Apprentice2Jesus

Ramblings of a Confessing Pentecostal

Archive for the category “Economy”

Things That Make Me Go… “HUH?”

UBS, a Swiss bank, reports they lost $2 BILLION in a rogue trade incident.

The Swiss. Precision-minded people. Keeper of international secrets. People who have a reputation for knowing what in the world they are doing… and one of their banks loses $2 billion in a rogue trade. Excuses like, “That person may have accidentally added a zero, or perhaps hit a wrong button…” just don’t seem to fully explain such a mistake.

I am reminded of a SNL skit awhile back about another trade that sent the market tumbling. Apparently someone put in a trade for a million shares rather than 100,000 shares. “What? The program doesn’t have an ‘ARE YOU SURE?’ button before you make a transaction? Even if I want to delete a photo off of Facebook, it asks, ‘ARE YOU SURE?’”

But this actual comment from a Swiss banker really makes me laugh:

“It’s a shock, a real negative surprise,” said Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, head of research at the private bank Vontobel in Zurich.

A real negative surprise. Wow. No kidding.

The President’s Speech and Economic Theory

In light of the President’s speech last night and all the brouhaha we create over the ideological grenades we lob at each other these days, I thought we should be reminded of most economic theory origins.

;)

Study War No More

I love reading biographies of American Presidents. Eisenhower is a personal favorite since he is from Kansas. This article in The Atlantic Monthly reminds us of this general’s view of war and the industry that grows with it.

Even in his day the numbers are astounding as to how much money was spent on “defense.”

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities … We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

One of the key beliefs Eisenhower had is trust in the American people. The PEOPLE needed to voice their views on how dollars were spent. Wishful thinking, as it has turned out. We cede power over to government all the time. If we are conservatives, we don’t question dollars spent on defense. If we are liberals, we don’t question dollars spent on social programs. We the people just assume. As Eisenhower prophetically pointed out: bad mistake.

Hitting Home

I have watched yet another family on my block lose their home. This one was not pleasant to hear about at all. Compassion is completely gone out of our system. Maybe even out of my own system. (It’s something I need to keep before the Lord.) But this family is out on their ear with stuff being tossed out by sheriff’s goons.

It’s enough to make me a #$@! liberal. But even a #&@! liberal organization wouldn’t help this family tonight. It’s not enough to just look on. It’s not enough to shake our heads and talk about “personal responsibility.” We have a deep problem that is not going away anytime soon.

Is the Age of Entitlement Over?

A column by Thomas Friedman thinks so. Friedman is a great observer of American culture. In his view, we truly have reached lean times when residents of a county have to think about paying for a 911 call. They can pay a flat fee per year, or a huge fee per call.

So many things we just simply take for granted due to extravagantly “fat” times over the past generation are now coming home to roost. What was a privilege two generations ago is now seen as a right. And somehow we have lost sight of the fact that we have to EARN our rights. They are not always free. In fact, they are NEVER free.

Yet, it’s what we keep demanding.

Healthcare. We need reform. However, NO ONE wants to give up ANYTHING to get something better. We can blame the insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, and on and on. How about ourselves? How about learning to deal with a cough WITHOUT going to the emergency room? We just keep demanding.

We want responsibility from banks that practiced horrible lending practices. Yet, we were certainly thrilled to take out a $300,000 loan to get a house we couldn’t possibly hope to pay for in a huge mortgage. We just keep demanding.

President Obama keeps lecturing us that government isn’t our solution… and then proposes more government spending to get us out of the mess we made. We just keep demanding.

A generation ago, I could have these thoughts and put them in a journal using a pen and paper and no one would ever read them. Now, I can put them on the web and… well, no one will still read them, but there is the possibility that SOMEONE will read them. Yet, do I want to pay more for internet access or a newer computer or newer technology? Not if I don’t have to! We just keep demanding.

We do not know how to make lean choices. We are intelligent, well-educated, creative in so many ways… and handicapped. We don’t know how to do without, or EARN our way to something better. We just keep demanding.

Does Capitalism Do Better With an Enemy?

There is a new book, among many to come, discussing the current financial collapse. This paragraph of the review stuck out to me:

Once upon a time in America and Britain, he observes, “the jet engine of capitalism was harnessed to the ox cart of social justice, to much bleating from the advocates of pure capitalism, but with the effect that the Western liberal democracies became the most admired societies that the world had ever seen.”

Then the Wall crumbled, and “the jet engine was unhooked from the ox cart and allowed to roar off at its own speed. The result was an unprecedented boom, which had two big things wrong with it: It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t sustainable.”

He is talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It seems that the thesis is that capitalism was fine when there was a communist enemy because it forced capitalism to be “kinder.” The system of capitalism is designed to raise money and make money… lots of it. But when we battled communism as an ideal, there were things we did as capitalists that gave money to key parts of the world. We had more philanthropy and it was the envy of the world.

Now, without any “enemy,” capitalism just took off and the rich got richer and looked for ways to just keep getting richer. It’s an interesting thought. I’m not sure that is where the author is going, but it’s how the review sounds.

Belief as Dementia, Evangelicals as Wimps, and HOW ABOUT THOSE TWINS

Leave it to The New York Times to equate religious belief with mild dementia. Check that. What they are really offended at is the thought of an intellectual having a Christian worldview. This must drive them nuts.

We live in a day when David Letterman can confess on air to having multiple affairs with staff women and there isn’t one peep from women’s rights groups. In fact, his first show after that confession was a ratings gold mine! But actually hold a Christian worldview as an intellectual, and you’re branded as loony. Go figure.

What else doesn’t figure is the lack of moral fortitude on the part of evangelicals concerning the healthcare reform debate. They have plenty of moral fortitude when it comes to funding abortions. Yet, there is no moral outcry over the current Bacchus bill and how it will bankrupt the middle class.

To be fair, we as evangelicals also aren’t very vocal when it comes to the healthcare debate outside very narrow parameters. If it doesn’t have to do with abortion or legalizing homosexual marriages, we just don’t seem to have an opinion.

We have officially passed the one trillion dollar point on war funding. Eight years. One trillion dollars. I support our troops. I’d love to win this thing. But I can’t help but noticing a couple of things:

1. Oil company profits and private contracting firm profits that do business over there are through the roof. We’ve done some favors in some areas we just didn’t need to help out in.

2. One trillion dollars is about what we’re going to fork over for healthcare.

Does anyone notice this huge hole in the ground? Anyone?

But that’s just too much to think about. What I REALLY want to talk about is the best baseball game that will be played this year. Game 163 of the regular season: Detroit and Minnesota. Twins win in 12. The Dome lives on for at least another game or two!

The Terrorism Without… and Within

It is rare that I interact politically on this blog. I’ve done it, I’m sure, but most of the time when I make a political comment, it’s on my Facebook page or somewhere else.

However, I cannot leave a couple of news items alone. The first is the terrorism without. Thomas Friedman wrote a column that is scary. Friedman is a level headed liberal, and I mean that in the kindest way. When it comes to terrorism, he is one of the best sources I can read. His latest column needs to be read by every American. Agree or disagree with Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. (and he has his opinions as well), what we are forgetting is there is truly an enemy and that enemy is not forgetting us. We may not like the fact we have an enemy, but that doesn’t make them go away.

It’s like the devil. Some believe in a literal devil. Some don’t. Either way, he doesn’t care. He’ll use either belief system and keep on battling humanity.

Friedman recounts several recent events where authorities have stopped potential terrorist attacks on our soil. Then, he says this:

These incidents are worth reflecting on. They tell us some important things. First, we may be tired of this “war on terrorism,” but the bad guys are not. They are getting even more “creative.”

It’s a sobering column worth your full attention. We are so temporal in our thinking. We have such a “been there, done that” mentality, we are not realizing the need for vigilance in our national security. HOW that is done is still a matter of debate, but I am more and more convinced that it MUST be done. It’s not a matter of NOT staying vigilant.

Then, I refer to a terror within. National healthcare reform.

I am not saying healthcare reform is terrorism. I am saying the current Bacchus bill up for consideration and a possible vote IS terrorism in a new way. This article runs the numbers on the current bill and it’s just plain scary.

Here are my options as someone who cannot currently afford healthcare:

1. Pay incredibly high premiums for little coverage because it will be required.

2. Don’t pay for health insurance and pay a fine each and every year I can’t afford health insurance.

3. Go to jail for not paying the fine.

This bill has a “tax credit” to “help pay” for those premiums. Here is the false premise on that: you still have to pay the premiums. You get the tax credit at the END of the year, so I’ll still have to pay nearly $1000 a month for insurance for a family of four!

This is war on the middle class. The poor have coverage. The rich have coverage. They’ll get taxed to pay for the poor to have coverage. The middle class will end up in jail. But at least in jail we’ll have medical care!

This line out of the article is what sends me over the top:

Most of the uninsured are in households headed by someone who’s self-employed or works at a business that doesn’t provide coverage. It’s this group that Democrats are trying to help.

THIS is the help we are getting? Mandatory insurance, through companies that still won’t give us affordable plans, OR JAIL?

WHO STOLE MY COUNTRY?

I’ll get back to my regularly schedule blog tomorrow.

This Just In… THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!

We interrupt this blog for an important breaking news bulletin: Starbucks is going INSTANT.

Yes, you heard that right. They are going to peddle (I shudder at the thought) instant coffee. When I first got into “real” coffee years ago I read Howard Schultz’s book on the founding of Starbucks. He was such a purist. Now, he’s a corporate hypocrite. (It’s okay. He’s got public stock holders to worry about. It’s the nature of the beast.)

He swore he’d never allow his coffee to be sold in stores… He swore he’d never allow other vendors to make Starbucks coffee in a retail setting (it had to be THEIR baristas doing the job)… All of it he has backtracked on to make his stockholders happy.

BUT THIS??? Howard! How could you?

Greed, Selfishness, and Other Dangers


This article from Great Britain has some interesting thoughts about selfish capitalism. There are things I so deeply appreciate about the Roman Catholic Church. There is a sense of calling people back to what is biblical. (I will admit that even that call can seem hypocritical at times when one looks at the splendor of the Vatican in the context of some of their words.)

One sentence from the Cardinal sticks out: “This particular recession is a moment – a kairos – when we have to reflect as a country on what are the things that nourish the values, the virtues, we want to have … Capitalism needs to be underpinned with regulation and a moral purpose.”

Your turn. What do you think?

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