Greetings,

If you have visited the Wonder Springs Front Page in the period from February 20th until just a few minutes ago you might have suspected that we were on a long holiday at some exotic skiing resort or getting some rays on a warm sunny tropical beach? In actuality nothing tremendously exciting has happened other than the Front Page, through a stupid error on my part, had both an index.html and also a index.php files on the server. The index.html file takes president over its php twin, hence that is all you were able to see with no updates since the February date.

As I told Karn of the technical support team at RapidWeaver, I used to do those type of fixes on a somewhat regular basis, back in the old days when there was much more a need to do some of that coding/correcting on your own. All I had to do now was go to the server, find the index.html file, highlight it, and hit the little button at the top of the screen that said delete, then confirm the this file needed to be history, and that was it.

Now if I had asked for help about a week or so ago when I discovered the error — well I suppose it is a guy type of stereotype at work.

Check out the updates, especially Brute’, he is a little miffed at human incompetence generally and with me specifically.

Blessings,

Jerry

The essence of the Wonder Springs worldview is that every time and individual or an organization makes a statement about something they believe in strongly; Wonder Springs in others. This is best stated something like:

If they had the guts to take that stand and do something like that, I wonder what would happen if I did this about this thing, that I believe is good and right, but which nobody seems to care?

The answer is that all of this amazing wonder, plants a seeds of creativity, in a unique human personality, and begins to build a Wonder Spring pilgrimage oasis, where others my come and be refreshed. This refreshment gives us the courage to attempt what we once thought impossible.

With God’s help, I can do something to make a difference.

Take a visit to Ray Stevens’ Wonder Spring in Arizona:



For many months I was looking for a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which I think I heard in Disney Land many years ago. I recently found that quote and published it as our Friday Quotation of the Week on our other websites; Deep Woods Moola, Redux Rendezvous, and The Creation Leadership Center.

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865); 16th U.S. President Read More...

Tags: Ray Stevens, Arizona, Abraham Lincoln

The Wonder Springs Chronicle in cooperation with PREFER Ltd, have launched a new Redux Rendezvous website. The site is very much under construction, but the enterprise model we are using for the design indicates the Redux Rendezvous could make a significant contribution to small enterprise wealth creation and growth.

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:

• 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.

Tags: Wooly Mammoths, ice age, global warming, climate change, green energy, crude oil, windmills, solar panels

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.

Tags: Glenn Beck, 1920-21 Depression, New Deal, Nazi, Audacity of Wrong

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.

Tags: Creation Leadership Center, Business Ecology, leadership, survival, stupendous change

In our effort this year to provide more timely or more useful information for our readers we have replaced the old Community Tab with a new Phylogenesis Tab. In this new section of the site you will find the reason for the Phylogenesis designation as well as the Seven Principles of Business Ecology and the Five Lifestyle Curves. Further information on Business Ecology and Metis Phylogenesis and similarly extended topics by searching the archives.

Tags: Business Ecology

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...

Tags: Christmas, Copenhagen Conference, Teddy Roosevelt, Al Gore, climate change, The Big Bang Theory, Progressivism, Conservationism, Cap and Trade, religion, EPA finding, Chanukah, Jesus

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

I have refrained for some time from posting other interesting articles that seemed to grasp the importance of the moment. Part of that was due to the fact that I really haven’t had the resources necessary to do the searching for these unique pearls of journalism. Changing metaphors, more to the point has been the desert in which our journalism has entered, where you can take little at face value, and without resources to understand the back or hidden story, items of interest may turn out to be not as they seem.

Who could have imagined just a short year ago the United States would be facing a “Constitutional Moment?” As a people we had been awaken to the reality that at least financially things were not going too well. But we had just elected the first president of a very diverse physical heritage. Furthermore through his “hope” and enthusiasm we were all at least willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of muted doubt towards his political agenda.

What a difference a year makes. Perhaps for the first time in one hundred fifty years real people are again talking seriously about the principles of the U. S. Constitution. What a miracle that is! The passive consumer addiction to stuff has been muted by real reality and those of us with Traditional Historic American Values are beginning to voice our displeasure on the way the country is heading, both politically and financially. Again what a miracle that really is? Furthermore it is pretty clear what the definition of “is - - is.”

So today I offer you a weekly interview from the Online Wall Street Journal, by James Taranto talking with Seth Lipsky on our “Constitutional Moment.” There is a reason to be optimistic about the future of the United States, it is just that we really are not too much into what and where this “change we don’t really want to believe in” may lead.

Tags: U S Constitution

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.

Tags: wealth, entrepreneurship, Barack Obama, consumerism, bungling bureaucratic bourgeois

Back in the early 80s in one of my first college graduate courses I learned that temperate climate zone produced ethanol from corn took two calories of energy to produce one calorie of energy. About a decade later I was presented with a “great business opportunity” to help convert an old brewery in Tacoma, Washington to produce biofuel ethanol from midwest corn. After LOL (laughing out loud) I told the group that theirs was possibly the most stupid business idea I had ever heard of. Over the years I have continued to read the reports, and finally if you spin the numbers just right, you can show it might work energetically in the perfect world (at least if you believe the report). However for the foreseeable economic horizon ethanol needs a huge tax break to compete in the even a cartel price controlled energy sector.

This problem is not a problem with tropical ethanol produced from sugar cane residuals. That is because the sunshine is more intense, sugar cane does not need high quantities of energetically intensive nitrogen fertilizer, nor the intense tillage and harvesting energetic requirements.

All of that does not matter to the ethanol special interest — special rights corn lobby in the United States, which helped the Bush Administration create a domestic energy boondoggle and tax incentive, that is and will continue to be perhaps the most stupid idea that it ever conceived. Thanks to that, gas mileage has been reduced approximately ten percent without any environmental benefit.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal points that out quite well, and says that President Obama plans to raise ethanol in gasoline to fifteen percent even though the EPA and the Congressional Budget Office concur that at best ethanol is a push environmentally and in some cases a strong negative in the greenhouse gas debate. We still have not even discussed the “ten to fifteen percent increase” of “Ethanol’s Grocery Bill.”

This points directly that this country’s leadership is no longer concerned about free markets, but only on a system by which you buy money from the government. It seems as the only alternative to this is eventually, after everything runs out of gas, to institute a flat tax to run needed government programs and open up truly free opportunities to create wealth. That, after all, was once called “free enterprise” which was the energetic paradigm that made the United States the world leader it became, but is rapidly disappearing by the entropic work of a bungling bureaucratic bourgeoisie.

Tags: ethanol, Special Interests, bungling bureaucratic bourgeois, free enterprise

From the time I first heard about the global warming alarmist’s “Cap and Trade” energy taxing scheme, it then and still seems to me as one of the most bureaucratic inane proposals ever conceived in the minds of humans. Disregarding whether climate change global warming exists, there is no event in history where mankind has ever accomplished anything truly significantly positive as it relates to major environmental protection. Sure we have cleaned up some air and some waterways, which we fouled by our stupidity and greed. But for the most part we have turned a big blue and green planet into a blue and brown sphere.

Now from the conservative Heritage Foundation comes a report that puts some numbers on the economic cost of this ridiculous proposal. The report, “Son of Waxman-Markey: More Politics Makes for a More Costly Bill” outlines those economic costs to the citizens of the United States.

Tags: cap and trade, Heritage Foundation

by Jerry Bannon

I have to admit I am a very recent convert to Fair and-or Flat Tax proposals. While I considered the concepts interesting, I believed that the current system was somewhat working and even if it appears broken at times, it would be more cost effective to fix our Income Tax system rather than starting over.

The last few months and the gargantuan Federal spending associated with all the meltdowns and the bailouts have changed my perspective considerably. Then when you add the Obama Administration’s (never let a good crisis go to waste), simplistic and pedantic narcissism, something needs to change.

In yesterday’s weekly post the essential focus of “TEA Party Flavors” was the reestablishment of the Founder’s absolute constitutional values, making money again related to real wealth, and limiting the power of special rights — special interests.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, “The Case for a Federalism Amendment” is a practical and doable option to rein in our bloated and out of touch Federal Government. All three constitutionally prescribed branches of the Federal bureaucracy need to be included, the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary.

Most of our current economic troubles however stem from the Fed and the monetary expansionist policies of Alan Greenspan, which exponentially exceeded the linear natural growth in the economy. By allowing unregulated growth in debt, especially debt leverage, cheap credit forced consumer consumption leading to an unsustainable cancer. Current Fed Chairman Bernanke’s belief that tight money and speculation brought about the Great Depression, does not look at all at the systemic overvaluation of assets, especially real estate, which truly brought about the bursting bubbles both in the Great Depression and in our present condition.

Briefly checking the economic news this morning, there were discussions on whether the bottom had been reached at this time. The consensus was not yet, but the declines was showing signs of easing. All those commentators were really just blowing the smoke of their own opinions, not much better than a campfire, or a toxic cigar. Only the reestablishment of the Founder’s constitutional controls stemming from Natural Law and Nature’s God will give some absolutes for a profitable dialogue. Then perhaps some might begin to see that Natural Law did a more than decent job of predicting this mess and provides a path to a sustainable future based upon wealth creation, rather than monetary spin and debt leverage games.

Tags: Federalism Amendment, Alan Greenspan, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Great Depression

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.

Tags: Spokane Washington, tea party

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.

Tags: Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Great Depression, Steven Gjerstad, Vernon L. Smith, ecology, linear growth, exponential growth, ecosystems

Into our valley of economic turpitude rode President Obama’s itty-bitty team of economic knights to tell us with the passage of the stimulus plan the City of Eternal Prosperity was just a steep monetary deficit climb away. To reach that city they offered us some Keynesian economic projections of continual prosperity to come. They then supplied us all with rose colored glasses, whereby we could see through the dust of enterprise destruction and gain a vision of this summit Auda-City of Hope.

People generally and Americans specifically are really pretty skeptical of evangelists of any fashion, hence many refused the put-on and decided they would continue to struggle slowly through the haze. As reported in a Wall Street Journal today in Old Europe Is Right on Stimulus a team of four trans-Atlantic economists, two Americans and two Germans questioned Obama’s Old Keynesian projections with New Keynesian projections. Those projections showed not an eternal plateau of stable economic growth, but a real that Auda-City was not near as high as the itty-bitty knights predicted, and furthermore there was another very deep valley on the other side of the hill. A link to that New Keynesian versus Old Keynesian Government Spending Multipliers paper is found under our Resources Tab.

Not having that much formal education in economics it is interesting to see the similarities between two of our Business Ecology Growth Curves below as they relate to the projections of the Old Keynesian Obama knights and the New Keynesian study.
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Tags: Keynesian economics

What are the odds of a real depression?

Yesterday an article in the Wall Street Journal put that probability at about 20%. Is that good news or bad news, I assume that is truly an individual determination?

What Are the Odds of a Depression? by Robert J. Barrow, examines just that possibility. The report is based upon looking at 251 stock-market crashes from around the world dating back to 1870. When you factor out those associated with major wars, the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts do not apply, you are left with 209 crashes and 59 depressions. Defining a minor depression as at least a 10% decrease in GDP, and a major depression of a 25% decrease in GDP, crunching the numbers, resulted in the 20% number and the 2% probability respectively. The details are well spelled out in the article, as well as the title of the working paper source document.

This somewhat intertwines with thoughts in yesterday’s article which generally ties true wealth directly to stock market Dow Jones Industrial Averages. The reference point to which most recently relates, in both our article and the Barrow depression data, is to the recession of 1982 when GDP fell 3%.

In our faux pas article was also a remark about 1971, when President Nixon unilaterally took the United States out of the Bretton Woods Agreement that served us well in the post WWII redevelopment of world economies.

In that light I became inquisitive of just what were those Dow numbers from 1982 and 1971 and how they might compare with where we are now and that Dow high from 2007. That all time high came in October 2007 @ 14280. Therefore if we use this as a richness zenith, it has been downhill since that point, approximately 55%. Dow numbers for the 1971 year averaged pretty steady around 900. The numbers for 1982 were quite similar to those in 1971, except for a rally near year end that took the Dow to about 1100.

Now these numbers do not include inflation which was considerable especially surrounding the 1982 recession, or the period of stagflation. However it could be argued that inflation numbers are built into the Dow average itself, so backing out a composite inflation number, while it does make one feel somewhat better, really is not a meaningful exercise. So if you are averaging the weight of apples, it doesn’t make much sense to throw in an orange weighing exercise, unless you are not dealing with apples and oranges, but generalized fruit weights.

The biggest change however, and probably the most significant force in driving up the Dow was a rapidly increasing number of small individual investors from the 1970s and onward. The concept of investing in common stock equity as a means to grow your retirement, walked in lock step with buying your own home as your major source of wealth. If you could couple some sense of real estate speculation with a somewhat risky growth stock play, you could retire early with little true risk?

The question then surfaces does this increase from around 1100 to an excess of 14,000 mean a true increase in wealth or just a dilution of the underlying wealth according to market supply and demand characteristics relating to increasingly cheap money and debt leverage? Lacking any sort of meaningful analysis by some truly independent source, the question will probably be somewhat answered by another question. “Just how low will it go?”

So we are learning that the past and the present does not always indicate the future. We believed the words would make the numbers work. Now we are all learning that our words and numbers do not create or even forecast reality. Some will find that an impossible lesson to learn.

We have also provided a link to the Depression Odds article under our Resources tab.

Tags: Great Depression, Dow Industrial Average, 1982 recession

Money historically is the medium for the exchange of goods and services. It could be argued that money is the capital upon which human civilization and culture is based. What happens when governments decide to alter that balance? There are examples from throughout history, pre Nazi Germany quickly comes to mind. However, this tsunami debasement of the basis of money has never happened before on a global scale.

The synopsis of the wisdom of this explosion of debt around the world is, We have nothing else left to try and if this doesn’t work we are all out of ideas. Perhaps the most sagacious speech made at the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland came from Russia’s historic free market guru Vladimir Putin. Actually, I was just kidding about Putin’s free market history, but the speech, did point to some spy type reality that no western leader had the guts to proclaim.

The St. Louis Monetary Base graph below shows the expansion of money in the United States, and comes from information that was presented last week on the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News. Accompanying the graph is Inconvenient Debt video that compares this debt expansion as more deadly in all forms than someone’s illusionary inconvenient truth.

Tags: money, Glenn Beck, debt, Vladimir Putin

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.
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Tags: gegwcatsf, EPA, greenhouse gas, regulations, Supreme Court, 1st Amendment

It surely is well past the time to get an energy program. This is the link to the video Brute' is speaking about. While you are at it, you might drop over to American Solutions and sign their petition on energy independence. Brute' was thinking about signing himself, but realized that would add a small amount of mockery to a very serious issue. Brute' is a very honest, straight talking, and serious Griz. As of this posting well over 1,050,000 people have already signed up. You should do likewise. That is if you are a real human being.

Tags: energy program, leadership, fiscal responsibility

By following this link can watch these videos by Bob Carter's Climate Change Videos. Read More...

Tags: Bob Carter, climate change, global cooling, global warming

How difficult is Brute's dream? He told me that he had very little hope of that dream ever becoming reality. It seems like the whole United States is asleep to what is really important. His thoughts about a responsible government funding a planned civil infrastructure, a sound monetary supply, true free markets for goods and services, and opportunities for all people to become what God uniquely created them to be, don't seem to be in the news, or on any head's talking points list. True leadership isn't anywhere to be found.

Instead of wise government, we fund only special interest earmarks, create and borrow money out of vapor, allow speculators and monopolists to sink the economy, and tell people everything will be fine if we just buy more stuff. Then, and only when it all begins to unravel, we proudly announce not to worry, this same government will save you from your own inepititude. All this is not just silly, but insane and criminal .

How sad is the state of human affairs, when a cartoon of a smiling grizzly bear, on an obscure website, published from nowhere, has to point out the true purposes for the existence of human society.

Tags: responsible government, civil infrastructure, sound money, free markets, unique humanity