltaics is one of the leading contenders for a sustainable energy future. Because of the American emphasis on leveraged debt consumerism, which amounts to about three-forths of the United States GDP, we lag behind both Germany and Japan in developing this technology.
For the techno geeks, engineers, and green enthusiasts we offer the following MIT video featuring Tonio Buonassisi discussing the Next Generation of Solar Cells. There is also a direct link to this video timing: 1:21:25 under the Resources Tab
For the techno geeks, engineers, and green enthusiasts we offer the following MIT video featuring Tonio Buonassisi discussing the Next Generation of Solar Cells. There is also a direct link to this video timing: 1:21:25 under the Resources Tab
Signs of the times? The Spokane TEA Party
16/April/2009 13:49
Are they signs of the times, just a picture of frustration, or are they the first fruits of something much bigger than we can now understand?
On Tax Day 2009 about 2000 people came together on the south shore of the Spokane River in downtown Spokane, Washington to protest taxes, government spending, and to just vent personal frustrations. In conservative Spokane even the television media attended, even though their reports stated hundreds present, which as a decidedly lower report than the 4000 stated by organizers. This respectful and pretty much happy group, at least in the sense of protesters, joined with as many as 600 similar groups across the country and reportedly around the world.
The question remains will this TEA Party, when combined with the others, amount to something or just become a remembrance of a decent spring day in Spokane, after a record setting winter snowfall?
Protestors were pretty much of the conservative tone, but to say that these were a Republican or even Libertarian groupies is a gross simplification. Perhaps better descriptions would be Traditionalists or Populists, run of the mill American working people.
If there was a central theme in the speakers, it focused on the founding documents of the American Republic and the universal rights that these documents give to the American people, and the limitations they impose upon government at all levels. What was not apparent to those present was just how deep their views collide with the prevailing evolving enlightenment of the power structures of big government, big business, and big special interests.
The success of these TEA Party endeavors probably most closely link with the battle of the Alamo in 1936 and the original TEA Party in Boston in 1773. Both center on American Independence and individual rights, but the first TEA Party was an overt confrontation with religious ramifications. The American Revolution was a battle between human created common rights given and sustained by the Creator, contrasted with the Divine Right of Kings. King George lost.
This battle can be also seen in The Reformation, this time the battle was between common grace human rights and the Supreme Catholic Church. The Pope lost. It should be noted however that the Roman Catholic Church of the Council of Trent was and is a much more humble version of the Church of the Renaissance. That is especially true also of the British monarchy after the American Revolution.
If this truly develops as a reformation based upon Divinely given and sanctified common human rights contrasted with enlightenment evolutionary egalitarianism, the TEA Parties will be remembered as a date inline also with Luther’s 95 Thesis. If God is for us who can be against us?
This vision also was really the dominate empowerment behind the American Revolution, even though many of the Founding Fathers were more Deists rather than committed Christians. This allowed for a uniquely American Religious freedom and hence common public freedom. Baptists wanted to be Baptists, and not Presbyterians, and neither wanted to be Congregationalists. The Papists enjoyed just being on the sidelines.
The Reformation and the American Revolution were of a much different scale than the one faced by these twenty-first century TEA Parties. Those two could be envisioned as a couple of pimples on the back side of an elephant. However these potential changes are on a similar scale to a number of common nation recreations of the last century, the fall of the Soviet Union being the most homologous. This American version however, has a much different free expressive heritage than Mother Russia.
If this recreation scenario is true we will begin to see pretty much ex nihilo creation of gumption in those selected to be leaders in this developing movement. For now we can look at some pictures of these Spokane signs of change.
The Greenspan Bug Curve
06/April/2009 10:32
By Jerry Bannon
In “The Prosperity Myth” on March 23rd we showed the exponential growth relationships between the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Federal Reserve Monetary Base. As we pointed out in that report, virtually all this exponential growth took place under the administration of Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve. It also just so happens that Alan saw fit to retire at the zenith of his proclaimed monetary genius in February 2006.
Is it all that difficult to see, that all this prosperity, we all became so accustomed, began to fall apart shortly thereafter?
Mr. Greenspan was replaced with Ben Bernanke, considered by many the leading expert on the Great Depression. Bernanke, shares with many other economists, the Great Depression was caused by stock market speculators and tight money. But is that the whole or real story?
Today in the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled “From Bubble to Depression?” Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith, from empirical evidence, make a pretty strong case that the Great Depression was caused by a similar housing bubble that began to collapse in this country later in 2006.
I have little formal training in economics, about the same in finance. What I do have however is a very diverse training in natural ecology. Natural ecology is governed by natural laws that can be verified by direct observational science. It is my contention that these same natural laws govern human enterprise. As with the results of all science, you may disagree with that hypothesis, but that disagreement or wishful thinking (from my perspective) is not going to change reality.
In the garden of God, growth takes place via two curve models, linear and exponential. Linear can proceed over long periods of time, I have called that the Toil Growth Curve. Exponential growth is of much shorter duration, which I have called the Bug Growth Curve, growth occurs for a season and then dies.
Growth is really quite easy to manage, either in the linear or exponential phases. It really gets difficult however once the zenith is reached and things begin the natural decline, many times resulting in death, death of the individual or the population.
Some ecosystems reach a climax state, which is really just a more specific term for sustainability. These climax communities can exist in harmony with their environment for long periods, like centuries, or even millennia.
So far all efforts to manage the housing bubble by both the Bush and Obama Administrations have focused exclusively on the hypothesis that loose money and more regulation will fix the problem. Disregarding the fact that we are not playing with reality with real wealth, but highly leveraged debt money, there is absolutely no emphasis other than restoring bug economic growth, whatever it may cost.
It is long past the time when we should have looked at the cost — benefit ratio of this charade. Toil produces long term sustainable growth. In economic growth this can only occur in a climate where there are known principles by which to build. So far efforts to resurrect the dead Greenspan Bug Curve have failed. In this case the impossible is really impossible.
The Europeans understand that, so does much of Latin America and Africa. Even the communist government of China has criticized America’s current monetary policy. What the Obama Administration has yet to learn is “Change you can believe in” must be anchored to a real natural world, not some shining vision of an unobtainable present utopia.
In “The Prosperity Myth” on March 23rd we showed the exponential growth relationships between the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Federal Reserve Monetary Base. As we pointed out in that report, virtually all this exponential growth took place under the administration of Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve. It also just so happens that Alan saw fit to retire at the zenith of his proclaimed monetary genius in February 2006.
Is it all that difficult to see, that all this prosperity, we all became so accustomed, began to fall apart shortly thereafter?
Mr. Greenspan was replaced with Ben Bernanke, considered by many the leading expert on the Great Depression. Bernanke, shares with many other economists, the Great Depression was caused by stock market speculators and tight money. But is that the whole or real story?
Today in the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled “From Bubble to Depression?” Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith, from empirical evidence, make a pretty strong case that the Great Depression was caused by a similar housing bubble that began to collapse in this country later in 2006.
I have little formal training in economics, about the same in finance. What I do have however is a very diverse training in natural ecology. Natural ecology is governed by natural laws that can be verified by direct observational science. It is my contention that these same natural laws govern human enterprise. As with the results of all science, you may disagree with that hypothesis, but that disagreement or wishful thinking (from my perspective) is not going to change reality.
In the garden of God, growth takes place via two curve models, linear and exponential. Linear can proceed over long periods of time, I have called that the Toil Growth Curve. Exponential growth is of much shorter duration, which I have called the Bug Growth Curve, growth occurs for a season and then dies.
Growth is really quite easy to manage, either in the linear or exponential phases. It really gets difficult however once the zenith is reached and things begin the natural decline, many times resulting in death, death of the individual or the population.
Some ecosystems reach a climax state, which is really just a more specific term for sustainability. These climax communities can exist in harmony with their environment for long periods, like centuries, or even millennia.
So far all efforts to manage the housing bubble by both the Bush and Obama Administrations have focused exclusively on the hypothesis that loose money and more regulation will fix the problem. Disregarding the fact that we are not playing with reality with real wealth, but highly leveraged debt money, there is absolutely no emphasis other than restoring bug economic growth, whatever it may cost.
It is long past the time when we should have looked at the cost — benefit ratio of this charade. Toil produces long term sustainable growth. In economic growth this can only occur in a climate where there are known principles by which to build. So far efforts to resurrect the dead Greenspan Bug Curve have failed. In this case the impossible is really impossible.
The Europeans understand that, so does much of Latin America and Africa. Even the communist government of China has criticized America’s current monetary policy. What the Obama Administration has yet to learn is “Change you can believe in” must be anchored to a real natural world, not some shining vision of an unobtainable present utopia.
Special Report - The Prosperity Myth
23/March/2009 12:01
Special Report – The Prosperity Myth
The only thing we have to fear is reality itself. That reality is that much of America’s and the world’s recent wealth was based solely upon a Prosperity Myth. Most people are now afraid to look at reality. Is that stress, fear, or lack of mature coping skills?
The psychoanalysis definition of narcissism is: Self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder.
What is the foundation of your life? For most people today that foundation is money. “Show me the money,” is the cultural ethic for today’s world. Reverence for God is where your created reality truly finds ultimate meaning, flowing from your created past, through the present, and into eternity. However pretty much all religious institutions now are based on a paradigm, not of amazing grace, but “give to get.”
Pretty much everyone hopes for security, especially future security. However, now seems to be all we have, the future has become an illusion, because the Federal Government is aggressively playing with the future in the hopes of maintaining a myth of sustainable prosperity.
Last week I was reading an article, which used as an illustration the following Monetary Base graphic from the Federal Reserve. That article focused upon the tremendous gain in the Monetary Base in the very recent past. What I found quite interesting was the distinct similarity between this illustration and the data I used two weeks ago in a weekly column, “Trilogy – The Dow’s Hidden Reality.”
Federal Reserve Monetary Base
Searching for a meaningful representation of that Dow data, I was able to find this chart from the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. Except for that brief peak centered around the year 2000 the graphs are pretty much the same. Also interesting is the graph on the trading volume. That pretty much represents you trying to find financial security by investing your then present prosperity in Wall Street, either by various retirement mechanisms, or as a direct investor. Notice that Wall Street investing by normal folks was not normal at all until the market really began to take off exponentially in the late 1990s.
Since all my statistics books are in storage, I began to wonder just how tight the data from the Fed’s Monetary Base and the Dow Average correlated. So Sunday afternoon for every five years from 1970 through 2005 I estimated both the average yearly value for the Dow and the Monetary Base and incorporated those numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. On that data I ran a correlation coefficient (CORREL) and found a value of 0.96.
A number that high is very significant when you consider that both the Monetary Base data and the Dow level are supposedly somewhat financial independent fruits. What that really means is that they are not independent at all. A controlled or managed increase in the monetary base causes a strongly related increase in the Dow, or your perceived future wealth. That is all great if the model and the data relate to the real world. If it does not that means you are being taken, cheated, believing a lie, or being just passive, in the best interpretations. Taken, as a worst case, there is now a dude named Bernie Madoff doing time for a similar scheme for basically comparison chump change.
In that “Dow’s Hidden Reality” portion of our recent article we made the case that true real increases in wealth are linear functions. What that means is if you look at the Dow increasing value graph above and draw a straight line from the 1970s through the early 1980s that line will intersect the right axis of the graph somewhere between a Dow of 2000 – 4000 depending how optimistic you choose to be. As we related in that article this increasing wealth relates somewhat directly to the linear growth of “GDP with the money backed out.” This is quite similar to what you would see in a sustainable natural system.
Treasury Secretary Geithner today spelled out the specifics of his bank rescue package, which was first announced with great fanfare on February tenth. So now a month and some change later, we have some details that will save Wall Street and big financial investment opportunities. All those toxic assets, actually all assets, currently have some toxic components related to implied wealth compared to real wealth. As we throw another trillion at the problem, how can you, in the same asset, separate the good portion from the bad? Mark to market accounting is not up to that task and actually may become a hindrance.
But the biggest question still remains, is the model of exponential Wall Street growth still viable? Just trust in the ever-changing parameters of the hope of wishful thinking. We a told by all the powers who are in control, if we just create enough debt it will all work out fine.
Secretary Geithner is still short some-teen Assistant Secretaries at Treasury. So the question remains who designed this plan? Evidence so far indicates that the secretary is pretty much a loan lone ranger when it comes to being a competent manager. In stupendous change times like this the United States and the world should demand a competent and strong Treasury leader. But where would you find someone not tied to the Wall Street Prosperity Myth?
However, this angst was greatly calmed last week by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke purchasing three hundred billion of securities from the Treasury to become assets for the Fed. Of course he used basically debt securities to purchase these securities. But at least he still believes in the model he inherited from Alan Greenspan that got us into this mess to begin with. This move essentially resulted in a dollar devaluation compared to the Euro of about seven percent and a rise of commodities especially gold and oil.
The President for his part that evening told some jokes on late night television. This week he moves the gig to a primetime news conference. So if we choose to watch we will see his teleprompter roll lines from a version of Hamlet, updated into radical Chicago political euphemisms.
Then on Friday the House of Representatives voted for a 90% tax on Executive Bonuses. That outrage, because they were all so serious, seems to make all the above look like genuine applied genius.
The real problem facing the country and the world is that all these attempts to bailout Wall Street misses the true wealth of the United States and that is the country’s entrepreneurial spirit. Furthermore this period of Wall Street supremacy destroyed the capital infrastructure required to rapidly fund these opportunities for true new sustainable enterprise growth. The only way this change will come is when those who still have some real wealth remaining, begin investing in true wealth creation at the grassroots level. True growth will on occur by promoting a Prosperity Myth debt funded by financial and governmental dinosaurs.
The only thing we have to fear is reality itself. That reality is that much of America’s and the world’s recent wealth was based solely upon a Prosperity Myth. Most people are now afraid to look at reality. Is that stress, fear, or lack of mature coping skills?
The psychoanalysis definition of narcissism is: Self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder.
What is the foundation of your life? For most people today that foundation is money. “Show me the money,” is the cultural ethic for today’s world. Reverence for God is where your created reality truly finds ultimate meaning, flowing from your created past, through the present, and into eternity. However pretty much all religious institutions now are based on a paradigm, not of amazing grace, but “give to get.”
Pretty much everyone hopes for security, especially future security. However, now seems to be all we have, the future has become an illusion, because the Federal Government is aggressively playing with the future in the hopes of maintaining a myth of sustainable prosperity.
Last week I was reading an article, which used as an illustration the following Monetary Base graphic from the Federal Reserve. That article focused upon the tremendous gain in the Monetary Base in the very recent past. What I found quite interesting was the distinct similarity between this illustration and the data I used two weeks ago in a weekly column, “Trilogy – The Dow’s Hidden Reality.”
Federal Reserve Monetary Base
Searching for a meaningful representation of that Dow data, I was able to find this chart from the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. Except for that brief peak centered around the year 2000 the graphs are pretty much the same. Also interesting is the graph on the trading volume. That pretty much represents you trying to find financial security by investing your then present prosperity in Wall Street, either by various retirement mechanisms, or as a direct investor. Notice that Wall Street investing by normal folks was not normal at all until the market really began to take off exponentially in the late 1990s.
Since all my statistics books are in storage, I began to wonder just how tight the data from the Fed’s Monetary Base and the Dow Average correlated. So Sunday afternoon for every five years from 1970 through 2005 I estimated both the average yearly value for the Dow and the Monetary Base and incorporated those numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. On that data I ran a correlation coefficient (CORREL) and found a value of 0.96.
A number that high is very significant when you consider that both the Monetary Base data and the Dow level are supposedly somewhat financial independent fruits. What that really means is that they are not independent at all. A controlled or managed increase in the monetary base causes a strongly related increase in the Dow, or your perceived future wealth. That is all great if the model and the data relate to the real world. If it does not that means you are being taken, cheated, believing a lie, or being just passive, in the best interpretations. Taken, as a worst case, there is now a dude named Bernie Madoff doing time for a similar scheme for basically comparison chump change.
In that “Dow’s Hidden Reality” portion of our recent article we made the case that true real increases in wealth are linear functions. What that means is if you look at the Dow increasing value graph above and draw a straight line from the 1970s through the early 1980s that line will intersect the right axis of the graph somewhere between a Dow of 2000 – 4000 depending how optimistic you choose to be. As we related in that article this increasing wealth relates somewhat directly to the linear growth of “GDP with the money backed out.” This is quite similar to what you would see in a sustainable natural system.
Treasury Secretary Geithner today spelled out the specifics of his bank rescue package, which was first announced with great fanfare on February tenth. So now a month and some change later, we have some details that will save Wall Street and big financial investment opportunities. All those toxic assets, actually all assets, currently have some toxic components related to implied wealth compared to real wealth. As we throw another trillion at the problem, how can you, in the same asset, separate the good portion from the bad? Mark to market accounting is not up to that task and actually may become a hindrance.
But the biggest question still remains, is the model of exponential Wall Street growth still viable? Just trust in the ever-changing parameters of the hope of wishful thinking. We a told by all the powers who are in control, if we just create enough debt it will all work out fine.
Secretary Geithner is still short some-teen Assistant Secretaries at Treasury. So the question remains who designed this plan? Evidence so far indicates that the secretary is pretty much a loan lone ranger when it comes to being a competent manager. In stupendous change times like this the United States and the world should demand a competent and strong Treasury leader. But where would you find someone not tied to the Wall Street Prosperity Myth?
However, this angst was greatly calmed last week by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke purchasing three hundred billion of securities from the Treasury to become assets for the Fed. Of course he used basically debt securities to purchase these securities. But at least he still believes in the model he inherited from Alan Greenspan that got us into this mess to begin with. This move essentially resulted in a dollar devaluation compared to the Euro of about seven percent and a rise of commodities especially gold and oil.
The President for his part that evening told some jokes on late night television. This week he moves the gig to a primetime news conference. So if we choose to watch we will see his teleprompter roll lines from a version of Hamlet, updated into radical Chicago political euphemisms.
Then on Friday the House of Representatives voted for a 90% tax on Executive Bonuses. That outrage, because they were all so serious, seems to make all the above look like genuine applied genius.
The real problem facing the country and the world is that all these attempts to bailout Wall Street misses the true wealth of the United States and that is the country’s entrepreneurial spirit. Furthermore this period of Wall Street supremacy destroyed the capital infrastructure required to rapidly fund these opportunities for true new sustainable enterprise growth. The only way this change will come is when those who still have some real wealth remaining, begin investing in true wealth creation at the grassroots level. True growth will on occur by promoting a Prosperity Myth debt funded by financial and governmental dinosaurs.
Wonder Economics
26/February/2009 10:34
by Jerry Bannon
Yesterday I saw some projections on television of United States historic debt/GDP ratios. Intrigued, I decided to do some web research of just what this multi-trillion dollar budget/deficit might have upon the future. What I found was far from reassuring. Did anyone had a valid idea of what all this all meant?
First, things look much different depending upon whether you put your ratios in dollars or in percentages. Things look much better in percentages because you divide everything by 100, which has a tendency to level out the graphs.
Then it really gets complicated because you find out that all the reports are generated by people with vested interests to promote a specific economic worldview. Hence conservative economists state that the current deficits are binding our children with debts they cannot hope to repay. The more liberal spin is that these deficits are basically inconsequential when we look at long term future liabilities related to future entitlements.
There are gems of truth in it all; it is just that all the findings get buried in the noise of the rhetoric. So both sides are really trying to raise or suppress the fears of specific interest groups that pay their bills. Which verifies the effects of the natural law of the stasis of present reality over an unknown future.
In similar light, leadership from each side promotes the findings to foster their present economic self-interest and the noise again increases accompanied with an increased probability of chaos or entropy. What this does is to increase the certainty that we always overestimate the best and underestimate the worst. This all dependent upon our primary presuppositions.
What all these numbers quantify, is that numbers are incapable of imagination. Imagination is the one quality of the human personality that has allowed for the rise of all human civilization. In short, the imaginative rule and prosper, the unimaginative are eliminated from the gene pool.
When imagination triumphs it produces wonder. Wonder Springs from the impossible becoming not just possible, but reality. From that Wonder a new vision of reality then becomes a path forward.
Putting that into some sort of a cognizant understanding of the reality of humanity we can envision a more hopeful – less noisy plan for the present. In these practical terms we can see:
Private investment can create some infrastructure, but in order to do that, risk needs to be reduced, or potential for rewards need to be sufficient to induce investment. The rise of the Internet and wireless technologies fit that niche.
Some infrastructure will not fit that risk – reward scenario. Building roads, bridges, power grids, national defense, are some of those. Those types of infrastructure need to be built by efficient government with tax revenues.
Bureaucracies, both based on private capital and government taxes find imagination a fatal disease from which they cannot survive. Hence we see big government, big business, and big labor trying to maintain their hold on a collapsing energetic infrastructure, which they created by manipulating everything to the betterment of their own power through the access to capital. Hence entitlements, pork barrel spending, targeted tax loopholes, and such are hindrances to true market forces in both economics and energetics.
Those systems we are now seeing go bankrupt. All the money they can generate is not going to change that reality. What will replace that is innovative small business, and over time some of those small businesses will become big businesses. Those businesses will have specific niches in which they operate.
What we are seeing in the current world economic catastrophe is growth by mergers and acquisition, leverage, and debt is terminally ill. As of the present we have no means to replace that system. Until we have the imagination to look beyond the present in a new way, we will be shackled by the past, to repeat the failures of the present.
That new imaginative economic future will look at access to capital, and also how that capital can be utilized to promote a sustainable economic and energetic infrastructure for all civilization. That will mean, we more than anything look at how imaginative risk can be compensated, by removing regulations that kill innovation, but also creating a tax structure that truly allows for true creation of wealth rather than just playing with money.
Yesterday I saw some projections on television of United States historic debt/GDP ratios. Intrigued, I decided to do some web research of just what this multi-trillion dollar budget/deficit might have upon the future. What I found was far from reassuring. Did anyone had a valid idea of what all this all meant?
First, things look much different depending upon whether you put your ratios in dollars or in percentages. Things look much better in percentages because you divide everything by 100, which has a tendency to level out the graphs.
Then it really gets complicated because you find out that all the reports are generated by people with vested interests to promote a specific economic worldview. Hence conservative economists state that the current deficits are binding our children with debts they cannot hope to repay. The more liberal spin is that these deficits are basically inconsequential when we look at long term future liabilities related to future entitlements.
There are gems of truth in it all; it is just that all the findings get buried in the noise of the rhetoric. So both sides are really trying to raise or suppress the fears of specific interest groups that pay their bills. Which verifies the effects of the natural law of the stasis of present reality over an unknown future.
In similar light, leadership from each side promotes the findings to foster their present economic self-interest and the noise again increases accompanied with an increased probability of chaos or entropy. What this does is to increase the certainty that we always overestimate the best and underestimate the worst. This all dependent upon our primary presuppositions.
What all these numbers quantify, is that numbers are incapable of imagination. Imagination is the one quality of the human personality that has allowed for the rise of all human civilization. In short, the imaginative rule and prosper, the unimaginative are eliminated from the gene pool.
When imagination triumphs it produces wonder. Wonder Springs from the impossible becoming not just possible, but reality. From that Wonder a new vision of reality then becomes a path forward.
Putting that into some sort of a cognizant understanding of the reality of humanity we can envision a more hopeful – less noisy plan for the present. In these practical terms we can see:
Private investment can create some infrastructure, but in order to do that, risk needs to be reduced, or potential for rewards need to be sufficient to induce investment. The rise of the Internet and wireless technologies fit that niche.
Some infrastructure will not fit that risk – reward scenario. Building roads, bridges, power grids, national defense, are some of those. Those types of infrastructure need to be built by efficient government with tax revenues.
Bureaucracies, both based on private capital and government taxes find imagination a fatal disease from which they cannot survive. Hence we see big government, big business, and big labor trying to maintain their hold on a collapsing energetic infrastructure, which they created by manipulating everything to the betterment of their own power through the access to capital. Hence entitlements, pork barrel spending, targeted tax loopholes, and such are hindrances to true market forces in both economics and energetics.
Those systems we are now seeing go bankrupt. All the money they can generate is not going to change that reality. What will replace that is innovative small business, and over time some of those small businesses will become big businesses. Those businesses will have specific niches in which they operate.
What we are seeing in the current world economic catastrophe is growth by mergers and acquisition, leverage, and debt is terminally ill. As of the present we have no means to replace that system. Until we have the imagination to look beyond the present in a new way, we will be shackled by the past, to repeat the failures of the present.
That new imaginative economic future will look at access to capital, and also how that capital can be utilized to promote a sustainable economic and energetic infrastructure for all civilization. That will mean, we more than anything look at how imaginative risk can be compensated, by removing regulations that kill innovation, but also creating a tax structure that truly allows for true creation of wealth rather than just playing with money.
Leaving the Christless Church II
16/December/2008 13:25
By Jerry Bannon
Today we shall review “Christless Christianity” by Michael Horton as a complement to “Quitting Church” by Julia Duin.
“Christless Christianity” is a much more challenging book than “Quitting Church” because it is designed to be that way. After all Michael Horton is a graduate school seminary professor, writing to a general audience. The first chapter of the book is available on the Internet at christlesschristianity.org.
If you perform a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level analysis on that chapter you find it is written at a grade equivalent of about grade 13. A Flesch Reading Ease Level of 46 means that the chapter contains a more complex structure than your typical popular sources. (I try to keep Wonder Springs articles at around grade 10 and a ease rating of above 55, where the higher the score the easier it is to read.)
The book is written from the construct of Covenant Theology, which basically began in Genesis 2 and flows through God’s elect throughout the Bible and to us today. That means that God chooses His people by His grace alone without any merit contributed by the chosen individual at any time. Worked out in life this means that Christians are both saints and sinners at the same time.
Horton contrasts this theology against various American Christian genres, which state that “I am basically a good person and through my actions and choices I can reach up to God and He will bless my good works, mostly materially here, but also with a heavenly eternal reward.”
This paradigm contrast is most apparent in the dichotomy between the question, “What would Jesus do?” and the statement, “What Jesus did!”
As with “Quitting Church,” “Christless Christianity” is highly fixed upon the problem rather than the solution, which Horton admits early on. This opens the door for sequels more focused upon application rather than theory, or more in the Biblical context imperatives rather than indicatives.
For the average American Christian, attending a typical evangelical church, perhaps the greatest contribution of this book is the contrast between the true historic reformation Christian gospel and it’s preaching and the so called gospel which is proclaimed by various warm and fuzzy, seeker sensitive ways within the broad spectrum of brick and mortar churches of all genres, denominations, and non-denominations.
In the context of our review of both books, once you truly understand the Good News of true Christianity, you will never be truly content with whatever form of dumbed down platitudes that come from the stage and the me centered worship band again.
Our modern church service is really not centered on God’s grace coming down from heaven to save and empower God’s people through His means, but rather an attempt to reach up to God through our own merits, a religion that all humans find totally appealing.
God’s grace alone empowers Christians to do good works in historic Christianity. To seek God’s grace through works results in fear, discouragement, and many times giving up on the church and God completely.
If you look historically at God’s people, both in the Old Testament, the New, and church history up to this very day, you really do not find a whole lot of stellar moments. Contrary to our wishful thinking, we are just as prone as anyone to forsake the joy of the Christian heritage for any and all types of idols of self appeasement.
Horton for his seminarian part is good with the criticism, and completely deficit on the application of how to find a good church in the desert of the American religion. The point being that the church or churches that Horton would recommend really no longer exist in America or probably anywhere in the world.
The conservative Calvinist and Lutheran churches that still exist, are just basically a generation behind evangelicals in warm fuzzy application, and are working very hard to catch up, or are so inward focused to be of neither heavenly nor earthly good.
This brings us back to the indicative statement issued by Jesus in Matthew 16:18 where Jesus states, “on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
The world and the church are in crisis, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is only available in this world to those whom rest upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. All this is indicatively illustrated through His bodily crucifixion on the cross as the propitiation for the sins of all mankind, His resurrection from the dead illustrating that death and the devil have been conquered, and one day in the not too distant future the once perfect creation will be restored.
It is a great day to be alive, if you understand that everything and everyone is proceeding toward that restored goal in intelligent and perfect grace. Currently it is difficult to find that message in church, and within the church to do much about that eternal and present reality. Building the church is a statement of the reality of God - He will bring it about. That truly is a reason to redeem this season in our lives and proclaim it to a world that is lost with no hope of finding direction in any other god or savior.
Today we shall review “Christless Christianity” by Michael Horton as a complement to “Quitting Church” by Julia Duin.
“Christless Christianity” is a much more challenging book than “Quitting Church” because it is designed to be that way. After all Michael Horton is a graduate school seminary professor, writing to a general audience. The first chapter of the book is available on the Internet at christlesschristianity.org.
If you perform a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level analysis on that chapter you find it is written at a grade equivalent of about grade 13. A Flesch Reading Ease Level of 46 means that the chapter contains a more complex structure than your typical popular sources. (I try to keep Wonder Springs articles at around grade 10 and a ease rating of above 55, where the higher the score the easier it is to read.)
The book is written from the construct of Covenant Theology, which basically began in Genesis 2 and flows through God’s elect throughout the Bible and to us today. That means that God chooses His people by His grace alone without any merit contributed by the chosen individual at any time. Worked out in life this means that Christians are both saints and sinners at the same time.
Horton contrasts this theology against various American Christian genres, which state that “I am basically a good person and through my actions and choices I can reach up to God and He will bless my good works, mostly materially here, but also with a heavenly eternal reward.”
This paradigm contrast is most apparent in the dichotomy between the question, “What would Jesus do?” and the statement, “What Jesus did!”
As with “Quitting Church,” “Christless Christianity” is highly fixed upon the problem rather than the solution, which Horton admits early on. This opens the door for sequels more focused upon application rather than theory, or more in the Biblical context imperatives rather than indicatives.
For the average American Christian, attending a typical evangelical church, perhaps the greatest contribution of this book is the contrast between the true historic reformation Christian gospel and it’s preaching and the so called gospel which is proclaimed by various warm and fuzzy, seeker sensitive ways within the broad spectrum of brick and mortar churches of all genres, denominations, and non-denominations.
In the context of our review of both books, once you truly understand the Good News of true Christianity, you will never be truly content with whatever form of dumbed down platitudes that come from the stage and the me centered worship band again.
Our modern church service is really not centered on God’s grace coming down from heaven to save and empower God’s people through His means, but rather an attempt to reach up to God through our own merits, a religion that all humans find totally appealing.
God’s grace alone empowers Christians to do good works in historic Christianity. To seek God’s grace through works results in fear, discouragement, and many times giving up on the church and God completely.
If you look historically at God’s people, both in the Old Testament, the New, and church history up to this very day, you really do not find a whole lot of stellar moments. Contrary to our wishful thinking, we are just as prone as anyone to forsake the joy of the Christian heritage for any and all types of idols of self appeasement.
Horton for his seminarian part is good with the criticism, and completely deficit on the application of how to find a good church in the desert of the American religion. The point being that the church or churches that Horton would recommend really no longer exist in America or probably anywhere in the world.
The conservative Calvinist and Lutheran churches that still exist, are just basically a generation behind evangelicals in warm fuzzy application, and are working very hard to catch up, or are so inward focused to be of neither heavenly nor earthly good.
This brings us back to the indicative statement issued by Jesus in Matthew 16:18 where Jesus states, “on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
The world and the church are in crisis, and the peace of God that passes all understanding is only available in this world to those whom rest upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. All this is indicatively illustrated through His bodily crucifixion on the cross as the propitiation for the sins of all mankind, His resurrection from the dead illustrating that death and the devil have been conquered, and one day in the not too distant future the once perfect creation will be restored.
It is a great day to be alive, if you understand that everything and everyone is proceeding toward that restored goal in intelligent and perfect grace. Currently it is difficult to find that message in church, and within the church to do much about that eternal and present reality. Building the church is a statement of the reality of God - He will bring it about. That truly is a reason to redeem this season in our lives and proclaim it to a world that is lost with no hope of finding direction in any other god or savior.
Leaving the Christless Church I
15/December/2008 10:21
By Jerry Bannon
A real winter blast has settled over the area, so changing the metaphor slightly instead of making lemonade now is the time to read some books.
Today and tomorrow we will briefly review a couple of books that look deeply at the current state of the church. As with pretty much all popular book writing, the emphasis is much on the problem and little with the solution, especially workable solutions. Having said that, both of these books do point precisely at the lack of true Christian leadership in American Christianity, if not directly, obtusely as I am many times accused of doing.
The book we will review today is: “Quitting Church, Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about it” by Washington Times religious editor, Julia Duin.
Tomorrow we will review: “Christless Christianity, The Alternative Gospel of the American Church” by Michael Horton, Professor at Westminster Seminary California and host of the “White Horse Inn” radio broadcast. Both books are published by Baker Books.
On Wednesday in the weekly column and thereafter I will try to put some of the information in these books into a relevant Wonder Springs context. I am still trying to decide whether to look first at church leadership that has allowed or forced many of the best and brightest of lay and ordained Christians to flee the church, or whether to try to focus on what America’s current and historic Christless Christianity has allowed to happen in American and world culture, especially in the context of our current bailouts, meltdowns, et cetera.
Since two weeks hence this coming Wednesday, is Christmas Eve, perhaps it would then be a good thing to talk about current Christmas wars or something more benign, because Jesus Christ is the reason for the season, and contrary to what you might hear in church, Christless Christianity is essentially the reason this culture war exists at all.
So it looks like the schedule for the Wonder Springs Chronicle weekly columns for the rest of 2008 are pretty much set. Wasn’t that easy?
Julia Duin, is a reporter, consequently “Quitting Church” is really a report about what is happening in the church. As such it is really a very good report, focusing on a number of the best and brightest of American Christians who are leaving the established church either to do nothing directly related to church, to wander alone in the church wasteland, or to form small house churches.
Hence, when she discusses the church, as does Horton, the church being discussed is typically the brick and mortar church, not so much the historic church made up of living stones.
This book is really not about the great majority of so-called spiritual Christians, who do not attend and never have attended church on a regular basis. This is a book about mature Christians, including many former pastors, who either have left their former church out of frustration, or have been forced out by inept church leadership.
As a reporter, Duin discusses church frustrations, pretty much across the church spectrum, and does it without any observable bias that is so typical for what now passes as journalism, which really isn’t journalism at all but agenda propaganda.
This report, as similarly does Horton, really doesn’t address the rock confession of Peter in Matthew 16:18 where Jesus states, “on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
In context of what we have reported previously, Duin’s book deals with what Willow Creek Church, considers potential “self feeders” and Christian pollster George Barna considers “Revolutionaries.” What Duin does report that was new to me is that Barna is associated with a house church, which in my mind has a tendency to bring a certain self-righteous predilection into all of his work.
Not addressed in the book is that most, but not all, of those quitting church are associated with evangelical churches that Horton would consider representatives of America’s Christless Christianity. Since Horton’s book is a more recent publication, that link we will discuss more fully in our weekly columns the rest of the year and probably beyond.
That again should bring a reader back to the statement in Matthew and verified in both the Old and New Testament, that God’s chosen are not always and many times not affiliated with the established religion of the day, and includes the ministry of Jesus himself to sinners and not to the established religious personalities.
“Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about it,” is the subtitle of Duin’s book. The fleeing part is well done, the what to do about it is much less developed. More to the point however, the “what to do about it” really isn’t reporting or journalism,” it is perhaps an editorial subjective required by Baker Books. That doing also lies really in the realm of applied leadership, or in our century the bloviated spin of pundits.
Along that line, the church needs to return to preaching the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected. That is the role that current church leaders are not leading, but perhaps following, but I am not too confident of that.
Which brings us to the old leadership principle of “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Since Wonder Springs is very commonly designed to be a source of living water, perhaps the God, who created the universe and founded the church as those he called out of the world, is positioning His church for a new and more important role in not only Christian religiosity, but also in the greater common community of our decaying culture.
That is also the message of this Advent season, which much of the church does not recognize, to their detriment.
A real winter blast has settled over the area, so changing the metaphor slightly instead of making lemonade now is the time to read some books.
Today and tomorrow we will briefly review a couple of books that look deeply at the current state of the church. As with pretty much all popular book writing, the emphasis is much on the problem and little with the solution, especially workable solutions. Having said that, both of these books do point precisely at the lack of true Christian leadership in American Christianity, if not directly, obtusely as I am many times accused of doing.
The book we will review today is: “Quitting Church, Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about it” by Washington Times religious editor, Julia Duin.
Tomorrow we will review: “Christless Christianity, The Alternative Gospel of the American Church” by Michael Horton, Professor at Westminster Seminary California and host of the “White Horse Inn” radio broadcast. Both books are published by Baker Books.
On Wednesday in the weekly column and thereafter I will try to put some of the information in these books into a relevant Wonder Springs context. I am still trying to decide whether to look first at church leadership that has allowed or forced many of the best and brightest of lay and ordained Christians to flee the church, or whether to try to focus on what America’s current and historic Christless Christianity has allowed to happen in American and world culture, especially in the context of our current bailouts, meltdowns, et cetera.
Since two weeks hence this coming Wednesday, is Christmas Eve, perhaps it would then be a good thing to talk about current Christmas wars or something more benign, because Jesus Christ is the reason for the season, and contrary to what you might hear in church, Christless Christianity is essentially the reason this culture war exists at all.
So it looks like the schedule for the Wonder Springs Chronicle weekly columns for the rest of 2008 are pretty much set. Wasn’t that easy?
Julia Duin, is a reporter, consequently “Quitting Church” is really a report about what is happening in the church. As such it is really a very good report, focusing on a number of the best and brightest of American Christians who are leaving the established church either to do nothing directly related to church, to wander alone in the church wasteland, or to form small house churches.
Hence, when she discusses the church, as does Horton, the church being discussed is typically the brick and mortar church, not so much the historic church made up of living stones.
This book is really not about the great majority of so-called spiritual Christians, who do not attend and never have attended church on a regular basis. This is a book about mature Christians, including many former pastors, who either have left their former church out of frustration, or have been forced out by inept church leadership.
As a reporter, Duin discusses church frustrations, pretty much across the church spectrum, and does it without any observable bias that is so typical for what now passes as journalism, which really isn’t journalism at all but agenda propaganda.
This report, as similarly does Horton, really doesn’t address the rock confession of Peter in Matthew 16:18 where Jesus states, “on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
In context of what we have reported previously, Duin’s book deals with what Willow Creek Church, considers potential “self feeders” and Christian pollster George Barna considers “Revolutionaries.” What Duin does report that was new to me is that Barna is associated with a house church, which in my mind has a tendency to bring a certain self-righteous predilection into all of his work.
Not addressed in the book is that most, but not all, of those quitting church are associated with evangelical churches that Horton would consider representatives of America’s Christless Christianity. Since Horton’s book is a more recent publication, that link we will discuss more fully in our weekly columns the rest of the year and probably beyond.
That again should bring a reader back to the statement in Matthew and verified in both the Old and New Testament, that God’s chosen are not always and many times not affiliated with the established religion of the day, and includes the ministry of Jesus himself to sinners and not to the established religious personalities.
“Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about it,” is the subtitle of Duin’s book. The fleeing part is well done, the what to do about it is much less developed. More to the point however, the “what to do about it” really isn’t reporting or journalism,” it is perhaps an editorial subjective required by Baker Books. That doing also lies really in the realm of applied leadership, or in our century the bloviated spin of pundits.
Along that line, the church needs to return to preaching the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected. That is the role that current church leaders are not leading, but perhaps following, but I am not too confident of that.
Which brings us to the old leadership principle of “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Since Wonder Springs is very commonly designed to be a source of living water, perhaps the God, who created the universe and founded the church as those he called out of the world, is positioning His church for a new and more important role in not only Christian religiosity, but also in the greater common community of our decaying culture.
That is also the message of this Advent season, which much of the church does not recognize, to their detriment.
Special Report: The energetic economic outlook
27/October/2008 11:17
In a little over a week, we will know the results of the Presidential and other important elections in the United States. At no time in America’s past has the election come during a time of such energy and economic uncertainties.
Many have already cast their votes, but still some prefer to journey to the polls to express their opinion, others still are pondering, who to vote for, or whether to vote at all?
At Wonder Springs we believe neither major candidate has addressed the truly important issues, all are spouting talking points of a failed energy and economic agenda from an era now past. Hence one could again assume neither really has a plan, the advisors, or the leadership credentials to take the United States and the world through this time of stupendous change.
Just a couple of months ago, energy was the important topic everyone was talking about. Energy independence will save us $700 billion a year we are now sending overseas. Now all talk is about the financial bailout, how low will the stock market go, what happened to all the wealth?
What follows is generally called a SWAG, about where we are, and where we are heading in the near term future, no matter who is elected President. Perhaps the most frightening thing is not the numbers here, the thing that most people should ponder is that better numbers probably exist nowhere else among the expert institutions that are supposed to be part of the solution. Hence they are not part of the fix, they are the problem. We will portray this data in terms of the price of a gallon of gas, something we all track now more carefully than the weather.
Read More...
Many have already cast their votes, but still some prefer to journey to the polls to express their opinion, others still are pondering, who to vote for, or whether to vote at all?
At Wonder Springs we believe neither major candidate has addressed the truly important issues, all are spouting talking points of a failed energy and economic agenda from an era now past. Hence one could again assume neither really has a plan, the advisors, or the leadership credentials to take the United States and the world through this time of stupendous change.
Just a couple of months ago, energy was the important topic everyone was talking about. Energy independence will save us $700 billion a year we are now sending overseas. Now all talk is about the financial bailout, how low will the stock market go, what happened to all the wealth?
What follows is generally called a SWAG, about where we are, and where we are heading in the near term future, no matter who is elected President. Perhaps the most frightening thing is not the numbers here, the thing that most people should ponder is that better numbers probably exist nowhere else among the expert institutions that are supposed to be part of the solution. Hence they are not part of the fix, they are the problem. We will portray this data in terms of the price of a gallon of gas, something we all track now more carefully than the weather.
Read More...
Economic bubble gum?
24/October/2008 09:19
Bubble gum, the preferred chew of children.
Could it be all the economic bubbles that are now bursting around the world, were caused by experts, playing simplistic, childish bubble gum games with the American and world economies?
Another Bubble Bursts on the Wall Street Journal Online might lead one to believe that this was the case.
Their analysis is just about as clear and concise as it can be stated.
Could it be all the economic bubbles that are now bursting around the world, were caused by experts, playing simplistic, childish bubble gum games with the American and world economies?
Another Bubble Bursts on the Wall Street Journal Online might lead one to believe that this was the case.
Their analysis is just about as clear and concise as it can be stated.
Stupid does, as stupid is!
13/October/2008 11:15
You may have noticed that we have reordered the immortal words of Forrest Gump. In this case we have done that to signify what we now see in the world of global finance, or in the language of the significant players, “A global meltdown that has followed the bailout.”
The Chronicle was probably not the only place where you might have read about “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” to describe the current financial happening, but we are probably the only place you could have read about, the Titanic adrift on a vast ocean of non-energetic money.
So, stupid does, as stupid is, because the world’s experts in money and finance don’t know no better. In this case we use the double negative to show stupid squared. That is the elementary answer, however, but leaving it there does not lead to the underlying physical paradigm.
That paradigm is: In a world created, organized, and run by a Biblical God’s Natural Law, any worldview that does not accept the reality of either God or Natural Law, will not inherit the earth, and is bound to fail.
You can trace this foreseeable bailout and meltdown beginning with the Enlightenment, but there were many potential checks, or rapids blocking continued, passage down the river of life. (We are trying to maintain the aquatic nature of this liquidity happening.) When these obstacles presented themselves we just built a portage and continued merrily upon the course to aforementioned ocean of non energetic debt financing.
It would be easy to blame all the players along the way that helped us to believe that we were evolving to a higher level of human achievement and prosperity, but that is really not where the Truth actually resides, or is called to reside for that matter.
The real stupid does, because it stupid is, rests with Protestant Christianity, most recently understood as evangelicalism. Protestant evangelicalism has abandoned the Truth of God’s Word reenforced by the visual revelation of God’s creation. Instead of proclaiming a gospel of what Jesus did in time and space to redeem fallen humanity from sin and death, evangelicalism has embrace the evolutionary precepts of worldly self-centered narcissism.
Now I know this is going to be a real leap of faith for most Christians in America and around the world today. Therefore we will direct you now to the broadcast/podcast of the White Horse Inn yesterday, 12 October 2008, entitled Getting Stupid. This link takes you to the link at Wonder Springs and the post is also found under the Resources Tab.
The Chronicle was probably not the only place where you might have read about “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” to describe the current financial happening, but we are probably the only place you could have read about, the Titanic adrift on a vast ocean of non-energetic money.
So, stupid does, as stupid is, because the world’s experts in money and finance don’t know no better. In this case we use the double negative to show stupid squared. That is the elementary answer, however, but leaving it there does not lead to the underlying physical paradigm.
That paradigm is: In a world created, organized, and run by a Biblical God’s Natural Law, any worldview that does not accept the reality of either God or Natural Law, will not inherit the earth, and is bound to fail.
You can trace this foreseeable bailout and meltdown beginning with the Enlightenment, but there were many potential checks, or rapids blocking continued, passage down the river of life. (We are trying to maintain the aquatic nature of this liquidity happening.) When these obstacles presented themselves we just built a portage and continued merrily upon the course to aforementioned ocean of non energetic debt financing.
It would be easy to blame all the players along the way that helped us to believe that we were evolving to a higher level of human achievement and prosperity, but that is really not where the Truth actually resides, or is called to reside for that matter.
The real stupid does, because it stupid is, rests with Protestant Christianity, most recently understood as evangelicalism. Protestant evangelicalism has abandoned the Truth of God’s Word reenforced by the visual revelation of God’s creation. Instead of proclaiming a gospel of what Jesus did in time and space to redeem fallen humanity from sin and death, evangelicalism has embrace the evolutionary precepts of worldly self-centered narcissism.
Now I know this is going to be a real leap of faith for most Christians in America and around the world today. Therefore we will direct you now to the broadcast/podcast of the White Horse Inn yesterday, 12 October 2008, entitled Getting Stupid. This link takes you to the link at Wonder Springs and the post is also found under the Resources Tab.
Globalism’s entropy unmasked
08/October/2008 10:00
Last week we dealt somewhat with the religious, or lack of religious underpinning of the world’s current financial catastrophe. This week we turn are attention to specific observations of the continuing demise of global capitalism as the repercussions of energy and mortgage profiteering spreads around the globe.
Friday, American’s political leadership finally adopted a bailout plan, which probably was somewhat better than the original first proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson a couple of weeks ago. Having said that, any bailout can only be looked at as the least destructive measure, among the alternatives proposed, at least in the short term.
As we are seeing this week continued Treasury and Fed moves show that $700 billion and related expenses are just American band-aids and aspirin as this crisis of monetary entropy grows. On Tuesday the Dow fell another 500 points, and it has been reported by the Associated Press that retirement accounts have lost over $2 trillion in the last 15 months.
This week the bailouts are spreading to Europe. Ireland was the first EU country last week to place government guarantees on bank deposits. This week that fever is spreading to the continent as other countries attempt to enact similar measures within their own national entities.
It seems that a unified attempt to quell this continuing monetary problem is for now taking a back seat to national interests. Whether that will work reminds one of the similar problems in the American Congress to enact bailout legislation. Political leaders around the world have become leading indicators to just how much all leadership is out of touch with the current crisis.
Read More...
Friday, American’s political leadership finally adopted a bailout plan, which probably was somewhat better than the original first proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson a couple of weeks ago. Having said that, any bailout can only be looked at as the least destructive measure, among the alternatives proposed, at least in the short term.
As we are seeing this week continued Treasury and Fed moves show that $700 billion and related expenses are just American band-aids and aspirin as this crisis of monetary entropy grows. On Tuesday the Dow fell another 500 points, and it has been reported by the Associated Press that retirement accounts have lost over $2 trillion in the last 15 months.
This week the bailouts are spreading to Europe. Ireland was the first EU country last week to place government guarantees on bank deposits. This week that fever is spreading to the continent as other countries attempt to enact similar measures within their own national entities.
It seems that a unified attempt to quell this continuing monetary problem is for now taking a back seat to national interests. Whether that will work reminds one of the similar problems in the American Congress to enact bailout legislation. Political leaders around the world have become leading indicators to just how much all leadership is out of touch with the current crisis.
Read More...
Money, money everywhere, but not a drop to lend
06/October/2008 09:38
Well, the Ancient Mariner stated it: Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Well, after the USA passed it’s financial bailout plan and that liquidity water ran under the bridge, it seems that Europe is now looking at the same drought, as an article in the UK Telegraph reports.
Germany takes hot seat as Europe falls into the abyss points to a fact that we have been preaching for some time. The world is awash in money, all kinds of money, but none of it has any energetic value to create, or to maintain true wealth.
What the world needs now is available short term responsible direct credit, but also a new way to view money in a revolutionary, fresh, old fashioned way, as equity liquidity, to create new vibrant small businesses.
Huge global corporations, aided by easy money national banks, will continue to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, but that will not be enough to stem the liquidity drought on main street. Continuing to irrigate the essential small business sector with mined well liquidity, well it is just not going to be enough.
For the last few decades many people made a lot of money with basically passive investments on Wall Street and similar markets around the world. It would be interesting to see how long it will take everyone to adjust to a new reality because the old does not work anymore, but the truth is that this is very serious business and leadership especially political and financial leadership, (changing metaphors) doesn’t seem to have a clue of any medicine other than band-aids and aspirin.
We have said a lot about this in the past and this week’s article should begin to bring some of this information into the present context. Check back on Wednesday.
Germany takes hot seat as Europe falls into the abyss points to a fact that we have been preaching for some time. The world is awash in money, all kinds of money, but none of it has any energetic value to create, or to maintain true wealth.
What the world needs now is available short term responsible direct credit, but also a new way to view money in a revolutionary, fresh, old fashioned way, as equity liquidity, to create new vibrant small businesses.
Huge global corporations, aided by easy money national banks, will continue to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, but that will not be enough to stem the liquidity drought on main street. Continuing to irrigate the essential small business sector with mined well liquidity, well it is just not going to be enough.
For the last few decades many people made a lot of money with basically passive investments on Wall Street and similar markets around the world. It would be interesting to see how long it will take everyone to adjust to a new reality because the old does not work anymore, but the truth is that this is very serious business and leadership especially political and financial leadership, (changing metaphors) doesn’t seem to have a clue of any medicine other than band-aids and aspirin.
We have said a lot about this in the past and this week’s article should begin to bring some of this information into the present context. Check back on Wednesday.
One web video that should be watched: Randy Pausch - Last Lecture
04/August/2008 05:29
Cancer, without a doubt, is the most baffling disease known to fallen humanity. Why does it strike so many and take them in the prime of life. It really makes no logical sense in a world we work so diligently to create order. Saturday night I was discussing the death of a high school and college friend, Wayne Gilman, who died of colon cancer shortly after coaching his second state high school basketball championship at Ferris High School in Spokane. His death didn’t make the national or international news, but for those who knew him, it was still an occasion to take stock of our lives and what we do with the time that we have on this earth.
On July 12th, Tony Snow, Press Secretary to President Bush was taken with the same disease. Brute’ attempted to pay our respects, by linking two articles by Tony and how he was able to cope with this life killer, and what he had learned and positively tried to pass on to those of us, more or less blessed, depending upon the perspective.
I recently heard of the Last Lecture of Randy Pausch, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University who died of pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. The following links will get you to the YouTube video of that lecture and other information, The lecture runs 76 minutes and is well worth the time spent. This link leads directly to the Last Lecture web site. This link takes you to Randy’s Web Site at Carnegie Mellon. If you watch no other web video in your life, this is the one you should watch. We have also linked that Last Lecture under the Resources Tab.
Using the sports metaphor of a “head fake,” Randy tells you many of the various reasons behind the points of his presentation. The real “head fake” is while much of Randy’s work related to the creation and operations of computer Virtual Reality, this talk really is a head fake into the real reality of each of our unique human lives.
If we all made the decision to live and work more in real reality rather than that virtual reality of our own wishful thinking, the world would be a much better place, we would all interact with each other in a more civilized manner, and many of the pressing problems the world now faces would disappear.
One of the real realities of this life is the absolute requirement of death. Most people would rather not deal with it and as a consequence never really live. I suppose that is the messsage we must understand from the reality of cancer, that may affect us, our friends, or people who this killer will take from us, with so much left to live for.
On July 12th, Tony Snow, Press Secretary to President Bush was taken with the same disease. Brute’ attempted to pay our respects, by linking two articles by Tony and how he was able to cope with this life killer, and what he had learned and positively tried to pass on to those of us, more or less blessed, depending upon the perspective.
I recently heard of the Last Lecture of Randy Pausch, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University who died of pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. The following links will get you to the YouTube video of that lecture and other information, The lecture runs 76 minutes and is well worth the time spent. This link leads directly to the Last Lecture web site. This link takes you to Randy’s Web Site at Carnegie Mellon. If you watch no other web video in your life, this is the one you should watch. We have also linked that Last Lecture under the Resources Tab.
Using the sports metaphor of a “head fake,” Randy tells you many of the various reasons behind the points of his presentation. The real “head fake” is while much of Randy’s work related to the creation and operations of computer Virtual Reality, this talk really is a head fake into the real reality of each of our unique human lives.
If we all made the decision to live and work more in real reality rather than that virtual reality of our own wishful thinking, the world would be a much better place, we would all interact with each other in a more civilized manner, and many of the pressing problems the world now faces would disappear.
One of the real realities of this life is the absolute requirement of death. Most people would rather not deal with it and as a consequence never really live. I suppose that is the messsage we must understand from the reality of cancer, that may affect us, our friends, or people who this killer will take from us, with so much left to live for.
Special Report - Environmental Bible published by USEPA
21/July/2008 11:04
by Jerry Bannon
In order to have a viable religion you first need a holy book. I was too busy to realize that when writing about the Gegwcatsf (Pronounced Jeg-wa-catsf) Revival last week, that they already had a holy book written by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, with the appropriate unique title for such a document simply called a ANPR. The longer title is, “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act.”
Like many other Proposed Rules for the Federal Government it too was published on a midsummer Friday when it would not gain any scrutiny from anyone until much later. The only news I heard was that President Bush had issued the report and had not endorsed the proposed regulations. This was spun in the now too typical media way of inferring, “we all know the President is out of touch with everything and this is just another instance.”
These rules are to begin to take effect without any legislative approval 120 days after the publishing date. This of course is a week after we elect the new President. In the meantime all media attention will focus on the elections. Then with a new President these regulations will begin to destroy western civilization in a way no external terrorist could begin to imagine.
Why would, or could, this 589-page document end western civilization? Because of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA in 2006, found that greenhouse gases were pollutants and covered by the United States Clean Air Act.
These gases include not only, carbon dioxide, but also livestock flatulence and other methane sources, ozone, and water vapor, I could not find that definition within the report, but within the Supreme Court decision, it mentions only carbon dioxide by name as one of four such gases, which the EPA may regulate. However absence any other definition we cannot assume for now that these are the only gases that may be regulated.
A search of the ANRP lists other materials as greenhouse gases or aerosols, which may have “climatic effects” such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) halons (which is any compound containing a halogen, such as chlorides, bromides and iodides), and black carbon.
Therefore it can be assumed that if it is found in the air and maybe caused by some type of human activity, it is a greenhouse gas. Interesting the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect is water vapor, however compared to the world’s water vapor total, human activity is not considered significant by the report, at least for now.
Read More...
In order to have a viable religion you first need a holy book. I was too busy to realize that when writing about the Gegwcatsf (Pronounced Jeg-wa-catsf) Revival last week, that they already had a holy book written by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, with the appropriate unique title for such a document simply called a ANPR. The longer title is, “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act.”
Like many other Proposed Rules for the Federal Government it too was published on a midsummer Friday when it would not gain any scrutiny from anyone until much later. The only news I heard was that President Bush had issued the report and had not endorsed the proposed regulations. This was spun in the now too typical media way of inferring, “we all know the President is out of touch with everything and this is just another instance.”
These rules are to begin to take effect without any legislative approval 120 days after the publishing date. This of course is a week after we elect the new President. In the meantime all media attention will focus on the elections. Then with a new President these regulations will begin to destroy western civilization in a way no external terrorist could begin to imagine.
Why would, or could, this 589-page document end western civilization? Because of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA in 2006, found that greenhouse gases were pollutants and covered by the United States Clean Air Act.
These gases include not only, carbon dioxide, but also livestock flatulence and other methane sources, ozone, and water vapor, I could not find that definition within the report, but within the Supreme Court decision, it mentions only carbon dioxide by name as one of four such gases, which the EPA may regulate. However absence any other definition we cannot assume for now that these are the only gases that may be regulated.
A search of the ANRP lists other materials as greenhouse gases or aerosols, which may have “climatic effects” such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) halons (which is any compound containing a halogen, such as chlorides, bromides and iodides), and black carbon.
Therefore it can be assumed that if it is found in the air and maybe caused by some type of human activity, it is a greenhouse gas. Interesting the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect is water vapor, however compared to the world’s water vapor total, human activity is not considered significant by the report, at least for now.
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