R/A - The Radical Agenda

How Do You Feel About Self-Funded Law Enforcement?

2010-09-07T11:40:00.001-07:00

Forfeiture laws ripe for reform - Commentary | The Columbia Daily Tribune - Columbia, Missouri
If you're not sure, then imagine the police having the authority to seize your property once they've accused you of a crime - accused, not convicted you - selling it on the open market and keeping the profits.
Welcome to "Funding the Police, Missouri Style".

Visualizing Obama

2010-09-07T10:50:00.002-07:00

Here's a killer video helping us to understand how utterly irrelevant the President and his team of budget-cutters really are.

(Old but cool.)

Are we truly one nation, indivisible? Secession essay in July 4 Arizona Republic

2010-07-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Are we truly one nation, indivisible? Secession essay in July 4 Arizona Republic

The Best Resistance is Meticulous Compliance

2010-05-23T21:37:00.002-07:00

Gary North explains that the very best way to deal with an out-of-control government is to drown them in the very paperwork they have demanded from us.

Brilliant!

Why Greece Matters to You - The American Taxpayer

2010-04-28T11:00:00.001-07:00

New post at my personal blog, jackheald.com.

Should You Walk Away?

2010-01-22T16:51:00.001-07:00

Here's the money quote from a scholarly article by University of Arizona professor Brent T White. regarding the economic impact of walking away from your mortgage:

Norms governing homeowner behavior stand in sharp contrast to norms governing lenders, who seek to maximize profits or minimize losses irrespective of concerns of morality or social responsibility. This norm asymmetry leads to distributional inequalities in which individual homeowners shoulder a disproportionate burden from the housing collapse. (My emphasis)

Friends, the big banks are utterly immoral. Walking away from a mortgage that is no longer a good deal for you is NOT immoral. If you're having trouble with your mortgage, you need to read this.

"The Big Bankers Never Lose"

2010-01-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul made this cogent observation - not in 2008 but in 1988.

"No matter which party is in power, they will appoint to the major offices members of these two committees, (Trilateral Commission and Council of Foreign Relations), so that Wall Streeters and the Big Bankers always have inside information as to what is going on."

See the entire video here.

Jack's Weekly Apocalypse Watch

2009-12-28T20:08:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I renamed it. "Weekly Update" was just a little boring. Or "snorey", if you will. (Inside joke.)

Here's the news I found amusing this week.

Government No Longer Pretends To Be Anything Other Than an ATM for Bankers
In an utterly unsurprising development, the government has said it will guarantee unlimited number of losses at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac for the next 3 years. You remember Fannie & Freddie, right? They were private companies that bought mortgages. This was their business model up till July 2008:

Step 1. Buy mortgages from banks that don't want to carry them because the mortgagees are bad credit risks.
Step 2. Lose trillions of dollars when those people who were bad credit risks quit paying.
Step 3. Pay their executive Big Bucks for doing a such a stellar job.

Then in July 2008, they couldn't pretend this was a viable business model anymore, so they called in their political debts and Congress handed them $700 billion dollars so they wouldn't have to officially declare themselves both Bankrupt and Insolvent. Congress assured us ignorant rubes that this was in our best interest, and that Things Would Be Better Now. Of course they were lying and of course we knew it. Fannie & Freddie are now even more broke, more insolvent and deeper in debt, so Congress - rather than writing a big check - just gave them a credit card with no limit.

Ain't it great to be a banker?

Never One To Miss an Opportunity To Look Idiotic, the TSA Outlaws Pooping and Peeing the Last Hour of a Flight
Unless you do it in your seat. Then it's okay. This in response to the guy who lit his underwear on fire. They also prohibited using electronics in the last hour and keeping anything in your lap the last hour.

Of course, a really CLEVER terrorist will find a way to make his poop and pee explosive, and then "detonate" it when they strap him into his seat.

I don't know why they don't just prohibit flying. Oh wait, yes I do. Where would all those mouth-breathers currently employed by the TSA go, the Post Office?

UPDATE: They caved on their stupid new rules.

James Cameron is in fact The King of Hollywood
We just got back from seeing Avatar, the latest movie from Titanic/Terminator creator/director James Cameron. It seems like every two months another movie is being touted as "ground-breaking-this" or "never-before-done-that" and invariably they all fail to live up to the hype. Avatar, however, exceeds the hype. I was blown away. It is a game changer. From now on, all movies will be either "Before Avatar" or "After Avatar". It really is that good. Go see it. You'll thank me.

More fun Graphs

2009-11-09T19:32:00.006-07:00

I sincerely hope no one interprets my skewering of the Obama administration as an endorsement for Republicans. The only thing keeping Republicans from being the slimiest creatures on the planet is Democrats.

The REALLY fun part about all this is that the government has under-reported unemployment for more than two decades. John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics uses the government's pre-1982 formulas for calculating things like CPI and unemployment. He says the true unemployment rate, using the government'e earlier formula, is likely over 20%.

Now that's what I call "change we can believe in."

Too True to be Funny, Too Funny not to Share

2009-11-09T09:21:00.004-07:00

I found this on Charles Goyette's website.

Rest in Peace - Ken Jessup

2009-10-31T16:56:00.001-07:00

I lost an old friend today and don't much feel like talking about finance.

Rest in Peace, Ken.

Is Your Bank Doomed?

2009-10-26T17:47:00.001-07:00

This list will tell you. Any number greater than 100 in the column labeled "Texas Ratio" means the bank is --uhm-- "less than healthy". How's that for politically correct?

If you consent to it, its not a crime

2009-10-21T11:29:00.003-07:00

Interesting juxtaposition of headlines in the WSJ yesterday:

States Post Widespread Job Losses
Morgan Stanley Breaks a String of Losses
Wells Net Rises Despite Loan Losses

Rising unemployment. Big banks making tons of money and paying huge bonuses. Does this make any sense?

The U.S. Government is bought and paid for by the NY bankers. The government operates for the benefit of these banks. The bankers are raping us, and the government is the one providing the rope and duct tape.

The most profound insight on the nature of government comes from the Declaration of Independence: ...all government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

If you continue to consent to this type of government, then it is not rape, it is merely kinky, consensual sex.

Why the SEC will never rein in Goldman Sachs

2009-10-16T08:31:00.001-07:00

Seriously, do you still believe this is a government "of the people, by the people, blah blah blah"?

From Bloomberg: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hired Adam Storch, a 29-year-old former employee in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s business intelligence unit, as the enforcement division’s first chief operating officer, according to people familiar with the decision. The COO, who started Oct. 13, has “a great deal of background” in technology and managing processes and the pace of work, Robert Khuzami, head of enforcement, said yesterday in Washington. Storch, who worked since 2004 in a unit at Goldman Sachs that reviewed contracts and transactions for signs of fraud, will be charged with making the unit more efficient. Storch, reached by telephone at the SEC, declined to comment.

That's right - the chief enforcer for the SEC is a wet-behind-the-ears Goldman Sachs puppy. He worked at G-S since 1984 which means "since they hired him out of college." Yeah, that is some serious experience there.

I continue to assert that Goldman Sachs owns the government and runs things for their own benefit. How else to explain the fact that this time last year, the big banks - led by G-S - were begging for a government bailout and this year G-S is set to pay their biggest bonuses ever?

Remember: government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. As long as "We the People" continue to assent to this government, then the crime syndicate that runs the biggest banks and by proxy the government will continue stealing from us and say it is for our own good.

What Happened to Global Warming?

2009-10-15T13:03:00.001-07:00

That bastion of reactionary, luddite, head-in-the-sand hyperconservatism - the British Broadcasting Company, (yes, I am attempting to be sarcastic) - wants to know what happened to Global Warming. Good story and worth your time.

Have you noticed that the Do-Gooders who always worry about things that cannot be changed have switched the object of their worry to Climate Change and away from Global Warming? Back in the mid 70s, the same nincompoops were up in arms about the coming New Ice Age but they had to change their tune in the late 80s because the Ice Age they predicted with such confident certainty was manifestly failing to... well, manifest.

That's when they changed to worrying about Global Warming.

I suppose after another 20 years of the Climate not Changing, they'll worry about The Sky Falling, or something equally unlikely and unpreventable. These people would be objects of pity and derision if they didn't wield so much power to harm the rest of us with their baseless schemes.

DOW at 10000? Whoop Tee Doo

2009-10-14T16:08:00.003-07:00

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 today for the first time in a while. It first crossed the 10,000 in 2000.

What does "Dow 10000" mean today?

In 2000, you'd need more than 30 ounces of gold to buy the Dow. Today, you'd need less than 10 ounces.

In 2000, your dollar would buy almost 30% more than it will today. (Check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator linked here on my site.) That's what inflation does to you.

In other words, the Dow at 10,000 today is equivalent to the Dow at about 7500 in 2000.

Whoop Tee Freakin' Doo.

Imagine how bad it would be if STUPID people were in charge..

2009-10-14T15:40:00.004-07:00

The date is July, 2005. Can you guess who is answering the questions?

Q. "Can you give us your view of whether there is a housing bubble out there?"
A. "I don't know whether prices are exactly where they should be but I think they are supported by the strength of the economy."

Q. "So tell me, what is the worst case scenario, if in fact we were to see prices come down substantially across the country? "
A. "I don't buy your premise. It is a pretty unlikely possibility. We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. I'm confident in the fact that the bank regulators will pay close attention to the kinds of loans that are being made, making sure that underwriting is being done right... I do think this is mostly a localized problem and not something that impacts the national economy."

In hindsight, it sounds like this person was not very well informed, doesn't it? But who could blame him?

You'd need to actually know what was going on inside the banks to realize that they were making loans they knew couldn't be repaid - and the only people who knew that were the bankers themselves.

And you'd need to know what was going on with the bank regulators to realize they weren't doing a thing about it - and the only people who knew that were the Bankers responsible for watching over the banks. No, the only possible way you could expect someone to know what was really happening with the banks would be the people in charge of the Federal Reserve. They were really the only ones who could possibly know, right?

So you could hardly blame this guy for being so completely clueless.

Good thing we have really well informed, intelligent and ethical individuals deciding how to save the economy.

/sarcasm

S&P 500 now trading at 140 Times Earnings

2009-10-09T10:32:00.001-07:00

Greetings readers,

I will be away from my computer over the weekend for a much-needed vacation, so my "Weekly Update" will not be published. But I do want to pass along this news to you:

As of September 30, the S&P 500 was trading at 140 times earnings. Here's the link to the Standard and Poors website confirming this information.

The S&P 500 is an index of the 500 largest public companies in America. It is considered the most reliable proxy for the overall state of the entire stock market. For comparison, over the last 80 years, the S&P 500 has traded at an average of 15 times earnings.

What does this mean to you?

It means that the rise in values in the stock market since March is not the result of improvements in business; it is the result of the government dumping a little over a trillion dollars into the five biggest banks. The banks were supposed to use that money to lend, but they have instead used it to speculate in the market. (Goldman Sachs is the worst offender. The others are Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.)

This is NOT the time to be putting money into the market. It is time to make sure your investments are protected from a stock market reversal. It is also time to be saving and getting out of debt.

See you all next week.

Mid-Week Update

2009-10-06T15:37:00.001-07:00

Hello faithful readers,

Just a brief note to let you know why you have not heard from me in the last month. I am hard at work changing this update from a text-based to a video-based update. It's taking longer than I anticipated, but we will get there.

In the meantime, I want to share with you a couple of things:

The first is a video I just found today. This is from Dylan Ratigan's show on MSNBC back in July. (Don't know why it took me so long to find it.) Dylan is one of the very few people in the MSM who asks good questions and doesn't kow-tow to his corporate masters. I have the utmost respect for him. (When he left CNBC, I quit watching it.)

This video is the clearest, simplest explanation of what happened with the banks and the Fed in the last year. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

Of particular interest is the presence of Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governnor of New York who was forced to resign in March 2008 when it was discovered he had paid for sex. Spitzer was the most powerful public figure fighting corruption on Wall Street. His forced resignation occurred exactly one week prior to Bear Stearns being forced to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase. This was no coincidence.

The second is to recommend to you Matt Taibbi's article in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. Taibbi is an investigative journalist of the highest quality. He has authored two of the best pieces I have read on the banking crisis. (Link is here.) It actually amazes me that he is still walking around, because he exposes malfeasance at the highest levels of our government and banking system. Please do yourself a favor and read it either online, (once it is posted) or pick up a copy at the newsstand today. It is the issue with U2 on the cover.

"I Gotcher Green Shoots Right Here"

2009-09-17T09:22:00.001-07:00

One of the most reliable indicators of world economic conditions is shipping traffic. Here's a story in the UK's Daily Mail about the unprecedented decline in the amount of shipping world wide and - most shocking to me - the precipitous decline in the cost of renting a container ship.

This entire story is worth a read, but some of the highlights - if you are in a hurry are:

A massive fleet of empty container ships sits idle in the waters off Singapore. Apparently, world ship owners are just parking them there
The cost of chartering a bulk freighter has plunged from $300,000 last summer to $10,000 earlier this year.
It takes 3 years from the time a new ship is ordered till it is delivered. Come 2011, the world's biggest ship-building companies in South Korea will have nothing to work on, because no one is ordering new ships.

Here's a sea-level photo of some of those idle ships:

The Impending Doom of the US Dollar

2009-09-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a fascinating story from Larry Edelson at Money and Markets about the US Dollar. He writes from Asia:

We are now the laughing stock of Asia. Our dollars are no longer respected; our ambitions, no longer mimicked. Our way of life, often based on consuming far beyond our means, is being flat-out rejected.
I can’t even exchange a $100 bill on the street here anymore: Most of the street money changers will take euros, Singapore dollars, even Chinese yuan. But fearful of losing their shirt with sinking exchange rates, they don’t want U.S. dollars. Not long ago, I never traveled without my American Express card. Now, it sits in my office safe. Many in Asia no longer accept the card anymore. MasterCard and Visa are still OK, but they’re also losing market share to locally grown cards like Aeon.
The running joke in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur is that the U.S. is the place where even your pet could get a credit card or a home mortgage. So to Asians, the crisis we’re going through is our own fault. And although it was also caused by blunders in Western Europe and other regions, truth be told, they are mostly right.

When foreigners hold dollars, and those dollars lose value against their home currencies, then they lose purchasing power. The US Dollar has lost of 15% of its value since March. That means a street vendor who accepted dollars in March can now buy 15% less with those dollars than he could just six months ago. And what happened six months ago to trigger this decline? The Federal Reserve began dumping something north of $700 billion freshly created-out-of-thin-air dollars into their member banks.

The dollar is doomed unless the government slashes spending, but you can bet every last depreciating dollar you own that will not happen.

Rights & Responsibilities

2009-09-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

According to the wisdom of the day, healthcare is a universal human right. When the term "universal right" is used, I cannot help but think of the Bill of Rights, where rights such as free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are enumerated. However, as best as I can tell, the people who use the term "universal right" as applied to healthcare mean something different than what I think of when I hear the term.

As I understand it, every right possessed by Person A implies a responsibility on the part of Person B. For example:

- my right to speak my mind means you have the responsibility to NOT prevent me from speaking my mind.
- my right to freedom of assembly means you the responsibility to NOT prevent me from assembling with whomever I want.
- my right to worship as I see fit means you have the responsibility to NOT prevent me from worshiping as I see fit.

However, there are also limits to your responsibility:
- you are not responsible to publish my speech
- you are not responsible to drive me to my meeting place
- you are not responsible to contribute to my religion

In other words, your responsibilities to my rights are negative - you are obligated to NOT PREVENT me from doing something. This is the simplest way to test whether something is really a universal right. The cool thing about this system of universal rights and obligations is that it requires no effort on my part to NOT PREVENT you from doing something. I don't have to take action nor do I have to spend time or money or effort to allow you to exercise your rights. My responsibility to you is to do nothing.

Does "universal healthcare" pass this test? Nope, not in the slightest.

In the current debate, if you have a right to healthcare, it obligates someone else to provide that care, does it not? If you have a right to be treated for cancer, then obviously some doctor has an obligation to treat you for cancer. If you have a right to diabetes medicine, then some drug company has the obligation to provide you that medicine, some doctor has the obligation to write the prescription, and some pharmacist has the obligation to prepare the medicine. And if the doctor, pharmacist or drug company somehow fail to provide that care, treatment and medicine properly, then apparently you have the right to sue them for malpractice which service - no doubt - some schmuck lawyer will be obligated to provide you.

Whatever else this may be, it is not a universal right. It sounds a lot like slavery to me: forcing someone else, against their will or their best interests, to provide time, labor and/or money for your wishes, wants and desires.

Those who claim that everyone has a "right" to universal healthcare obviously mean something different by the word "right" than the Founders meant when they penned the Bill of Rights.

Forgive me, but I fail to see how you have any right to obligate me to provide you healthcare. I just don't see it.

How much is a trillion?

2009-09-08T13:23:00.002-07:00

Very well done slide show demonstrating the kinds of money required to keep Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank from collapsing.

A Private Swiss Bank Is Pulling Out of America

2009-09-02T21:10:00.001-07:00

This is a long read, but worthwhile. Wegelin & Co is a private Swiss bank founded in 1754. It is divesting itself of all American securities and will no longer act as an intermediary for clients who wish to own American securities through them.

What Does It Mean: The IRS is making it ever more difficult and complex for foreigners to invest in America. The IRS is trying to increase tax revenues, but the effect of these new policies will be a decrease in foreign investment in America. Wegelin & Co estimates the US will need an additional $2 Trillion in tax revenues to make up for the losses from foreign investors.

This is a terrific paper with a lot of very good information. It is well worth your time to read.

One of the most damning quotes comes in the first few paragraphs. Remember, this is a Swiss bank's view of America:

...let us briefly recall the sort of tax authorities we are dealing with, and the sort of state they serve: a country that, over the last 60 years, has unquestionably been one of the most aggressive nations in the world. The USA has fought by far the largest number of wars, sometimes with, but mostly without a UN mandate. It has broken the international laws of war, maintained secret prisons, and fought an absurd war against drugs, with serious consequences both abroad (Columbia, Afghanistan) and at home (according to reliable sources, the tentacles of the narcotics mafia now reach well into political circles). With breathtaking moral duplicity, the USA maintains enormous offshore havens in Florida, Delaware and others of its states. The moralizers have joined sides with a nation that still makes extensive use of the death penalty, and that has a legal system under which lawyers can get rich on the misfortunes of their clients. Liability cases often end in verdicts with exorbitant damages, which makes business activity extremely risky, for medium-sized enterprises in particular. The moralizers provide intellectual support for a country that allows its infrastructure to collapse, and then stuffs convicts into hopelessly overfilled jails, after what are not infrequently dubious proceedings. They fund a nation that tolerates – or rather, causes – regular crises in the global financial system that it manages. A country whose underclass enjoys neither the benefits of an adequate education, nor a halfway functional health care system; a country whose economic system is increasingly inclined to over consumption, and in which saving and investing have increasingly become alien concepts, a situation that has undoubtedly been one of the driving forces behind the current recession, with all its catastrophic consequences for the whole world.

What Can You Do: The Declaration of Independence declares that "government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." Once we - the people of these united States - cease to consent to this government, it will cease to possess any just powers, and will in fact be nothing more than a criminal organization, exactly like the mafia. What we can do is cease to consent to this government.

But Is It Right?

2009-09-02T18:03:00.003-07:00

Graham Summers has a terrific article at Seeking Alpha that asks a simple question about the Goldman Sachs bailout:

Never mind the legality of this issue… it’s simply NOT RIGHT. End of story.

Some animals are more equal than others...

If Insiders Know What's Happening, What Does It Mean When They Sell?

2009-08-31T21:50:00.003-07:00

Because executives in public companies have access to data that the rest of the public does not have, any time they buy or sell their own stock, they are required to file notice of those transactions with the SEC. This lets the rest of us know what the insiders are doing, and - by extension - be able to make informed guesses about what those transactions mean.

Multiple news sources report that insider selling - as reported to the SEC - outnumbers insider buying by a 30:1 margin.

Here, Trim Tabs CEO Charles Biderman discusses what it means for the retail stock purchaser. (Trim Tabs actually tracks this data for investors.)

You DO have Stop-Loss orders in place now, don't you?

Income Up and Tax Receipts Down. Huh?

2009-08-30T07:30:00.001-07:00

According to this chart from the Department of the Treasury, income tax receipts were down substantially in July. In fact, it's the 4th straight month of declines and we are now well below levels seen at the bottom of the 2002 recession.

According to this report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal income was up in July, albeit marginally.

How can income be up marginally while income tax receipts are down significantly?

I guess it makes sense in a world where the cure for a hangover is more whisky.

Weekly Update 29 August 2009

2009-08-29T16:54:00.004-07:00

Before I get to the meat of today's update, I want to bring your attention to an article at Zero Hedge regarding the price of the S&P 500 as a ratio of money in the economy. Here's the link to the article.

For those of you who don't get off on all things financial-geeky, here's the gist of it:

The Federal Reserve is responsible for "...conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates,".

The S&P 500 is a proxy for the entire stock market, because it is an index composed of the 500 largest publicly traded companies. You can see the exact make-up here.

When the value of the S&P 500, (and by extension - the overall value of the stock market), is expressed in terms of the money supply, (which is controlled by the Federal Reserve), then the market has actually done nothing since the crash of 2000 and is in fact significantly lower than it was during the depths of the 2002 recession. In other words, all the extra money that the Federal Reserve has pumped into the economy has done NOTHING for real values.

On to the News Of the Week

WHAT IT IS: As I mentioned last week, the S&P 500 is currently trading at about 143 times earnings. At the height of the dot com bubble in the late 90s, the highest the S&P ever traded was 45 times earnings.
WHAT IT MEANS: Historically, the S&P trades at an average of 15 times earnings. In other words, this market is grossly overheated and a massive correction is due.
WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT: Many of you lost a lot of money in your portfolios last fall, and have watched in relief as the market has regained some of that lost ground. I want you to protect yourself this time, and not make the same mistake when the market collapses again. Here's how: You must place a "Stop Loss Order" for every stock you own. So what is a "Stop Loss Order"?

A Stop Loss is an order to sell the stocks you own IF and ONLY IF the price falls to your Stop Loss price. So for example, if you own 100 shares of FroBozz Corp, and it is currently trading at $45 a share, you might want to enter a Stop Loss order for 100 shares at $40.50, which would be 10% below the current price. If the price falls to $40.50, then your Stop Loss will be executed. If it doesn't fall that low, then you will continue to own the stock.

How do you calculate the price at which to enter your Stop Loss? That is a matter of personal preference. William O'Neill, in his classic book How to Make Money in Stocks, recommends using an 8% stop. Another way to calculate a stop amount is by looking at a chart and finding historical support levels, then placing your stop just below those levels. A more sophisticated form of stop-loss is the trailing stop. A trailing stop trails the price of the stock as the price rises, but does not move if the price of the stock falls.

Returning to our previous example of FroBozz Corp, let's again assume it is trading at $45. You could place a $4.50 Trailing Stop Order. If FroBozz rose to $50, then your Trailing Stop would rise with it, and would now be at $45.50. If the price of the stock then falls back to $45, your Trailing Stop would be executed at $45.50.

The subject of Stops is a little more complex than this, but that should give you some idea of how to protect your profits rather than take a huge loss. Make no mistake - a massive correction is coming in this market. Don't get caught this time.

Monday morning - call your broker - place Stop Loss orders. Don't let him talk you out of it.

Till next time.

DHS - Surfing to Protect Us

2009-08-26T12:49:00.001-07:00

Some of you may remember that last spring, the Department of Homeland Security issues a threat assessment about rightwing extremism. The title of the report was alarming all by itself: Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

Your federal government, diligently looking out for your safety. And how did they arrive at their conclusions?

[wait for it]

[wait for it]

By surfing the web!

That's right, kids. The same people who can give $700 billion dollars to Hank Paulson so he can make sure his buddies on Wall Street still get their bonuses can't spend any more than the cost of a web connection to research threats to the republic. Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, we now have a list of all the "research" Janet Napolitano's DHS did before labeling half of America "security threats".

Don't these people have the CIA, FBI, NSA, ICE and god-knows-what-other police and paramilitary forces at their beckon call? And they best they can come up with is a list of websites?

This is what it has come to: Government of the clowns, by the clowns and for the clowns.

[Janet Napalitano on a bad hair day]

The Stratified US Consumer

2009-08-24T23:23:00.001-07:00

The money quote from a post at Zero Hedge today:

...so far the lower and middle classes have borne the brunt of the recession. Is it safe to say that the wealthy have managed to game the system yet again and avoided a significant loss of wealth, while maintaining sufficient access to credit?

You bet it's safe to say that.

Other interesting facts from this report:

A sobering observation is that while 90% of the population holds 50% or more of its assets in residential real estate, the Upper Class only has 25% of its assets in housing, holding the bulk of its assets in financial instruments and other business equity...The other observation is that only 10% of the population has truly benefited from the 50% market rise from the market's lows: those better known as the Upper class.

And to add insult to injury, the segment of housing that has been impacted most adversely in the current downturn, is lower and middle-priced housing: that traditionally occupied by the lower and middle classes. The double whammy joke of holding a greater proportion of net wealth in disproportionately more deflating assets is likely not lost on the lower and middle classes.

Weekly Update 22 August 2009

2009-08-22T18:46:00.012-07:00

About That Bull Market...

Hello folks. I hope this note finds you well. I literally have too much news to summarize this week, so I am going to give you lots of appetizers instead of one big entree'. Here's the headline we will start with.

Housing Gooses Stock Market

WHAT IT IS: The market rose on Friday on news that sales of existing homes jumped at the fastest rate in 10 years.
WHAT IT MEANS: The WSJ article I linked here has a side-bar with this odd headline: "...But Prices are Still Falling..." They make it sound as if the link between falling prices and increasing sales is mysterious. Quick economics lesson: When prices are too high, buyers stay away. When prices come down far enough, buyers come back. It's that whole supply & demand thing. So what this story means is that housing is finally starting to get affordable.
WHY IT MATTERS: Well, here’s where it gets tricky. The perma-bulls, talking heads and government shills say that it means that the economy is stabilizing and things are looking up. But that is deceptive. For every positive sign the economy is stabilizing, there are hundreds that say we are not nearly through the storm yet.

This week I read an excellent analysis called "The New Bull Market Fallacy". It is a lengthy read, but well worth the time. Here are some juicy tidbits I pulled from it.

Housing

Wells Fargo, via their purchase of Wachovia, now holds about $115 billion in Option ARMs on their books. They are valuing this stuff at 85 cents on the dollar - a 15% mark down.
The Fed took a bunch of mortgages onto their books as collateral when they swapped Treasuries for Mortgages with the big banks. They took a 30%-40% markdown on the Maiden Lane properties.
JPMorgan-Chase has $90b of Option ARMs on their books.
Citibank is marking their residential and commercial real estate loans at 90% of loan value.
Housing prices nationwide have fallen an average of 50%.
The International Monetary Fund says that there will be $4.1 trillion in real estate related losses in 2010. So far, only $1t of that has been marked.

If Wells values their Option ARM portfolio at $115b after a 15% mark down, in reality it is probably worth something in the neighborhood of $67b. If that were the case, Wells Fargo would be insolvent under the banking rules prior to April 1st, but since the FASB changed the rules on that date, Wells gets to carry this stuff on their books at any value they want to, rather than at market value. Thus, they get to pretend to be solvent. Same situation with JPMorgan. Same with Citi and most of the other big banks that got all the government money are in the same situation. It is nothing but accounting tricks and collusion with regulators that keeps these giant banks afloat.

Here's Professor Elizabeth Warren explaining on MSNBC how the banks cheat.

23% of all single family home mortgages are greater than the value of the homes. Deutsche Bank analysts have predicted that such "underwater loans" could reach 48% of all mortgages by Q1 2011.

Finally, the "second wave" of mortgage resets - Option ARMs and Alt-A's - is scheduled to start in 2010. The dollar amount of mortgages scheduled to reset in this second wave is actually higher than the amount of resets during the sub-prime wave.

What are those banks gonna do then? We the people have already been soaked for well over $2 trillion because these vampire banks were supposedly "too big too fail". What happens next year when they are in even worse shape?

Oh, and the FDIC - which as recently as April said they'd need no more money - is bankrupt as of last Friday with the failure of Colonial Bank. Prior to the failure, they had $641m in assets. Colonial alone had over $2b in deposits which the FDIC had to cover. Betcha didn't hear about that on the news, did you?

Jobs

The number of jobs lost in July was less than the rolling 3 month average, but the reason for the drop is that the number of people who have quit looking for a job increased dramatically. These people are not counted in the government's new unemployment statistics.

Growth?

The federal government increased spending by 11% year over year in the second quarter. Many states are bankrupt. Tax receipts at the federal level are down 28% year over year, while the federal deficit has tripled.

Over the last several weeks, as the market makes new high after new high, insider selling outnumbers insider buying by about a 23:1 margin. In other words, the people who know what is coming are selling.

The S&P 500 as of the close Friday is valued at 143 times earnings. By comparison, the historical average of the S&P 500 runs about 15, so the S&P 500 is currently valued 10 times higher than its historical average. Is this supposed to be a bottom? Historical values for market bottoms run about 8 - 9 times earnings.

According to this chart, China is starting to divest themselves of US Treasury debt. Since they are the largest holder of US debt, if the US defaults, they have the most to lose. If the US economy is strong and growing, it's kinda stupid to divest themselves of treasuries.

By every possible definition, the stock market is once again a bubble. The government and the bankers, (**cough** Goldman-Sachs 8*cough**) have succeeded in creating yet another bubble. The 90s bubble was dot coms, the early 2000s was real estate, and this one is nothing but government money. It will end badly.

WHAT CAN YOU DO: This is important. If you are invested in the market, please please please protect your profits. That means put a Stop-Loss order into the market now. When the correction comes - and it WILL come - it will be mean, nasty, ugly and fast. A lot of people lost a lot of money last fall, and it will happen again - likely sooner rather than later. Don't get caught short.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO: Save like crazy. Get out of debt. Don't buy on credit. All those things our grandparents learned in the 30s, we get to learn again.

Till next time...

Whistling Past the Graveyard

2009-08-14T08:31:00.006-07:00

Today I am laughing - yet again - at the grand farce that passes for "law" and "justice" under the federal government. The theme of today's entertainment is banking. I know, you’d probably rather gnaw off your own leg than read about banking, but trust me – you’ll get a kick out of this.

Our banks - at least the ones who took all our tax money last fall - are members of the Federal Reserve system. It's called Federal because its territory is the entire country. It's called Reserve because it is a banking system based on reserves.

Reserves is the word used to describe the money that a bank is required to keep on hand to cover the deposits made by their customers. The idea behind a reserve is that if you deposit $100 in the bank, you might want to withdraw that $100 later. If you show up at the bank wanting to withdraw your money, the bank better have money to give you. It may surprise you to know that the banks are not required to keep a dollar on hand for every dollar that is on deposit. They are required to keep some fraction of that money on hand. That is why our banking system is called "fractional reserve banking".

In the Federal Reserve system, that fraction ranges between 3% and 14%. In other words, for every $100 deposited with the bank, the bank is required to keep between $3 and $14 on hand.

(By the way, I am simplifying quite a bit here. If you are really interested in the arcana of reserve requirements, there are some interesting links here and here. And God bless you if you are.)

So what happens to all the rest of the money? The bank loans it out. This is where the alchemy of fractional reserve banking occurs. Watch carefully now - nothing up my sleeves.

Assume we have two people, you and me. I buy things and take out loans, and you sell things and make deposits. And finally assume we have a bank, Bank A, that will take your deposits, will make loans to me and has a reserve requirement of 8%.You deposit $100 with the Bank. Bank A keeps $8 on reserve, and loans me the balance, $92.

I buy $92 worth of goods from you with that money and you deposit that $92 in Bank A. Bank A keeps 8% of that money on deposit and loans me 92% of it, about $85. I buy $85 worth of goods from you with that money I borrowed. You take that money and deposit it in Bank A.

Bank A takes your $85, keeps 8% of it, and loans me the remaining 92% of it, about $78. I buy $78 of stuff from you with the money I borrowed. You deposit that $78 in the Bank. They keep 8% of it and loan me the remaining $72. I buy $72 worth of stuff from you, and the game goes on and on and on...

So from a single $100 deposit, Bank A can make over $1000 in loans. If I repay those loans, then the bank has magically created profits of over $1000 on a mere $100 worth of deposits.

Pretty sweet little business, huh?

But what happens if I don't pay those loans?

Ah, here's where the magic goes all wanky. Instead of creating $1000 in profit out of thin air, the banks have created $1000 in debt out of thin air.

Most banks require that you put up some collateral before they give you a loan. If they loan you money to buy a car, they keep title to the car until you pay off the loan. If you don’t pay the loan, they take your car and sell it to satisfy the loan. Sometimes the car fetches enough to pay off the loan, sometimes it doesn’t.

You pays yer money and you takes yer chances.

This is where the Big Banks got caught. They loaned money to people who couldn’t repay it so that they could buy houses that were overpriced in the first place. Who would have ever imagined they'd have problems?

So why did they make such stupid loans?

Greed, plain and simple. They were lusting after the profits they could create out of thin air and were ignoring the risks that they were creating debts out of thin air instead.

Of course, it wasn’t $1000. It was more like $4 trillion.

According to Federal Reserve rules, if the amount of money a bank actually has on reserve falls below the minimum required amount to cover deposits, then that bank is - by definition - insolvent and must be shut down. There is more to it than that, but that is the important part.

Last fall, the Big Banks were insolvent. But since they are big, and since they own most of Congress, most of the executive branch, and probably several judges, they maneuvered their way out of that tight spot. They arranged it so that you and I – people who had nothing to do with the loans – would bear the losses.

Like I said, it’s a pretty sweet business.

News of the Week coming up tomorrow...

Weekly Update 1 August 2009

2009-08-01T12:22:00.006-07:00

This week we've got a doozy, and it is related to the Cash for Clunkers program. Congress appropriated a billion dollars - Yes, it is tax money. Yes, you are paying for it. - to pay car dealers extra money when they take an old car on a trade-in for a new car. The theory is that by taking money from the middle class taxpayer and giving it to GM and Chrysler, everyone benefits. (Don't try to understand it - it is so stupid only the extremely educated and the extremely powerful can pretend to get it.)

"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. – Thomas Jefferson"

The program has been so popular in its first week that billion dollars has already been soaked up. Congress, in its infinite stupidity, has added another two billion dollars to the program.Oh joy.

But that's not the real reason for the update this week. No, the real reason is the website that the government has established to provide information on the Cash for Clunkers program: cars.gov. I am intentionally NOT providing a link because you REALLY don't want to go there.

WHAT IT IS: If you use the cars.gov site, your computer then is considered to become the property of the Federal Government and they assume the right to access anything and everything on that computer.

This is not an exaggeration.
This is not a scare tactic.
This is not a mis-reading or twisting of information to suit my own purposes.

Here is the actual text from the cars.gov website describing the terms of use for the site:

"This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the US Government.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on ths system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign."

WHY IT MATTERS: My simple goal for this weekly update is to highlight the news of the week that affects our freedom. I focus on the ways the government, (and their masters on Wall Street), steal our freedom by stealing our wealth. So, do I really need to spell out why this matters?

The federal government has now ceased to even pretend to be the servant of the people. They now treat us as slaves.

They take our property when they want: cars.gov.
They take our money when they want and give it to whomever they wish: the bank bailouts.
They take our liberty when they want: habeus corpus is suspended for anyone suspected to be a “terrorist threat".
They even take our lives whenever they want: Waco, Rudy Ridge and who knows what else that didn’t make the headlines.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Two things - both very simple, but one easy and one very difficult:
First, refuse to use cars.gov. This is for your own protection. Tell everyone you know about this property grab by the government. Forward this link to your mailing list.

Second, make the decision today to be a free person and not a slave. A slave has only whatever freedom the master chooses to give it. If you acknowledge the government as your master, then you are already their slave.

But if you instead claim that your freedom belongs to you simply because you are human, and - most importantly - if you live that out, then you are a free man.

Just because they don’t use the terms “slave” and “master” doesn’t mean they don’t act as if they are the masters and we are the slaves. It doesn’t matter what they say, it matters what they do.

Freedom starts between your ears. No one can MAKE you be free, nor can you VOTE yourself freedom. You must choose to be free and then live that way. Starting today, choose to be free. Choose to live, think, work, act and play as a free person and not as a piece of property that the ruling class in Washington and Wall Street can move around and dispose of as they wish.

Do I sound like an extremist to you?

Perhaps I am. If so, I am in good company. A couple of quotes from Barry Goldwater.

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. "

Yours for Freedom...

Weekly Update 25 July 2009

2009-07-25T13:45:00.002-07:00

The news this weeks is misnamed mostly because - as the writer of Ecclesiastes said - there is nothing new under the sun. As the Government/Wall Street/Mainstream Media cartel go into full-on propaganda mode to tell us how everything is just peachy, we can continue to give thanks that Al Gore invented the internet, thus allowing us to bypass the "official" news and get our information straight and undiluted. I doubt that was really what Al had in mind.

According to the cartel, since things are getting worse slower than they were getting worse last year, things are officially getting better. Never mind that the jobless rate is climbing, debt is officially out of control, and the administration is determined to take on even more debt (healthcare) and hobble the economy even more (cap and trade). Never mind that by every meaningful measure, the economy is down in the basement and still digging. If you haven't read Alice in Wonderland, don't sweat it. Lewis Carroll never imagined anything as surreal as the reality we are living every single day.

Obama, (or as my friend Patrick calls him "Teleprompter Jesus"), apparently intends to be the new FDR, and he is following the script to perfection. The Great Depression was only "the depression" till FDR took over. His radical power grabs made the economy worse, (look it up for yourself), although in fairness he did get a lot of concrete poured and pecan trees planted. FDR's economy made no appreciable recovery throughout the 30s, so I guess we can prepare for three things - the economy will continue to suck, we'll be looking for another way - preferably a big one - and Obama will be sanctified if not outright deified by the same geniuses in the main stream media who used to NOT be bought and paid for by Wall Street.

Yeah, it's been that kind of week.

The news that interested me this week:

Schumer wants to curb traders' flash orders
What It Is: Senator Chuck Schumer is saying the right things about putting an end to "High Frequency Trading", a euphemism for the blatant market manipulation which Goldman Sachs & company have been engaging in for the last several years.
What It Means: As I have reported previously, Goldman Sachs is the biggest, most powerful, most corrupt and most corrupting influence in the US today. (The other big banks are complicit as well, but Goldman is by far the worst.) If Schumer has his way, Goldman will have to compete on an even playing field with the rest of the investors in the market.
Why It Matters: Though I doubt Goldman will allow Congress to stop this practice, and I am certain the SEC will do nothing to stop it, Schumer is at least shining a light on a very dirty practice that is robbing ordinary investors and is amplifying every move in the market, making rises and falls more violent and damaging.
What It Means To You: If you lost money in last year's market plunge, blame Goldman for the speed and violence of it all. If you know anyone who works for Goldman, you should shame them publicly. Seriously, outside of radical Islam, this bank is the most morally corrosive force in the world today.

End Note: I do not expect Congress to do anything about this because Congress and the Administration are bought and paid for by Wall Street. Believe me, Congress knows where the money that keeps them in power is coming from. So I no longer believe in lobbying Congress. They will not listen and the administration is a joke.

But I do believe it is time for you to bone up on your American history, specifically to read the list of reasons the colonies initially declared independence from the Mother Country. When neither the law nor morality matters to those in positions of power, it is time for us to say "no more". If I were you, I would learn what "non-violent civil disobedience" means. I'd start learning about Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi and what action they took when they decided that the status quo had to be challenged.

Our government is no longer moral by any stretch of the definition of morality. Wall Street - specifically Goldman - is a den of thieves, Washington is their hand-puppet and the Main Stream Media their p.r. firm. Don't depend on those in power to relinquish their power. We - the people, by whose consent they govern - must cease to give our consent. That doesn't merely mean "vote 'em out of office." It means coming to the point where we declare with our actions that liberty is more precious than life.

Yeah, it's that serious.

Weekly Update 11 July 2009

2009-07-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

Happy week after Dependence Day.

I didn't publish the weekend of July 4th. I hope you survived. I'm back this week stories stories from the world of finance and economics that are interesting and pertinent to those who care about the cause of freedom. But first...

...I received a note this week from someone who was hysterical about the impending nationalised healthcare debacle. Before I make my comments, let me make one thing clear:

I am opposed without reservation to nationalized healthcare.

With that said, I want to respond to some of the scare-mongering coming from "my side".

The letter I was sent warned that seniors in England and Canada who need various sorts of cardio procedures cannot get them because they are too expensive. This is not true. In England and Canada, anyone who can afford to pay for healthcare outside the public system can still get whatever healthcare they want. That is just like America today, and just like it will be in America after healthcare is nationalized. If you can afford to pay for it, you will be able to get it.

It doesn't help us to claim that "old people won't be able to get healthcare". Seniors who cannot afford to pay for healthcare today will get less healthcare in the future. Those who can afford to pay for it will still be able to get it.

2. Many Americans who oppose nationalized healthcare talk as if the current American system works. It does not. Our current healthcare system is hopelessly broken. We have medical cartels, rules against publishing prices, price gouging, fraud and a ridiculous bureaucracy. I am not remotely in favor of nationalizing healthcare, but it is lunacy to argue that the current system is not broken.

If you truly care about individual liberty, then you must take responsibility to think for yourself. Personal Freedom and Personal Responsibility are the two sides of the same coin. Don't mindlessly parrot arguments - think for yourself.

Now, on to the headlines:

Artificial Trading Volume on the NYSE
What It Is: The biggest banks in the world - Goldman-Sachs, Morgan-Stanley, BofA, Deutsche Bank, UBS, et.al - are exploiting a loophole in securities laws to artificially drive up trading volume on the NYSE.
Why It Matters: These banks are making money simply by creating artificial volume. It is manipulation without being technically illegal.
What It Means to the World: Once again, the largest financial institutions in the world are cheating. They are literally stealing from investors.
What It Means to You: The recent rise in the market in the last 3 months is bogus. If you are long stocks, keep your stops tight; a reversal is coming.

Emails indicate EPA Suppressed Report Skeptical of Global Warming
What It Is: Exactly what the headline says: EPA scientists submitted a 98 page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data." An EPA official told the scientists that the Obama adminstration had already decided what to do and that this report was not welcome.
Why It Matters: Politics - not hard science - is driving the "Climate Change" agenda. Anyone who questions it is - at the moment - merely an irritant. In coming days, those who question the political orthodoxy will be treated as enemies of the state.
What It Means to the World: Not much. Were the US not running pell-mell down the path of economic destruction with all the debt the government has already incurred, the economic lunacy of the Kyoto Convention would be alarming. But the Billionaire Banker Bailout will destroy us long before the EPA can.
What It Means to You: Trading carbon-emission credits is going to be big business. If you own a business, it is time to educate yourself in "cap and trade".

Goldman-Sachs is the Epicenter or Evil in the World Today - if you read nothing else this week, please read this article.
What It Is: Matt Taibbi documents all the ways that Goldman Sachs has manipulated the financial markets in the last 20 years, how they have callously destroyed the bank accounts and the lives of literally millions of people, and how they are still doing it.
Why It Matters: There is no more evil organization in the world today. Those who defend GS thinking they are paragons of capitalism don't know what they are talking about. GS does not compete like a capitalist, they compete like a Mafia don. In fact, the Mob has nothing on GS.
What It Means to the World: GS operates for the benefit of GS and no one else. Laws that allow GS to lie, cheat, still and kill must be applied to these people.
What It Means to You: Goldman Sachs is directly, (although not solely) responsible for the financial crisis, the rise in your taxes, the rise in unemployment and the destruction of many large companies. They are enriching themselves at your expense and the government is acting as their agent. Just like the Mafia, as long as you tolerate it, they will continue it.

Weekly Update 27 June 2009

2009-06-24T08:06:00.009-07:00

Curse the Darkness or Light a Candle?

These are indeed interesting times we live in, and we must be careful not to be people who complain yet do nothing to improve the world in which we live. There is no glory in saying "I told you so" when your dire predictions of doom prove to have been accurate. If you see trouble coming, don't merely talk about it - or worse, complain about it - do something constructive. Light a candle.

This week I finally started reading The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age. It's been on my "must read" list for several years, but I didn't get to it until just today. The authors pinpoint many of the challenges facing our modern world, including the collapse of the economy, but their message is optimistic, not "gloom and doom". They consider the nation-state a relic of the industrial age and predict the end of nation-states as viable political entities. To put that into terms we can understand, they predict that the Government of The United States of America will cease to have political authority over Americans. What it does not mean is "the end of America".

As I was telling a friend this week, it is important that we make a clear distinction between the government and our country. The US government is a dying pig that makes promises it cannot keep and bullies people around. America is a country, an idea and a people who share that idea and that geography. America can get along just fine without that ravenous, lying, violent government. In fact, we will get along a lot better without it. The transition will cause a lot of pain and fear, but we can take hope knowing that the end state is going to be a lot better.

With that in mind, let's see what's happened in the world this week.

Headlines of the Week

What it is: Goldman-Sachs to pay record bonuses Goldman-Sachs told employees this week to expect the biggest bonuses ever.
Why it matters: When the government gave AIG some $80 billion late last year to "save them", AIG turned right around and sent $15 billion of that money to Goldman-Sachs. So your tax money is paying bonuses to the richest, most corrupt bankers on the planet. Think about that Goldman-Sachs banker sipping rare scotch on the porch of his vacation home in the Hamptons when you are trying to figure out how to make your mortgage payment.
What it means to the world: GS continues to make sure everyone else pays for their mistakes. If you or I had sold a bunch of worthless bonds to investors and then bought a bunch of worthless credit- default swaps on those bonds from AIG, we would first go broke and then go to jail when the government found out we had committed fraud. Not Goldman-Sachs though.
What it means to you: Your tax bill will be higher for years to come so that a handful of GS bankers can keep their vacation homes in the Hamptons. Remember that when the government fails, we won't have to put up with this kind of crap anymore.

What it is: Riots in CHina After months of calm, there have recently been a spate of riots being reported in the Chinese media, or on the internet. Is this because media restrictions have been lifted, allowing news of riots to spread, or has there been a genuine increase in social tension in the countryside? It is impossible to tell. China no longer publishes the figures for how many riots take place each year, but most people put the figure at around 80,000 and the vast majority go totally unnoticed.

Why it matters: The nattering boobs of the talking-head media machine are convinced that China will recover from the recession first and then lead the world into a brighter consumer future. But China is not recovering and in fact has deep, intractable issues that must be resolved before any sort of recovery or growth can occur.

What it means to the world: There are several pieces to this puzzle:

China has millions of people who used to be peasants, then achieved middle class status, and are now out of work - people who will not willingly accept peasant status now. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm (after they've seen Paree)
Political leaders always try to divert attention from their failings.
War is the most potent diversion there is.
China has a huge army.
China has a huge imbalance between the number of young men and marriageable women.

Put the pieces together.

What it means to you: Do not plan on China pulling the US economy out of its slump. It's not gonna happen. You need to make plans to survive without the help of the Chinese dragon.

What it is: China - Economic Catastrophe Unfolding This falls into the category of "Important" as opposed to "Urgent" news. I urge you to read this entire article.

China has a real estate bubble just like we do, and a stock market bubble, just like we did, and an unwillingness to book losses, just like Japan did. In addition, they have a huge population of peasants who moved to the cities during the boom, (as the article says, "the largest migration of a population in human history"), and now they cannot find jobs. Exports are plummeting, the government is lying about the numbers, and - as per the previous story - riots are breaking out all over the country.

Why it matters: China is a tinderbox and we'd better pray that there are no budding Lenins, Stalins, Hitlers or Maos whiling away their time in a Chinese prison right now.

What it is: Insider Selling is the Fastest in 2 Years The people inside the largest publicly held companies in the us - people with intimate knowledge of their companies' propsects for the future, believe that the stock prices in their companies are going down, not up.
Why it matters: Since March 6th, the S&P500 index of the 500 largest companies in America has risen by more than 40%, from a low of 666 to a high of about 950. That means that the "dumb money" is driving this rally. The smart money is selling in anticipation of a fall.
What it means to the world: This stock market rally is a classic bear-market rally that traps the unsuspecting and destroys them. It is not a new bull market.
What it means to you: If you hold any long positions in the market, make sure you are either hedged or have stop-loss orders in place to protect your profits when the market falls.

What it is: Some additional updates on the bearer bonds saga:

This was either the biggest smuggling operation in history or the biggest counterfeiting operation in history. Either way, why did the Italian governments release the two men caught with the bonds?
One of the quickest ways to sabotage and usher in the death of a currency is to raise legitimate questions about its ability to withstand counterfeiting efforts. Prove that counterfeiting is not only possible but highly likely, and the world’s confidence in the sabotaged currency will undoubtedly plummet. This certainly has the "smell" of an attack against the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, and yet why would a counterfeiter be skilled enough to create almost perfect $500 million bearer bonds and then create a counterfeit of a $1 billion bearer bond that "never existed"?
What organization would make nearly perfect counterfeits of bonds they could never hope to cash?

Nothing about this story makes sense, other than this: worldwide confidence in the ability of the US government to pay its debts is growing increasingly shaky.

Till next week: Light a candle!

Weekly Update 20 June 2009

2009-06-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

This week is a little less eventful than last. We have no update on the rumored Federal Government Trading account at State Street, but we're keeping an eye on it. The government is saying that the $134 billion in bonds recovered by Italian border police last week were fakes, but they let the two guys go. Nothing about this story makes any sense - nothing. We may never get to the bottom of this, but I will point out that the men carried Japanese passports and that $134B is about 1/4th of Japan's holding of US debt. Draw your own conclusions.

This week's stories focus on the continuing effort by the media and the government to rob from us and enslave us. Enjoy:

Headlines of the Week
ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE
What It Is: ABC news is giving the Obama administration an hour of free air time to promote its Health Care plan.
Why It Matters: ABC and the White House are colluding to violate the FCC fairness doctrine, (but don't expect the FCC to do anything about it.)
What It Means To The World: The paper-thin divide between the government and the media is now officially shredded. Regardless of what you believe about nationalized health care, this cooperation between a government-protected and allegedly non-partisan broadcast company and the Executive Branch of government is nothing less than state-sponsored propoganda.
What It Means to You: It means nothing if you don't watch or if you watch and do nothing. But if you write ABC, their owners The Disney Corporation and their advertisers and declare your intent to boycott them all unless they give equal time to opposing viewpoints, it will mean a great deal.

What It Is: NY Times story from 2002 confirms that housing bubble was intentional
Why It Matters: The "Official Story" about the housing bubble and subsequent collapse is that "No one could have predicted it." This is patently false, as many people predicted it, among them Karl Denninger, Mish Shedlock, Nouriel Roubini and Peter Schiff. I'm sure there are others, but those are the four I know about who sounded the warning as early as 2005
What It Means To The World: The people currently in charge of "fixing" the economic mess are the same people who not only created it, but created it intentionally. This is not to say they intended to crash the world economy, only that they intentionally did all the stupid, illegal and immoral things that created the crash. Therefore, it is safe to assume that whatever they do, they will not be able to fix the problem.
What It Means to You: You should stop believing anything said by Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner or anyone who is now or ever was employed by Goldman Sachs. These are the criminals who have consistently been wrong about everything, but they get rich anyway. They are proven to be liars of the worse sort and it is foolhardy to believe a liar.

What It Is: Chinese Analysts Pinpoints the Achilles Heel in the Economic Recovery
Why It Matters: He makes several important points:
1. The financial industry is a disproportionate size compared to the rest of the economy.
2. The financial industry salaries are several times higher than comparable positions in other industry
3. The finanical press has no incentive to be truthful in its reporting, and great incentive to always be bullish.
What It Means to the World: The talk of "green shoots" in the economic recovery is mere propaganda. The economy is not improving.
What It Means to You: Two things - first, this should confirm for you that you have other sources of economic news you can trust besides the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and their lapdogs in the financial press. Second, do NOT make financial commitments based on the erroneous belief that the economy is improving. There is a lot more pain to come.

What It Is: Moody's Warns of Multi-Level Downgrade of California Debt, California Aid Request Turned Down by US (two different stories)
Why It Matters: California's economy is the eighth largest in the world. This downgrade means that California will have to pay much higher interest rates to borrow money than it has had to in the past. The Federal government is saying they won't give California money, which means the legislature will have to get serious about making cuts to services. No one seriously believe's California has any chance of repaying its debt, but a downgrade by Moody's makes that opinion official.
What It Means to the World: All this talk of green shoots is baloney. California is essentially bankrupt. The federal government will undoubtedly loan the state more money, but it won't fix the problem anymore than all the other bailout programs have failed to fix the underlying problem.
What It Means to You: Expect interest rates to continue to rise. Make sure you know whether or not you hold any California state government bonds in your portfolio. A downgrade will hurt you.

And finally, in the category of "Interesting and a Little BBit Alarming" is this story about tapping your cellphone.

As always, if you don't want to get these updates anymore, just drop me a note, but if you DO like them, please pass them on.

Spot On Financial Analysis from a Chinese Analyst

2009-06-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

This is some of the most succinct and compelling analysis I have seen yet. Here's the money quote:

"The Greenspan era has nurtured a vast financial sector. All the people in this business need something to do. Since they invest other people's money, they are biased toward bullish sentiment. Otherwise, if they say it's all bad, their investors will take back the money, and they will lose their jobs. Governments know that, and create noise to give them excuses to be bullish.

This institutional weakness has been a catastrophe for people who trust investment professionals. In the past two decades, equity investors have done worse than those who held U.S. market bonds, and who lost big in Japan and emerging markets in general. It is astonishing that a value-destroying industry has lasted so long. The greater irony is that salaries in this industry have been two to three times above what's paid in other sector."

Weekly Update 13 June 2009

2009-06-13T17:07:00.002-07:00

Last year, 2008, I spent the months of March, April, May, June & July bombarding you with emails imploring you to bombard your congressman with phone calls, letters, faxes and emails. The reason for my alarm was the financial time-bomb that was ticking and that I hoped Congress would have the courage and foresight to defuse. In July, Congress ignored us and voted to gift $800 billion to "bail out" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That was the point that I realized the game was over. The American government was no longer "of the people, by the people and for the people". We had told Congress - by a ratio of 300:1 - not to bail out Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, and they ignored us. I could no longer ignore the reality that Congress was owned by the bankers.

I quit sending out updates at the point because I could not imagine wasting any more energy trying to get Congress to do the right thing. And I am glad I didn't because it would have been a waste of energy. Washington is owned by the bankers, and Washington does whatever the bankers say. I don't even feel a need to explain that assertion. If it is not obvious, then you are not paying attention.

That brings me to the substance of this letter.

As some of you know, I make my living as a trader. I'm involved in the markets all day, every day, and I spend most of my spare time in research, hoping to understand what is happening in the world that will affect my work. I love what I do. What I have recently begun to realize is that most of you do not have the time or the inclination to study what I study, and yet your lives are likely to be affected by the things I am discovering. For that reason, I have decided to do a weekly update of the news that I think is important for you to know and an analysis of why it is important. This is my view, my opinions, and is certainly subject to my own biases, so "Handle With Care".

I hope you enjoy it. If you don't want to get these updates, just drop me a line and I will remove you from the list. On the other hand, if you DO enjoy them, please let me know and always feel free to pass them along to others.

Headlines of the Week
Italian Border Patrol Confiscates $134 Billion
What It Is: Two men carrying Japanese passports tried to smuggle $134 billion in US Government Bonds into Switzerland from Italy. The US press has not reported this story. Conflicting reports on whether the bonds are real or counterfeit.
Why It Matters 1: $134B is an amount of money so large that only governments, the World Bank and the IMF would deal in those. If this is stolen, then what in the world is wrong with these governments or banks that they can't keep track of their investments? If it is not stolen, then why was it being smuggled into Switzerland?
Why It Matters 2: If they are counterfeit, it means that there are more counterfeit bonds out there, which could de-stabilize the already precarious bond market. If they are real, it means someone is trying to unload US Government bonds without selling them through the open market process, which could destabilize the already precarious bond market.
What It Means To The World: Big bond holders are worried that the US may default on its debt. Japan this week made a formal announcement that they are fully confident that the US will pay its debts. This is code for, "we are very worried about the US paying its debts."
What It Means to You: The cost of credit just took another body blow. If you are trying to buy or re-finance a house, the window to get a low-interest rate loan is closing fast. If you are trying to get a business loan, either for new credit or to roll over an existing loan, the cost of credit is going higher and higher. This is going to work against the government's attempt to goose the economy.

Government possibly interfering in the market via State Street
What It Is: An unsubstantiated report that the government has opened several private trading accounts with State Street Securities and is buying and selling securities through a single broker there.
Why It Matters: If true, it means the government is using government money to speculate in the market. Because of the nature of the account, the type of broker that State Street is and - most importantly - the amount of money the government has available to it, then the government is not merely speculating, it is directly influencing the market.
What It Means to the World: Nothing until substantiated, but could be very, very important if proven true.
What It Means to You: Nothing yet, but watch it.

Federal Reserve Transparency Act has 222 Sponsors
What It Is: A Ron Paul-sponsored bill to conduct a pricvate audit of the Federal Reserve.
Why It Matters: In theory, an audit of the Fed will show how their money is being used. The belief is that the Fed is violating its charter by buying and selling securities that are not 100% backed by the full faith and credit of the US government.
What It Means to the World: Nothing. The Congress will do whatever the bankers tell them to do. Even if this passes, nothing will change. Congress will not bite the hand that feeds it.
What It Means to You: You should learn to watch what the government does rather than listen to what they say. The government works hand-in-hand with the bankers. Ron Paul has his heart in the right place, and this makes for good political theatre, but Congress had the chance to do something meaningful last summer when we bombarded them with requests to not bail-out Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. They instead obeyed their masters on Wall Street. Do not expect the government to do ANYTHING that harms the big bankers.

Government Overturns Contract Law in GM & Chrysler Bankruptcies
What It Is: The government ignored contract law when they compelled GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy. Senior debt holders who - under the terms of contract law - should have been first in line to be paid under the bankruptcy, were pushed to the back of the line and will get something like 17 cents on the dollar for their investment.
Why It Matters: The sanctity of private property and contracts is central to the functioning of a free society. This action by the government strikes at the heart of our free society. It also provides a disincentive for future investors to put their money into bonds for fear that the terms of the bond contract will be overthrown if the government deems it "necessary".
What It Means to the World: Investors will be far less likely to buy bonds issued by any company or municipality that has the slightest whiff of instability for fear that the government will simply ignore the law and trash the contract if they think it necessary. This will serve to drive the cost of credit higher, it will reduce the pool of available credit, and it will drive down the value of existing municipal and corporate debt.
What It Means to You: If you hold any sort of corporate or municipal bonds in your investment portfolio, you should find out exactly what those bonds are. If they are bonds backing any sort of entity that is at risk, you should consider moving into something less at risk of government intervention.

One Trillion Dollar Bill - Not news but funny

Almost Legendary Heist - Foiled!

2009-06-12T09:34:00.002-07:00

Viva Italiana! Sometime in the last week, the Italian border patrol stopped a couple of Japanese nationals with $134 billion dollars in US Bearer Bonds trying to cross into Switzerland.

A hundred and thirty four BILLION!

If these are counterfeit, it's the greatest counterfeiting job in history. If they are real, then this is even bigger news.

Doncha wonder why this isn't being reported ANYWHERE in US papers of record like say, the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal? (Bloomberg has a wee bit.)

Maybe the bankers and their lapdogs at Treasury are scared spitless about this. Maybe they should be.

The REAL Role of the Fed

2009-06-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

Excellent article on what the Federal Reserve is really in business to do. Key point, "pay attention to what they do, not to what they say."

The Symphony Orchestra and the Remote Control

2009-06-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Proof that there are still magnificent musicians in the world - and proof that they know how to entertain.

Parting Company

2009-04-22T06:55:00.001-07:00

Walter Williams explains that political divorce is more peaceful than actual murder. An awful lot of people seem to think that actual murder (war) is better than political divorce. Why?

Criminals For Gun Control

2009-04-21T10:10:00.001-07:00

Funny and true.

Hack Your Brain

2009-04-06T07:38:00.001-07:00

I love this!

Who Do You Believe?

2009-03-31T23:13:00.002-07:00

Obama and AIG: the numbers tell one story, Obama tells a different one. Which do we believe?

2009-03-26T12:54:00.001-07:00

I have NEVER seen a dressing down of a head of government to compare to this.

The Feds Screw Us Some More

2009-02-25T09:19:00.001-07:00

The guy who actually is in charge of oversight for the SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR Troubled Asset Relief Program, (TARP), says it is "ripe for fraud".

I think I'll have a heart attack and die of "not surprised".

The High Cost of Good Intentions

2009-02-25T09:17:00.001-07:00

Remember when The World As We Know It was going to end last September unless Congress threw $800 billion at the banks?

Well, here's how some of that money was spent. We overpaid $78 billion dollars for bad assets that the government has no business owning.

Now that's what I call seriously throwing good money after bad.

Ten Years Ago

2009-02-24T22:59:00.002-07:00

This piece from the September 30, 1999 issue of the New York Times tells about a program initiated by Fannie Mae to "help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers." And how would this program increase home ownership? Ah, it was a brilliant plan - brilliant I tell you:

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.

To be honest, they didn't do it our of pure altruism; there was some "pressure" applied by various parties also deeply interested in the welfare of minorities and low-income consumers.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

But hey, they were just doing it for the children, weren't they? And how did they propose to help those minorities and low-income consumers? With a plan that was a brilliant as it was daring: they would loan money to people who couldn't repay it!

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

I just feel a warm glow all over knowing that the government cares so much about minorities and low-income consumers, don't you?

And now, after the government has done so much to help, they are going to do even more!

Oh, I am flushed with giddy anticipation at the wonders our Glorious Leaders have planned for us poor minorities and/or low-income consumers ten years from now. I mean, who could have guessed ten years ago that these programs would be so stunningly successful? The sourpuss who wrote this piece did mention a wee tiny dark cloud on the horizon, a cloud no darker than a man's hand, one might say:

Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

Good intentions are really all that matters, and no one but no one has more good intentions than Our American Government.

Call your Congresscritter. Make their lives as miserable as they have made yours.

2009-02-24T15:47:00.001-07:00

I added a new post to Rockonomics today, for those of you interested in trading-related stuff.

Chicago Tea Party

2009-02-19T20:46:00.001-07:00

Enough is enough.

You can lead the borrower to the bank...

2009-02-12T10:45:00.001-07:00

...but you can't make him take out a loan.

This story from Bloomberg highlights the fundamental problem with the Billionaire Bank Bailout Bill III Congress is gonna pass tomorrow.

People are not taking out loans like they used to because we are afraid we won't be able to afford the payments.

It's simple stuff like this that convinces me Congress, Treasury and the Fed are conspiring together to make the Bankers rich regardless of the damage it does to everyone else.

We now have the government Alexander Hamilton wanted. Ain't it a sight?

Congress Does What Jesus Can't

2009-02-11T10:07:00.002-07:00

This is not original with me. I heard it from Guy Adami on Fast Money yesterday.

We all pretty much understand how much a million dollars is, and I guess we could all figure out how to spend a million dollars, right?

But does anyone really understand how much a trillion dollars is? Here's a little illustration.

If Jesus started spending a million dollars on the day he was born a little over two thousand years ago, and if he spent a million dollars a day, every single day since then, right up until today...

...He still wouldn't have spent a trillion dollars.

It'll be almost another thousand years before he is able to spend a trillion dollars, even at the rate of a million dollars a day.

But Congress is gonna spend a trillion dollars (that they don't have), to bail out the banks that lost trillions.

Makes you feel all warm inside, doesn't it?
-------------------------------------------
Call your idiot Congressman and tell him that giving money to the same idiot bankers who got us into this mess is not a real good idea. Here's the links to find their contact information:

House of Representatives
Senate

Morons & Bastards

2009-02-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's hard to imagine that there is a group of people more contemptible than Congresscritters, but Wall Street bankers have managed to fill that role. Now the morons in Congress are beating up on the bastards of Wall Street as if their own halos are tight and wings are secure.

In the immortal words of the bard, a pox on both their houses.

Your Daily Dose of Bad News

2009-02-10T11:36:00.001-07:00

Layoff Daily. What a great idea.

Uncle Sam Wants to Pay Off Your Mortgage

2009-02-09T17:04:00.001-07:00

Well, that's not exactly what the stimulus package is supposed to do, but the amount of money that the government is committing to "rescues", "bailouts" and "stimuli" is - according to Bloomberg, which has actually kept track of these things - NINE POINT SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS. (I think it has a bit more impact when written out like that.) That's enough money to pay off 90% of the mortgages in the country.

Lemme ask a question: Would you be more likely to get out there in the economy and spend money if the government paid off 90% of your mortgage?

Uh huh, I thought so.

That ain't gonna happen, of course. Instead, the money is going to spent so that billionaire bankers don't have to sell their private jets to afford their third vacation home in the Bahamas.

Truly, if you are a banker who is not a miserable greedy lying bastard, you must be embarrassed beyond words. I'll bet you've been considering a job that held in higher esteem, like maybe becoming a used car salesman, or a pimp.

Best Analysis Yet

2009-02-03T21:50:00.001-07:00

This analysis of our country's financial condition, by James Quinn, is the best I have read yet. Among the most salient points, since 1980:

The National Debt has grown by 1,150%
GDP has grown by 500%
Consumers have increased their total debt level by 738%
Revolving credit increased from $56 billion in 1980 to $982 billion
today, a 1,750% increase

In other words, we've borrowed way too much money. And the money the government is spending to "stimulate the economy"? That will be borrowed as well. The change we can believe in is this: we will borrow and spend our way out of the largest debt bubble in history.

Quinn compares the US situation today to that of Japan in 1989 and concludes that we will be very lucky if we make out as well as Japan did.

If Wishes Were Nuts...

2009-02-03T16:50:00.001-07:00

I've recently been involved with a group that is trying to exert influence over Arizona's budgeting process. State budgets are deadly dull things, right up until we find out that our state is insolvent. Then it gets exciting.

Things have been very exciting in Arizona lately.

The Center on Budget & Policy Priorities released a report indicating that 46 of 50 states are facing insolvency. Not mere "budget crunches" - actual insolvency. Arizona leads the pack with a budget shortfall that totals almost 16% of the general fund.

We wish it were different.

We wish we had enough money to pay for everything people want from their government. We wish we didn't have to exercise fiscal restraint. We wish we didn't have to make hard choices. We wish we didn't have to work so hard and get so little in return. We wish greedy people wouldn't shove and grab. We wish lazy people would work hard. We wish sick people would get well, and poor people would get rich, and bad people would behave, and good people would be even better. We wish someone else would fix it. We wish someone else would sacrifice. We wish that wishing would change things. We wish for a fairy godmother instead of self-discipline. We wish for strokes of good fortune instead of years of diligent labor. We wish for Easy Street and Happy Days instead of "nose to the ground", "hand to the plow" and "shoulder to the wheel".

For a long time, we've inhabited a fantasy world where dollar bills were equated with wealth, credit was the same as money, and good intentions were the same as good works.

We wish lies were the truth.

But all of our wishes and all of our good intentions have amounted to less than nothing. When Fantasy Worlds collide with the Real World, the Real World always always always always always wins. Fantasy is fine, as long as it is never exposed to the harsh ways of reality.

We have fantasized since August 15, 1971 that printing money was the same as creating wealth. We managed to avoid reality for 38 years. That's really quite impressive. But we can't do it anymore. Reality is here. The fantasy is over.

Arizona will be bankrupt within 4 months, unless we stop fantasizing.

Sorry folks, it's time to live in the real world again.

2008-12-01T10:37:00.001-07:00

VDH makes some good, if politically incorrect, points.

2008-09-30T09:55:00.002-07:00

The (Near) Death of the State by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Yesterday was one of the worst days in decades for the power elite. It was one of the best for liberty.

2008-08-21T19:12:00.001-07:00

I knew Tiger Woods was a terrific golfer, but this is ridiculous.

(I love it!)

Big Time Crooks

2008-08-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Somebody knew something in the days before the Bear Stearns debacle. This kind of behavior is criminal; it is theft on a grand scale, but I guarantee you that no one will go to prison for it. When it is bankers who rob the banks, and bankers who write the rules, you can be sure no bankers will ever serve time.

On Marriage

2008-07-02T19:54:00.003-07:00

My (common law) wife and I have a marriage, but we have never had a wedding. In previous times, I might have said that we lack "the benefit of a wedding", but I no longer think a wedding confers any benefits. Here's why.

We each had previous weddings. We each had the official sanction of both church and state governments, and when push came to shove, neither the state nor the church did a thing to help us keep our original marriages intact. If there is some alleged benefit to having the official sanction of the government and/or the church in the initiation of marriage, we sure didn't see it.

Now the state - and some churches, including my denomination, the ECUSA - are granting the status of "marriage" to homosexual couples. If homosexuals want to make a commitment to one another, that's fine with me. I figure you take love where you can find it. But for the entire history of the human race, a "married couple" has had a male "husband" and a female "wife". Now the state has decided that "marriage" doesn't mean that at all. Now it just means, "Bruce and Steve want the legal right to file their taxes as if they were married." And if Bruce and Steve want to get a divorce, then the state grants them that as well, no questions asked. It won't be long before the state grants a marriage license to any conceivable combination of entities, sentient or not. If a guy wants to have a marriage contract with his Pepsi Machine and his pet hamster, the California Supreme Court will allow it and the rest of the moron governments will follow suit.

The churches are mostly toothless in the face of this debacle. The ones that just follow whatever the gubbmint says, like the idiot Episcopal Church of the USA, (I can call it idiotic 'cause it's my church), will not draw the line anywhere; they are clueless. Some of the more "conservative" churches, (I use scare quotes because the only thing they are conserving is their imaginations of the past), will fuss and fight and condemn the godlessness of the culture but will not do the one thing that will make a difference: quit getting in bed with the government.

The churches in America act as agents of the state when their ministers announce that the happy couple is now married "according to the authority vested in" the minister himself by the state. If the church has the authority to make a couple married, then that authority should be coming from God, not from the state. And if the church does indeed possess that authority, then she should exercise it without apology and without qualification.

The Bible has a lot to say about how a couple should treat one another if they are married, but it is utterly silent on how a couple goes about becoming married. When a man and woman choose to live together as if they were married, then the only biblical response is to hold them to scriptural principals of behavior towards one another. If the church is going to claim the authority to marry people, then they better come up with a good explanation for how they gained that authority. Otherwise, please just shut up.

2008-06-26T17:56:00.001-07:00

Those who spend much time around me know that I have a deep interest in matters economic and financial. In fact, I know enough economics to truly understand why it is known as "the dismal science". Nevertheless...

This presentation is well worth your time. Since we are in an election year, we'll have the candidates and the talking heads in the media telling us what is going on. Do yourself a favor: instead of listening to them, (let alone believing them), educate yourself. This presentation tells exactly where we are financially, how we got there, and what will happen in the future without some significant changes.

I repeat - take the time to educate yourself. Don't depend on someone else to tell you.

2008-06-24T16:57:00.003-07:00

This is hysterically funny if you take the point of view that our country is totally screwed - which I do. Not so funny if you harbor any hope of us getting out of this mess with our freedoms or our constitution intact.

A bill winding its way through the Congress, (the so-called Dodd-Shelby Bill, also known as HR3221), is supposed to help "troubled homeowners" keep their homes. The reality is that the bill will use $300 billion in taxpayer money to bail out banks that made stupid loans.

Oh, and the bill was basically written by Bank of America.
And BofA is trying to buy Countrywide, but doesn't want to be responsible for all the bad loans Countrywide wrote.
And Countrywide made an extra-special, super-duper home loan to a guy by the name of Christopher Dodd, who just happens to be the sponsor of the "Dodd-Shelby" bill.

Ain't that just a knee-slapper?

Here's the actual BofA presentation from March 11 of this year proposing what is now the Dodd-Shelby bill.

When the revolution comes, the first people up against the wall are going to be the bankers.

2008-06-23T13:08:00.004-07:00

I've retired from the Boar's Head Tavern, (thanks for six great years, Michael), but I guess I still need a place to talk about what's on my mind. So R/A is back in business.

When my marriage broke up several years ago, Mary Gauthier's CD Mercy Now, served as the soundtrack for the dissolution of my life. I queued it up today for the first time in several years, and I must say it has aged very well. IN other words, I like it because it's good, not just because it made me feel good back then.

Arthur Robinson has written a terrific article on the politicization of science for Human Events. We are teetering on the edge of a return to the dark ages when the UN decides that scientific fact can be better determined by polling and politics than by the scientific method.

If you haven't discovered it yet, Gary North's website is well worth at least a weekly visit. He updates it daily, and I almost always find something worthwhile there.

Hit 'Em Where It Hurts

2008-05-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I traveled to New York last month to protest the bailout of Bear Stearns by you, the taxpayer. Perhaps you pay no attention tpo what is happening with our country's finances, and if so, that is fine. The short version of the story is that speculators made spectacular bets that they could rich with mortgages. It turns out they were wrong, and now they have gone to the government and asked to be bailed out. They are going to raise YOUR taxes to do it.

Do you like paying for other people's mistakes?

Would you like to do something about it?

There is something VERY powerful and VERY simply you can do about it.

(I like simple and powerful.)

Here's the what you do: Between June 5 and June 15 this year, pull all your cash out of the bank. All of it. For those who want to know more, here's a website describing it. In short, what will happen when you pull your cash out of your bank is that the banks are forced to lend less money. Since the bankers are the ones who made the bad bets, lost a ton of money and are now asking Congress to make good all their bad bets with YOUR tax money, it only makes sense to hit them where it hurts.

Let's do this together.

Ruminations on Baptism

2007-05-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

If you were baptised as an infant, then someone made a decision to do something good for you, a decision that you were incapable of making for yourself. In baptism, the child is welcomed into the household of faith and accepted as a part of the community of faith - all very good things indeed. But the best part is that the "good thing" of infant baptism occurs not by an act of the child's will, but by the will of another who is wiser, more loving, and far less self-centered than the child.

We baptise babies who know nothing about what we are doing or why we are doing it. They neither ask for it nor want it nor - in many cases - welcome it, but it is a very good thing we do for them, and we do it because we love them.

Infant baptism is a vivid picture of the work Christ did on our behalf. I am aware that much of Christendom prefers believers baptism and I respect their opinions, but the picture presented to us in infant baptism is profound, and we would do well to meditate on it.

The scriptures tell us that even though we were "dead in our trespasses and sins", Christ made us alive. Note that it does not say say we were sick, or weak, or disabled - it says we were dead.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions... Eph 2:4-5

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. Col 2:13

The scriptures tells us that we were sinners and enemies of God, but in spite of that fact, Christ reconciled us to God through His own self-sacrificing death.

But God shows and clearly proves His love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us... For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, it is much more certain, now that we are reconciled, that we shall be saved through His life. Rom 5:8,10

He did all these things because He loved us, not because we loved Him. Christ found us in a state where we were incapable of helping ourselves, incapable of asking for help and incapable of even knowing that we needed help. And yet, in just such a state, He saved us because He loves us.

As men, we are geared to performing, to working, to earning everything we get. We are constantly evaluated on the quality of our work - at home, in the workplace, in the church, on the athletic fields and courts - and we are all very aware of how well or how poorly we measure up. At work, when we perform well we get raises and promotions. When we perform poorly, we suffer. At home, when we work to our mate's satisfaction, we are rewarded in ways both overt and subtle. When we perform poorly, we pay the price. On the playing fields, the winners survive to play another day, but the losers go home.

The whole world operates under this paradigm. It is so deeply imbedded in our individual and collective psyches that we are offended when anyone suggests that maybe, just maybe, God does not operate by the same set of rules we do. We believe with every fiber of our being that God rewards those who do good and punishes those who do evil, because everything in our lives works that way. We are offended when the evildoer "gets off", (think OJ Simpson) and we cheer when the bad guy "gets what’s coming to him", (think Saddam Hussein).

It is little wonder that we men think God plays by the same rules. But baptism clearly shows us that God plays by an altogether different set of rules. Our baptism shows us that God extends His love, mercy and fatherhood to us regardless of our performance, and regardless of the quality of our choices and decisions. In fact, He made us alive when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, and He rescued us even when we were His enemies. If that wasn't enough, (and to me that is plenty!), He promises that just as He was responsible for starting this "good work" in us, He will take responsibility for completing it.

...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Phil 1:6

Furthermore, He has already planned the good works that He intends for "us" to "perform".

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Eph 2:10

Imagine! God not only plans the work we will do, but promises that He Himself will be responsible for making sure the work gets done.

We live in a world where those who perform are rewarded, and those who fail to perform are punished. There is Good and there is Evil and the two are locked in constant war. The world must be run according to Good/Bad dichotomies, else how would we function? If you are on the right side and do the right thing, you will be rewarded, but step across the line and you should expect to pay the price.

But the scriptures tell us clearly that God doesn't follow that set of rules. In fact, He "justifies the ungodly" (Rom 4:5).

In the creation story of Genesis, God offers Man free rein in the garden, with one minor prohibition. God forbids Man, (in the person of Adam and Eve), to eat from one particular tree. It is important that we understand what happened there, and particularly, to understand the name of the tree.

Many people seem to think that the prohibited tree was called "The Tree of Evil." They believe that if they avoid evil they will avoid the sin of Adam. Some think it was called "The Tree of the Knowledge of Evil." You shouldn't merely avoid doing evil, you should avoid even knowing about it. But both points of view share the mistaken belief that God intends us to both know and do Good.

Both views are mistaken. The tree God forbade was called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God never intended for man to have the power to discriminate between "good" and "evil". Rather, He intended us to "walk with Him in the cool of the day" and take all our cues - about everything - from Him. But ever since we learned about Good and Evil, we have chosen to depend upon our own ability to "Do Good" and to "Avoid Evil" rather than find our life in God Himself.

Most people recognize that our sins separate us from God, but what few recognize is that our righteousness separates us from Him as well.

...all our righteous acts are like filthy rags... Isa 64:6

We demand "righteous behavior" from ourselves and from one another, never realizing that God is as unimpressed with our righteousness as with our sin. In fact, is this not the whole point of The Parable of the Tax Collector?

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

The tax collector went home justified, not because of his deeds, but because of who he trusted: God. Contrariwise, the Pharisee went home condemned, not because of his deeds but because of who he trusted: himself. Living in the realm of "Good vs. Evil" and "Right vs. Wrong" places our trust in ourselves and our own deeds. When we do poorly, we condemn ourselves. When we do well, we congratulate ourselves. But in both instances, we are failing to trust God.

In His divine wisdom, God has chosen to accept us in Christ, not because we do well or because we do poorly, but simply because He has made as an object of His love. If we place our trust in Him, and in His love, then we too will "go home justified". But if we place our trust in our own works, whether they are "Good" or "Evil", we will surely go home condemned.

God's love is a free gift given to us without regard to our performance, worthiness or gratitude. It is truly free - just as our baptism was. We can choose to enjoy it, or we can choose to ignore it, but nothing we do can change the power or the graciousness of that gift.

Medicine & Terror - Two Approaches

2007-01-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

My buddy Michael Spencer and I have a long-running disagreement about the role of the government in fighting terror. Michael is, by his own admission, terrified that someone is going to smuggle a suitcase nuke into a crowded location and kill a whole lot of people, (a la this season's paean to fear on 24). He is in favor of most any steps the government can take to prevent such an occurrence.

I, on the other hand, argue that the powers of the government should and must continue to be limited to those explicitly enumerated by the Constitution, regardless of threats. I contend that the extreme steps taken by the government, (suspension of habeus corpus, national IDs, airport "security" and the like), are a bigger threat to our freedom than anything Islamic terrorists can accomplish.

Are either of us right? Or wrong? Or are we perhaps not even talking about the same issue?

To Michael's point, the mere idea of a nuclear detonation on American soil, (or any soil for that matter), is unthinkable. Michael and I both have children, and both wish to live in a world where those children are safe. Neither of us want to live in a world where criminals are able to deliver and detonate suitcase nukes with impunity.

I think the difference in our views is analagous to two different approaches to medical care.

Modern western medicine, when confronted with an infection in the body, takes an aggressive "kill the intruder" approach. This involves the use of some sort of chemical or mechanical process designed to kill the offending germs, virus or cancerous cells. The problem with such approaches is that they kill without discrimination. Antibiotics destroy not only the "bad" germs, but also the benign and helpful germs the body requires to maintain health. Most forms of surgery require general anesthestics that induce a near-death state in the patient. Chemotherapy introduces toxins into the body in doses that are near-fatal. The toxin is so dangerous that it would be lethal if continued, but the plan and hope is that before the chemo kils the patient, the chemo will kill the cancer.

This approach to medical "care" creates an environment of ever more powerful bugs adapting to ever more powerful drugs. For every "win" the doctors enjoy, they also create an environment where superbugs are forced to evolve to survive. It's the medical equivalent of the Cold War policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. There is no end to the escalation in sight.

There is another approach to medicine: the naturopathic approach. Naturopaths tend to have a much more humble philosophy of health care than do MDs. naturopaths perceive the body as a complex "system of systems" and believe that they cannot upset one of those systems through direct intervention without upsetting them all. Naturopathy seeks to influence the body in the direction of health, rather than attack the disease itself and in the process inflict all sorts of unsuspected "collateral damage".

In other words, a naturopath does not try to kill the bug. Rather, he works to create an environment in the body that is simply inhospitable to the growth or even existence of an offending organism. If, for example, the pH of the body is too acid, (an environment that is conducive to infection), naturopathy will work the change the pH of the body to a more alkaline balance. The change in the environment forces the offending parasite out of the body because it cannot thrive or even survive in such an environment. The best part about this approach to medicine is that it is not dangerous to the body. In fact, naturopathic medicine assumes that the reason the body is sick is because it was previously an attractive environment for sickness to invade. Modern western medicine, in contrast, neither knows nor cares about the state of the body prior to the onset of disease. It simply seeks to eradicate the disease and has as a target end-state for the body the body "as it is now, only without the disease". In other words, modern medicine does not look at the underlying reason for sickness to be in the body. It restricts its attention to the bug itself, rather than the environment in which the bug has come to exert influence. Naturopathy believes that a healthy body is able - in most cases - to maintain health without "outside" interference such as antibiotics.

Just as an MD assures us that western medicine is the only effective tactics for dealing with infection, the government assures us that their current tactics for rooting out terrorists are the only effective ways to deal with them. An MD uses ever more invasive and destructive methods to eradicate infection and disease from the body, and the government tries to use anything within their power to find and stop the people who want to use a suitcase nuke. But just as the MD approach to medical care destroys healthy cells in the pursuit of malignant ones, the government's terror-fighting tactics kill and/or maim many innocent people in pursuit of the few malignant ones. The government's method for pursuing and apprehending terrorists requires the abridgment of many fundamental rights and freedoms. In their view, in the pursuit of terrorists, there are going to be collateral damages; that is simply the price of eradicating the disease in the body politic.

But what if the root of the problem is that the body itself has become a hospitable host to these invading organisms? Or worse, what if the governments tactics for eradication actually create in the body politic an environment that is ever more hospitable to infection or invasion? Would it not make more sense to approach the problem as a naturopath approaches the problem of disease in the body?

My symptoms were fatigue, poor concentration, general malaise and stomach acid. The MD I visited gave me proton pump inhibitors to reduce the acid in my stomach and told me to reduce my cholesterol. If my cholesterol did not come down, he would have put me on Lipitor. Neither of these pills would have solved the problem, but they would have reduced the syptoms. In other words, the western medical approach would make the problem less painful, but would not actually eliminate the underlying bad health.

(In contrast, my naturopath has given me supplements to strengthen my pancreas and to help my stomach with digestion. My chiropractor found that my thoracic vertebrae were misaligned in the region that feeds the adrenal glands. He is adjusting accordingly. I have seen my health improve significantly.)

The western medical mind sees symptoms as the disease and therefore assumes that elimination of the symptoms equals elimination of the disease. This is not only wrong, it is dangerous. If an underlying disease that has not manifested symptoms still exists after eradication of the symptoms, it will inevitably manifest sooner or later somewhere else. And since the western modern approach is to treat the symptoms, it will result in an upward spiral of drug use and medical intervention.

This is exactly analogous to the current situation with terror and terrorists in America. Terrorism is a disease in the body politic, but the traditional military/interventionist approach treats the symptoms of terrorism as the disease. Without getting into the politics of the situation, my suggestion is that we think about the end game for the terrorists. Assume for a moment that the scenario played on 24 this season is real and that some group of disgruntled terrorists have 5 suitcase nukes they are ready and able to deploy. Worse yet, assume that they actually detonate these nukes and kill 100,000 people.

Then what?

They do not have an inexhaustible supply of nukes. They do not have an army to invade us with or an air force to control our skies or a navy to control our ports. They cannot land an army of Islamic invaders on the Atlantic and Pacific shores. They cannot take over our governments and force us to live the way they want us to live. They do not have the power to destroy us, they do not have the power to invade us and they do not have the power to occupy us. So what exactly are we afraid of from these terrorists?

I don't think we know. These radical Islamists no doubt have a political agenda that they would love to foist upon the whole earth, but the reality is that they simply do not have the power to obtain military or political goals in America unless we give them that power.

What might the islamic radicals really want? Well, we know that they believe that the whole world should be under the rule of Shari'a law as interpreted and administered by Ayatollahs. This is basically the form of government operating in Iran since 1979. What would that look like?
Discrimination on the basis of sex and religion would be mandated rather than prohibited. Muslims men would have full rights under the law, Muslim women would have few rights. Non-muslims of all varieties would have minimal rights. Freedom of worship would be banned. Freedom of speech would be banned. The right to free assembly would be banned. The religious authorities would hold the power to imprison and/or punish you without the right of appeal. Religious apostasy would be punishable by death.

In other words, the fundamental rights ascribed to all men and enumerated in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights would be utterly overthrown.

Do we fear that Islamic terrorists are going to take over our government and suspend the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

The government itself is saying that in order to combat terrorism, they need to suspend the rights recognized in the Bill of Rights and need to take up powers explicitly denied the government in the Constitution.

Or to say it another way, the government is telling us that in order to protect us from the terrorists end game, (an end the terrorists do not have the power to achieve), they need to take from us the rights the terrorists would take from us if the terrorists won. Does that make sense? This would be like the doctor saying that in order to keep your bronchitis from turning into pneumonia, he is going to remove your lung. It is an effective approach to eliminating bronchitis, but it completely misses the point of treatment in the first place.

2007-01-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

I have watched (my sisters) strive to achieve that elusive and self-defined thing called "perfection," just as I have. As we age, I find we are all a little more weary because of the fight and a little less sure of the definition.

Amen.

I found this little gem hiding in a blog called "chick truths - the worldview of a woman with unrealistic expectations".

Subject Predicate Object

2006-11-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

A young friend of mine is struggling mightily to overcome a particular behavior that he considers sin. I don't say right out that it is sin because I know that he has a little confusion about the difference between "temptation" and "sin", and of course, if he is hoping to overcome temptation, then he is doomed to disappointment. But that is a subject for another day.

My purpose in writing this piece is to explore what I believe is a common mistake on his part, common because most believers make the same mistake - he has focused his attention and his efforts on obeying Christ rather than focusing on Christ Himself. The difference is subtle, but important.

My friend believes that by focusing on obeying Christ, he is focusing on Christ. I argue that focusing on obedience is self-centered, not Christ-centered.

And how do I justify my point of view? For some reason, I ended up thinking about language. We use language to express our beliefs about ourselves and about God. My young friend is determined to obey God, so his thoughts about the subject at hand could be expressed as:

I will obey God.

Every properly constructed English sentence has at minimum a subject, (the Actor), a predicate, (the Act), and an object, (the recipient of the action). So the sentence "I will obey God" can be parsed like this:

I: the Actor
will obey: the Action
God: the object of the Action performed by the Actor.

In this sentence, the Actor, (my friend) performs the Action and God is the passive recipient of that Action. In contrast, consider these sentences.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

The difference between the two sentences is that "I" am the actor in the first sentence and "God" is the actor in the second. Another way to describe the contrast would be "Law" and "Grace". Under Grace, God is the Actor and I am the passive recipients of His action. Under The Law it is just the opposite, I Act and God is passive.

While we are certainly free as Xians to attempt to obey The Law, we are doomed to be disappointed by our efforts. The Law is spiritual, but we are made of flesh and blood. The Law, though it is perfect, holy and good, kills us. That's why God is no longer playing that game, (and we would do well to quit it, too.)

I know my friend is concerned about being holy, and I guess he believes that unless he gives it everything he's got, God is not going to be able to do His work. This approach to God is known as "Grace plus something else". It has the advantage of making us feel like we are contributing something to God's work, but it has the disadvantage of being utterly ineffective.

I guess some Xians believe that God lowers His standards for behavior once they become believers. They act like they believe that even though they occasionally lust or gossip or engage in gluttony or unrighteous anger, God is cool with that as long as they say "I'm sorry" and promise to try extra-special hard the next time around.

Jesus said that the entire Law was summed up in these two commands:
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

I know absolutely no one who manages to obey those two laws perfectly, yet they are very simple. Worse, we cannot WILL ourselves to obey because the command is to LOVE, and LOVE is something that cannot be coerced, it can only exist in an environment where it is freely given. My young friend tries to obey God because He fears what will happen if He does not, yet in His fearing, He is failing to obey. How in the world can we escape from this dilemma?

Through Christ.

Jesus was asked once, "what must I do to do the works of God" and His explicit answer was, "believe on the One whom God has sent."

God is not now, and never has been, impressed with our efforts. Our righteousness is as filthy rags to him. Our job is not to work hard. Our job is to trust Christ - trust Him in spite of our sins, trust Him in spite of our successful attempts at righteousness. Trust Him in spite of our fear. Trust Him to do what He said He would do. Trust Him to act on our behalf. Trust Him.

End of the Road?

2006-09-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Today is the end of a journey that started on August 8 last year - the JDA/Mervyns project. The time was exactly seven months after the end of my marriage, and I was still in the just-slightly-better-than-catatonic stage. The demands of the project were rigorous: travel every week for over a year, fly out early Monday morning, fly back late Thursday night. But I needed it. I needed something that was as absorbing and as demanding as this project to get me through the coming months.

Divorce, by the way, is the most fun you can have short of self-flaggelation. Inexpressible pain wrapped around loss, confusion, grief, fear, anger, hopelessness and ultimately, acceptance. I had everything I loved wrenched from me and had to start a brand new life, pretty much from scratch. The only constant was my job, and I think it went a long way towards helping me maintain my somewhat-tenuous hold on sanity during those days.

I've recovered a lot in the 14 months since the project started, and have actually reached the point where I am ready to move on. I have a new life - not the life I dreamed of, but a life for which I am grateful nonetheless. I survived the worst I could imagine and am now full of hope for the future.

Hope, by the way, is something I could not begin to conceive I might have 14 months ago. But time heals all wounds, and also - apparently - wounds all heels.

I don't know what comes next, but I do know that it is time to steer my own boat. The world looks so much different through these eyes. Not bad, just different.

I can hardly wait to see what comes next....

Random Shots

2006-09-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

In spite of my utter lack of campaigning, I still managed to garner sufficient votes in the September 12 primary to make it onto the ballot for the general election in November. I suspect vote fraud...

What am I running for? Would you believe the Arizona House of Representatives? (Yeah, me neither...)

I ordered a pile of stuff from The Teaching Company last week and am eager to commence my long-neglected liberal arts education. Having said that, I am also very aware that an awful lot of intellectual activity is little more than mental masturbation.

I shall try to avoid such self-abuse.

I finish the Mervyns project this week. 14 consecutive months on the road. Over 200,000 Marriott points. 4 free round-trip tickets on Southwest. Executive Elite status at National.

Whoop-ti-doo.

I filled out one of my candidate surveys and indicated that one of my priorities was the enforcement of property rights by changing the police culture from "crime-solving" to "crime prevention".

Here's an example of one Florida community that is actually doing that.

Animal rights advocacy would be more aptly named "idiocy". I question whether these people are capable of rational thought, and I fear they are not to be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spoon. Here's more proof.

Pray to God that they don't decide that your children need to be "rescued" some day.

Do you know what today is?

2006-09-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Why live your life in the fear of some Victorian prude clucking her tongue at you in disapproval, when you can be a pirate instead?

Holiness, Happiness and "Bowing the Knee"

2006-09-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

Inspired by anonymous commenters...

As best as I can figure, we humans have two possible ways of relating to God:

1. A business relationship
2. A family relationship

A family relationship is based upon the the nature of the persons in the relationship. A business relationship is based upon the quality of the transactions between the parties, without regard to the nature of the persons on either side of the transaction.

As I understand it, God intends a family relationship with people, but people seem to prefer a business relationship with God. Why? I think it has to do with pride and control. In a business relationship, we can maintain both our pride and our sense of control, but in a family relationship, there is no place for pride or control.

If the nature of our relationship with Him is transactional - in other words, a business relationship - then we can maintain control of the relationship by trading value for value with Him; our inate inferiority to Him is a non-issue in the relationship as long as our transactions are evenly balanced.

But if the nature of our relationship to Him is familial, then the difference between Him and us is fundamental to our relationship; His superiority to us in every way puts Him in complete control of the relationship. He is forever Father and we are forever children.

In a business relationship, whatever inequalities may exist between "buyer" and "seller" are immaterial, as long as each party trades value for value. In a family relationship, the weaker party is dependent upon the stronger; the child is dependent upon the parent.

A business relationship evens the playing field between both parties in the transaction, a familial relationship highlights the inequalities between the parties. A business relationship is maintained by the fidelity of both parties to the standard of "value for value". A familial relationship is sustained by love.

In a business relationship, as soon as one party ceases to offer value for value, the relationship is over. In a familial relationship, no action or lack of action can change the fundamental reality of shared blood, shared bone, shared flesh.

In general, people don't like having their inferiority and dependence spotlighted. That's why they prefer a business relationship with God. And that's why every religion in the world exists - to manage and control the relationship with God

In my experience, most Christians operate a business relationship with God. Though they may protest, their language betrays their core beliefs about the relationship. For example, here's a quote from an anonymous commenter:

You could become a great man if you would bow your knee and yield to the One who made you - because after your short years here you will face Him. Fall on the Rock before the Rock falls on you.

Implicit in this comment is the belief that God is Gonna Get You! You're gonna PAY!

Oddly, people seem to like this message. Do good, and all will be well with you. Do bad, and He will come down on you like a ton of bricks. In fact, the reason you are not getting blessed by God is that you are not making the payments God demands in exchange for His blessings.

An appealing message - but it's not the Gospel.

Here's another example:

From where does the idea come that God's will is for any of us to be happy? He wants us to be holy. Happiness can be a byproduct of holiness, but holiness will not come as a result of seeking happiness.

Apparently, in this commenter's religion, God doesn't value Happiness, but does value Holiness. Therefore, He'll trade us something of lesser value to Him - Happiness - if we will pay Him something of lesser value to us - Holiness. In other words, the reason you are not Happy is because you have not paid the price that God puts on Happiness. Happy people have paid the price; UnHappy people have not.

This position appeals to our sense of pride and control, and we jump up and applaud wildly: Yes! Yes! Preach it!

But it's not the Gospel.

This is how religion operates, and it is why the early Christians were so frequently ignored, marginalized or martyred. Their message was simple...God is out of the accounting business - permanently. From now on, God is gonna think of you as His own child, not as a servant. ...but it thoroughly destroyed the very premises of religion. It really pissed-off the religious people, (and make no mistake - everyone is religious), so they tried to silence and/or kill those foolish believers who were spreading it.

What's the point of following rules and sacrificing animals and paying tithes and doing deeds of penance if God doesn't value all my hard work? I pour an awful lot of effort into proving to God that I am good enough and holy enough and righteous enough and committed enough and serious enough, and then these yahoos come along and say that God simply isn't interested in what I am trying to pay?

This Gospel of the Kingdom, carried by early believers to the uttermost parts of the earth, proclaimed that God had decided to throw open the Divine Party to anyone who wanted to come in and partake of it. He was giving away the riches of His table - for free. All you had to do was take Him at His word. All you had to do was show up. (See, for example, the parables of the Great Banquet, the Prodigal, the Pharisee and the Publican, the Talents.)

For some reason, the religious folks thought this was Bad News, and they've spent the last 2000 years trying to convince everyone that God Still Demands Payment! The only reason I can imagine for such foolishness is because most people were (and are) addicted to their own sense of worthiness and control vis-a-vis God. They want a business relationship with God, not a family relationship.

Oh, and they also realize that people who are no longer living in fear can be awfully hard to control.

Me? I'm completely convinced that I have absolutely nothing of value to offer God. Therefore, a business relationship with Him is not even a remote possibility for me. If I have any chance at all of being in a relationship with God, it's gonna hafta be because He Loves Me.

You know - as if I were His own child or something...

Dreck and Piddle

2006-09-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

If writing is God's way of showing me how sloppy my thinking is, then what in the world does it say about my thinking when I don't write? I suspect it says exactly what you would think it says - that by not writing I have ceased thinking.

I wrote for years. Years and years and years. Reams and reams of dreck and piddle. And what did it get me?

Squat.

So I quit writing. And now when I do write, perhaps it will still be dreck and piddle, but at least I am not attaching any salvific attributes to the act itself.

I subscirbe to an newsletter called Monday Morning Memo - highly recommended by the way - that is the marketing piece for a man who calls himself the Wizard of Ads. (No links provided - feel free to google it yourself.) I recall a piece he sent out a while back that was a eulogy for his father. Lemme see if I can find it....

Yep - here it is. (You're welcome.)

Anyway, as I read it, and read the tombstone, and imagined the man about whom that eulogy was written, I thought to myself, "wow - he lived a life, didn't he?" And I realized that I am living a life, too. Not exactly the life I wanted, but closer now than I was before.

Conscience makes cowards of us all. I believe that was Hamlet, a coward if ever there was one. It was that quote that came to me when I made a choice that my background and culture told me I should regret, but which hindsight tells me set me free finally to be who I wanted to be and to live the life I wanted to live.

Fear has kept me bound for a very long time, but I have slowly and certainly begun to shake it's gnarly bonds. Each day gets me closer to living the life I have imagined; each day leads to me to stare my fear full in the face and say "what the hell..."

No one gets out alive. Hamlet eventually learned that. I do not intend to die young, but neither do I intend to die without living. I have finally - finally - started to live. And I'll be damned if I am going to give it all up for some bastardized version of puritanical morality masquerading as "What God Wants...."

No one but me knows what this means, but everyone can benefit by clicking on the link referenced above.

Eye Contact

2006-08-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Don't say I never point you to anything useful.

The Real Fight Club

2006-07-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

The article linked here is a typical example of the cluelessness that pervades public consciousness in our culture. If you are too lazy to click the link, I will summarize: shocked police and school officials have discovered that teens are engaging in organized fights in Fight Clubs, apparently inspired by the book and movie of the same name.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, (and it is obvious that the writer of the article has not), then you might not recognize how completely wrong the story gets the fundamental issue here.

A similar story can be found here.

I am not remotely surprised that Fight Clubs are popular amongst adolescent boys and white-collar 20-somethings, nor am I surprised that the egg-headed professors quoted in the story place the blame on video games.

In our public culture, we Americans have utterly abandoned the idea of anything transcendent, with the possible exception of the state. I'm pretty sure most of these kids involved in fight clubs have fully imbibed at the well of nihilism, moral relativism, and consumerism and they simply are looking for something that is real.

Pain is real.

Flesh is real. Bone is real. Blood is real.

They are tapping into something visceral and latent in every man. They are no doubt rebelling, (subconscious though their rebellion may be), against the intense feminization of their entire culture - school, work, public debate - all of it intensely anti-male. Through the machinery of state-funded education, they find themselves mechanized, industrialized, systematized and finally traumatized by the sheer banality of the modern secular state.

I can't blame them at all.

Irrelevant Minutiae

2006-07-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

Atticus lives in a hotel in Pleasanton, California, but his stuff lives in a house in Chandler, Az. He visits his stuff on the weekends.

He is the father of four beautiful, intelligent, creative, charming, independent and free-thinking children, ages 16, 19, 21 & 23, and father-in-law to one beautiful, charming, creative, intelligent and feisty daughter-in-law. He also fills the position of concierge and Butler for two cats, Sam & Hobbes. (You know the story: dogs have owners, cats have staff.)

He occasionally plays keyboards in a band that occasionally plays Rock-n-Roll cover tunes, but he listens mostly to jazz, country and sports-talk radio.

He blogs. He invests in commodities, but not equities. He plays options but not futures.

He reads lots of non-fiction, (economics, history and theology), and a little fiction, (high-brow snooty literature mostly, but also has occasional forays into comic books.) His favorite film has never been released on DVD. He believes the best shows on television are all cartoons - Futurama, The Simpsons, Family Guy & King of the Hill. His hero is Bugs Bunny. (Perhaps we detect a theme here.)

He's an ENTP, although he believes that Myers-Briggs is deeply flawed, in spite of its ubiquity and reputation. He also believes the demise of western civilization can be traced directly to the advent of Astro-Turf and the Designated Hitter rule and can be traced indirectly to public edjumakashun, fiat money, premilennial dispensational eschatology and Rationalism.

His reach exceeds his grasp. Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. Time flies like an arrow, fruit fries like a banana.

I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

Baseball!

2006-07-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

I took Caroline to the Red Sox game at Oakland last night. She is so much more than a fan: the Red Sox are her church and attending a game is a sacramental experience. Me, I've always enjoyed baseball, and tend to give my loyalty to whomever is least likely to break my heart, but Caroline is a Red Sox Fan through and through: for better or worse, for richer or poorer, to love and to cherish until, I guess, finally parted by death. I do not understand such devotion, but I do enjoy watching it in action. Her good cheer about her Red Sox - win or lose - is delightful.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to shop for something I knew she would love: tickets to see her beloved Red Sox. I got us tickets in section 116, row 32, just to the left-handed hitters side of homeplate. We spent roughly a zillion dollars on a couple of crappy hotdogs, a couple of drinks and the worst tub of popcorn I have ever eaten in my life.

Welcome to Oakland.

Josh Beckett pitched for the Sox, Barry Zito for the A's. The Sox roughed up Zito - he gave up five earned runs - but it was easy to see how he can be so dominating when his pitches are all working. Papi and Manny both homered, which delighted her. Beckett overcame a shaky start and was dominant for 5 innings. The Sox turned 3 DPs. Papelbon closed it out. In short, we got to see all the things she would want to see.

Banners around the stadium exhorted "Let's Keep the A's in Oakland!"; apparently Oakland is not doing a great job of supporting the A's. At several points in the game, the cheer "Let's Go Red Sox" rumbled through the ugly old barn that the A's call home. Not only were there nearly as many red Sox fans as A's fans at the game, the Red Sox fans were far more rowdy and loyal to their team. We stood and cheered the homers and the key defensive plays, talked smack with the A's fans around us, and took photos with fellow Sox fans after the game. They really do treat one another like "brothers" within the closely defined context of "Red Sox Nation".

I love the pace and rhythm of a baseball game, the ebb and flow, the phases of the game, (beginning, middle, end). It feels like life-writ-small.

I sat there thinking, "I need to attend more baseball games" and began plotting my purchase of Diamondbacks season tickets next year. I imagined myself becoming a real fan, knowing the players, the teams, and my fellow fans. I imagined myself charting pitches, keeping a box score, and just generally giving myself to the Diamondbacks, not because they would reward my loyalty by winning but because the rhythm of the game helps me to unwind. I also imagined how the pace of my life during baseball season would change as I made attendance at the games an integral part of my life.

I have no idea how much it will cost, but I like the dream.

San Fran Weekend

2006-07-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in San Francisco, which is not merely on the opposite side of the Bay from Oakland but is also the opposite side of the world, culturally speaking. I love San Francisco; I will live there for a year at some point in the future.

Saturday I decided to drive into town rather than take BART. It took 20 minutes to get to the traffic jam waiting to get through the toll gates for the Bay Bridge, and then another hour of crawling to get to the gates. At least we were sitting in air conditioning. I did not at the time know what a blessing that was. Once through the toll gates, we breezed along across the bridge at 60 mph. 20 minutes later, we parked close to Union Square and stood in line to get on the cable car.

While waiting, we saw one guy wearing a scarf on his head and admiring his reflection in the shop windows. Another guy was standing on his head on the street corner. Uh huh. This is San Francisco.

It was a touristy kinda day. We rode the cable cars, strolled through the Cannery, had a Beer at Jack's Cannery Bar while listening to a guitarist play through Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon all by himself. We hung out on the beach down by Ghiradelli Square, napped a little bit, then walked back up into town. We had exceedingly hot Hot Wings at a little diner on Lombard, got a brief massage from an aspiring massage therapist whilst waiting for the 28 bus to the Golden Gate Bridge, and then walked across the Bridge at sunset, snapping photos all the way.

We took another bus to some swanky neighborhood on the Pacific side of the peninsula down by Balboa Park I think, We walked a lot more and finally found the the Muni back to Powell station. We finished the evening with dinner in a Jazz place down by Union Square. I had a mostly boring mixed greens salad, a pretty decent boullabaise, and a Neopolitan to finish off the meal. The music was good, but the service was abysmal. Just like Europe!

While trying to find the Bay Bridge again, I made an illegal left turn and got pulled over by a motorcycle cop. He asked for my license and registration. When I told him it was a rental and I was from Arizona, he replied, "I thought this was gonna be easy", and let me go without a ticket.

The trip back to the hotel in Pleasanton took less than 30 minutes. THIRTY MINUTES.

Sunday was completely different - we decided to take BART. The trains are apparently not air conditioned. It was - uhm - unpleasant. (Did I mention this was the hottest weekend of the year? Temperatures inland reached 110, and it was in the 90s in SF.) I couldn't help wondering what it must be like on a weekday afternoon packed with bodies. Bleh again. While trying to find a rail car that was not 10 degrees hotter than the blistering outside air, we got separated, which resulted in 30 minutes of trying to reconnect, which we ultimately did at the West Oakland station.

Together again, we rode BART into the Mission District and began wandering around. I had hoped to find a killer Peruvian-fusion restaurant called Limon where I had eaten before, but really had no clue where it was. As we walked up 16th Ave past a bagle shop, I overheard a couple of guys talking about Limon. I interrupted, asked them to point me to the place, and it turned out we were less than a block away. Eureka!

It was a little before 4 when we arrived, so you could say we beat the dinner rush, which was nice since we got the opportunity to ask our waitress not only about the food but about herself. (Ashley, from upstate New York, in SF for about 18 months.) We ultimately chose the sampler with 4 kinds of cerviche. Then we did the tuna tartar patty and some amazing shrimp-stuffed calamari in saffron sauce - all exquiste and well-balanced. We washed it down with a bottle of some kinda white spanish wine, (instead of the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc I’d requested), and finished with latte and two decadent deserts - a dark chocalate truffel with vanilla ice cream, and home made short bread cookie sandwiches with 4 kinds of sauces. The cookies were a tad too sweet for my taste, but overall, it was a thoroughly fabulous dinner.

We then wandered 3 doors down to a joint known as Blondies Bar & No Grill. Black walls. Black ceiling. Black floor. Minimal signage. No Grill. 16 ounce martinis. This is a place you come to drink, to lounge, to groove, to lounge and to drink. We drank, lounged and grooved - and thoroughly, completely, utterly enjoyed ourselves. The Tour de France was on the tube above the pool table in the back, a very eclectic, very San Fran sound track was playing at conversation-enabling sound levels, and a lesbian couple was making out in the back corner.

We each had only ONE 16-ounce martini because ONE 16-ounce martini is enough for anybody.

Next, we crossed the street to a little curiosity shop specializing in used clothing, snarky refrigerator magnets, (”Divorce is Expensive - Freedom is Priceless”), and anti-George Bush knick knacks. It occured to me that the humongous market for Anti-George Bush tchotskis has probably helped to keep the economy afloat - an irony which would no doubt really irritate the George Bush-haters if they had a capacity to appreciate irony, which I doubt.) The place was buzzing - at 7:30 on a Sunday evening! We bought nothing, but enjoyed the experience.

Finally, to complete our Sunday of Decadence, we wandered down Valencia back toward 16th to a dive called Casanovas Lounge. (I have a thing for slightly seedy bars with quirky character.) As was Blondies, Casanovas was mostly empty, and mostly dark. Whereas Blondies has an air of world-weary sophistication, Casanovas has more of a 19th-century opium-den vibe going on. Not that I’ve ever been in the 19th century, or in an opium den, but this is the kind of place I picture when I read Sherlock Holmes.

What little light there was in the place was provided by red-tinted lamps scattered around the room. Paintings, not posters, were hung all around the back part of the bar. When our eyes adjusted to the dim light, we realized that the paintings were mostly nudes, and that the sofas in the back were invitingly low and soft and cushiony and easy to get real comfortable in, if you get my drift.

We took seats in the corner across from the bar just in front of the back lounge where we could watch people both in the bar and on the street. (San Francisco is a great people-watching city. If you can’t see it in SF, it can’t be seen on the planet.) Back behind the sofa-strewn lounge area was a smaller room with couches on three walls and heavy drapes framing the doorway. The drapes looked as if they could be drawn to make a private area, but they were open the entire time we were in there. A lesbian couple was making out on the cushions behind the drapes. Of course.

We decided on shots of Don Julio Silver since neither of us was driving. Lick the hand, sprinkle the salt, shoot the tequila, lick the salt off the hand, suck the lime. Weird, but fun. In fact, so fun that we did another shot.

Directly across from our table, a DJ was spinning actual vinyl albums with actually terrific rock & roll. Most of it I had never heard before, but I really liked it. It had a 70s feel without being 70s schlocky. Oh, and it too was played at a volume that did not prohibit conversation. (What marketing guru recommended that music be played so loud that your guests cannot hear themselves talk? And who thought shouting into an ear 3 inches from your mouth makes for a fun evening? Huh?)

At some point, I remembered that I was actually supposed to work on the morrow, so we hopped BART back to Pleasanton. The return trip was a good deal cooler and less eventful than the trip out. Thank God.

It is hot in the Bay Area. HOT. Aitch Oh Tee steaming hot. I’m glad my stale, lifeless cubicle comes equipped with A/C.

Fecal Matter Occurs

2006-06-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

Strange how a relationship can be so bad that you feel more lonely in it than out of it.

Can I get a witness?

Long or Short?: This Girl is Not Attractive, so Short Her

2005-09-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Long or Short?: This is strangely compelling, kinda like the game we used to play where we'd rate girls on a 1-to-10 scale, only for the go-go stock market generation.

Denny Burk

2005-09-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

Or, as I prefer to call it, Burk's Benign and Boring Baptist Blog.

The Inklings' Cafe

2005-09-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

The Inklings' Cafe is the work of a Singaporean Presbyterian.

I didn't really read the blog - I just wanted to say "Singaporean Presbyterian".

If he slobbered when he thought about nachos, he'd be a "Salivating Singaporean Prsybyterian".

I could do this for a while. But I won't.

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you...

2005-09-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

Memo to survivors of the government-induced levee break in New Orleans: The Feds are so concerned about your health, they will let you starve rather than allow unfit food to be given to you.

Some guy has figured out how to build a cleaner-burning engine. I'll be the government outlaws it.

2005-09-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

One more reason to love Dave Barry...

2005-09-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

For the survivors, cry mercy.

The Mask

2005-09-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

Dan writes about evangelicalism from the inside, and boy, does he speak the truth.

Not long ago, I made the mistake of confessing my deepest, darkest sins to some "church friends", and it became immediately obvious that they didn't know what to do with such a depraved sinner as me. I'll be a lot less likely to confess my faults in the future.

A lot less likely.

A Heretical Confession

2005-06-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

I don't believe in life after death.

I know, I know. Heretic. Before you start stacking cordwood for your Jack-flambee' though, hear me out.

Though I do not believe in life after death, I do believe in the resurrection of the dead. "What's the dif", you may ask. The difference is that the whole "life after death" thing requires that I leave my body upon death. That whole notion implies the very Greek and entirely unscriptural idea that "my body" and "me" are not the same, that my body is a prison from which I must escape if I am to experience existence as I was meant to. But if that is true, then I should seek to die as quickly as possible so that I can enter into the fullness of my existence. If being "stuck" in this body means I am barricaded from "real life", then Death is the friend that sets me free from my prison and should be welcomed as a liberator.

But Death is my enemy - a vanquished enemy, certainly - but an enemy nonetheless. I hate to draw attention to the obvious, but when we die, we quit living. Else what does it mean to say that we die? Death is The End, The Grand Finale, the Last Chapter, the Final Enemy.

Or at least that is what Death meant until Christ defeated it and broke its grip on mankind. The promise of Christ's resurrection is that though Death will claim us all at some point, Death will no longer have the last word.

Christ as the firstborn from among the dead has become the first fruits of the New Order of Creation; He is not a disembodied spirit but an embodied man. If Christ rose bodily from the dead, then we too shall be so raised. If Christ is now clothed in immortality then we too shall be so clothed.

But if that is so, what happens between the time of our death and the time of our resurrection? No one really knows, but I think we must simply cease to exist. We are dead. And though we are gone, we still maintain a kind of life in the memory of those who knew us on this earth. Those on earth who remember us after we are gone will not have known us perfectly, nor will they remember us perfectly, and - worse for us - they too will one day cease to exist.
But God knows us perfectly and will remember us perfectly.

Our bodies decay and return to the dust from which we were made, but the memory of us will remain incorruptible and in perfect safety and integrity in the mind of Him who first imagined us. Though our friends may wish to reanimate their memory of us, they are powerless to do so, but the God who loves us perfectly is not. When they time comes, He will restore us to life by His great power, His infinite knowledge and His perfect love.

He will raise us from the dead just as Christ Himself was raised.

The first time God imagined man, He made us from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life – His life - into us. The second time He creates us, He promises that the life He breathes into us will never end.

The ancient creed affirms the Christian belief in "...the resurrection of the body..." Paul reminded the early church that "if there is no resurrection of the dead, then we are to be pitied above all men". Christ appeared to the disciples after His resurrection and He made an explicit point of showing them that He was physically present. He was not just an ethereal concept or a substance-less spirit but a real person with real scars who ate real food. He occupied space, but was not constrained by space.

God seems to like the physical realm. He must get a charge out of His creation, or He wouldn't make such a big deal over it. When we treat death as if it were a friend and act as if this physical creation is somehow a lesser expression of God’s goodness than the spiritual realm, we are guilty of devaluing that which God highly values.

Life is good. Resurrection life will be even better.

Grace So Amazing

2005-06-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Donald McCullough verbalizes what I have been pondering for quite some time - the offense of grace.

If it doesn't offend your moral judgment, it probably isn't grace.

A Perfect Mirror

2005-06-07T17:35:00.000-07:00

...we tend to forget that ‘justification by faith’ is primarily the story of God’s faithful actions in the world in his Son, Jesus Christ. It is because God justified himself that we are justified, and only for that reason. It is too easy in our preaching to make ‘faith’ something we do, a work almost, which smuggles in all the dross and anguish of human-centred religion which Luther left behind.

Martin Luther and the Justification of God

Robert Doyle

Sometimes I get so worn out with trying to do the right thing, be the right thing, think the right thing, say the right thing and hang with the right people that I forget the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

I manage to screw up with great regularity. Every single blooming day I do at least one thing that violates some scriptural principle, and I can always find at least a dozen books, articles, tapes and radio preachers who are eager to explain - in excruciating detail - why any person who does what I do is (insert condemnatory description here) and certainly perdition-bound.

I keep thinking about that phrase in the letter from James to the church where he says that the person who gazes into the perfect law of liberty and acts based upon what he sees there will be blessed in what he does. I used to think that James was warning us not to forget what scum-bags we are, but now I realize that I had it exactly backwards.

When I gaze into this perfect law of liberty, I see reflected back to me the image of a perfect Man. This is a wonder to me - yet the image in this mirror is in fact what God sees when He looks on me. As I gaze into my "reflection" there in that perfect mirror and ponder what God's gracious work has wrought on my behalf, the glory of it penetrates - however slowly - to the darkest and densest reaches of my heart, and as this "God's-eye-view" of me seeps into my soul, I see myself as God already sees me. A lifetime of gazing into this image changes me - my choices slowly align themselves with the reality of that image.

I can trust that the screwups I assign to myself are not reflections of the real me that God already sees, but are merely the vestigal remains of the old Jack that is already dead but not quite yet fully decayed.

Good Cop/Bad Cop - Stupid Jack

2005-06-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

I wonder...

Am I worse at being a Christian than the other people at church, or am I just more aware of how screwed up I am?

The other day, as I was contemplating doing something I knew I shouldn't do, I stopped myself and gave myself a good talking to: "You know better than that. God doesn't want you to do that. You should do the right thing."

And so I didn't do what I was contemplating. I felt slightly better about myself and found the shadow of this thought floating through the detritus of my mind: I'll bet God is pleased with me for doing the right thing...

And just like that I realized what a fool I am.

I believed that God would be please by me doing the right thing. I imagined Him weighing my deeds in the balance and finding me worthy for doing the right thing, (or worthless for doing the wrong thing.)

Though I've always confessed that my fecal matter is malodorous to the Almighty, (and everyone else as well), I apparently still believe that my righteousness somehow impresses Him. I guess I honestly thing that my good deeds are NOT as repugnant to God as used, bloody bandages. What an idiot.

The New Testament clearly shows me that my evil deeds do not separate me from God and my good deeds do do not bring me any closer. My deeds - both good and evil, righteous and unrighteous - have no bearing of any kind on my relationship to God. With the death, burial, resurrection and glorification of Jesus, God has taken the whole issue of good deeds / bad deeds off the table. My sins mean nothing to God because they are all already paid for by the death of Christ, (and therefore forgotten by God). My righteous deeds are worthless to God, because they are dung by comparison to the righteousness of Christ. God approves of me not because I behave or don't behave but because I am in Christ .

This is such a radical way of thinking and living that I can barely wrap my head around it. I find it so much easier to condemn myself for my failings or to praise myself for my successes - yet both of these imposters are worthless to me and repugnant to God. He is utterly pleased with Christ, and is utterly pleased with me in Christ.

My deeds - both "good" and "bad" - are death for me, death if I place any value or trust in them at all. But if my trust is in Christ, then my life is in Him. He is the Vine, I am one of his branches. Whatever life is in me is His life. As the life of the vine is in the branch, so the life of Christ is the life of Jack.

Treasure

2005-03-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

Axiom: When God speaks, no one has any trouble hearing Him.

I know that I know that God has spoken to me, but I have no recollection of the time or event when He gave me the words that I now carry in my mind. I have a message inside my head - a message from God to me - but I have no memory of when that message was given. At some indeterminate point this summer while on vacation, I knew something that I hadn't known before. I don't know how it got there, but this "message from God" was burned into my mind:

I will be your reward.

God said this to me - I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't know where. I only know that these words are in my head, and I didn't put them there.

For as long as I can remember, my experience of life did not measure up to my expectations. I thrashed about trying to make sense of it all. I've made messes, hurt people, tried things, rejected beliefs and - in the immortal words of Bono - "still haven't found what I'm looking for." A deep, brooding dissatisfaction with life has marked me and colored every day in melancholy shades of gray and blue.

Not long ago, I was reading Jesus's instructions about the things we hold dear: "wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be - so store up treasures for yourself in heaven where they cannot be stolen or rot or rust." I remember responding saying to God something along the lines of: "Help! I don't know how to treasure heavenly things. Please help me do that."

I guess maybe that was one of those dangerous prayers - you know - the kind you shouldn't pray without strapping on your crash helmet. But I prayed it. And today I realized that since I prayed that prayer and since He spoke those words into my head, I have experienced a radical reorientation in my life. I had just finished lunch with a friend, and as we were parting, he asked if he could pray for me. I'm always grateful that anyone would talk to God on my behalf, so I said sure. He then asked me, "what do you want me to pray about?" and it struck me - I have everything I need.

I have lost everything in this world that I counted dear: my marriage, my children, my home and - to some extent - my church. And yet God has not abandoned me. I don't know how I know that, but I do. Even though I am bereft of the things that were most important to me, even though I feel their loss accutely, even though the external circumstances of my life are bleaker than they have ever been, God has not abandoned me. He's here hanging out with me, even as I stumble and bumble through the biggest mess and most difficult, painful experience of my life.

He's not making me feel better - I feel like shit most of the time. He's not easing my circumstances - they suck. He's not vindicating me - my reputation is shot. He's not doing any of the things that I used to think He should do to make me feel loved. Yet I feel more loved than ever in my life.

I cannot explain this except by saying "He is with me." And because He is with me, I just don't care what people think of me. I don't really care if I am doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. I don't care if people think I have gone off the rails, or that I am a lost cause or have abandoned the faith. I don't need to explain. I don't need to defend. I've lost everything I ever thought I cared about, and now I know - even if I never get any of it back again - God is with me.

So I told my friend, "I can't think of a thing to ask of God. He is with me - what else could I possibly need?"

He has become my treasure. He is my reward.

Jamming...

2005-01-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

I can hardly wait to see what I am thinking.

I spoke with Robert Capon today, the author of the subversive book Between Noon and Three. He is the first author I have ever found who is willing to say publicly what I have only dared to half-imagine. Grace, as he sees it, really is a the free gift of God to the underserving, and the only possible way to avoid enjoying its benefits is to not believe it. Simple, I know, but profound in its implications...

I have wondered over the last few years why it is that I have always been attracted to the folks who exist on the fringes of cultural normality - the freaks, weirdos, oddballs and assorted socially not-quite-acceptable people. Normal people, while non-threating, tend to bore me. I don't know why I prefer the statistical outliers to the normal folks, but when I look at His creation, I find all sorts of analogues in the natural world. God apparently has a tremendous taste for the bizarre and the weird and the just plain not-normal. How else to explain the platypus, or the venus fly-trap, or tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, cancer, Amos 3:6, crocodiles, dragons, giants, dwarves, the Loch Ness monster?

I know I am wandering back & forth between the nominally real and the nominally imaginary, but where exactly is the border between the two? Chesterton argues that myth is more real than reality, that the realm of the fantastic is where life really lives, and that the world we moderns and PoMos call "the real world" is really just a two-dimensional cardboard replica of the real thing. (Sorry, I don't remember if I got this idea from Orthodoxy or from The Everlasting Man.)

In light of my previous post, and in light of being cut off from the five most meaningful relationships in my life, (and thus losing my gravitational center), I find myself questioning my whole concept of God. It seems He is both far more terrible and far more wonderful than I thought before.

Well, maybe I have thought it before. I remember as a pre-adolescent reading The Chronicles of Narnia and tasting of something so much more wonderful and more awful than myself and my small, constrained little world, something I identified as God expressed through Christ, but the 30 intervening years have pretty well smashed the awe and wonder of that childlike vision out of me. I am so much more sophisticated, more worldly, more cosmopolitan - and yet somehow my world has become so much smaller.

But along comes Genesis and Job and Chesterton and Lewis and Capon and my world is turned inside out, or upside down or something I cannot explain in a straight-line intellect-only dimension. Poetry or song or art might better capture it.

I stumbled onto some poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, (who is apparently no longer in vogue as a poet), and found a beauty and wistfulness there that I had all but forgotten. So I shall sit down with my poetry again, and seek to touch that long-lost chord that Lewis first struck in me when I was 11 or 12, that music which echoed in my soul for years but that the years have likewise silenced, that wonder and awe at the beauty and mystery woven into the very fabric of the universe.

I am alone tonight, as I have been for the last 16 nights, and probably will be for many more nights to come, yet in some undefinable way, I am NOT alone, maybe for the first time ever.

As Robert Capon reminded me on the phone today, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and if I am anywhere at all these days, it is in Him.

A Disturbing God

2005-01-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

What makes the Christian faith different from any other, from that of the Jew or the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness or the Muslim or the Buddhist or the Sikh? Aren't all who fervently hold to their faith determined to be good people, to do good things, to be a positive influence on their world? Quite frankly, I know plenty of Christians who are simply nasty people. (I may be one.) And I know lots of extremely good people who are Jews and Mormons and JWs and Sikhs. So I cannot help but wonder if the behavior of the faithful is not really the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity.

We had a bible study at the office today and read Genesis 39-41 about Joseph, and the leader asked what the story taught us about how we should behave, (I think.) But it seems to me that is the wrong question. Rather than asking, "what does this story teach us about us", it seems to me the right question would be "what does this story teach us about God?" And quite frankly, I find it pretty darned disturbing. Here is a God who was apparently powerful enough to prosper Joseph as a slave and as a prisoner, wise enough to give him the interpretation of dreams, in control enough to cause them to come to pass, faithful enough to be with Joseph wherever he found himself, and yet this exact same God also allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery, allowed him to be cast into prison, allowed the baker to be hung, and allowed the famine to occur. It seems to me that such a God is utterly unlike anything we could imagine on our own. It seems He cares not one whit about pain - He certainly allowed, if not outright caused plenty of it. So the thought of us being "used by Christ" to be nice people in hard circumstances seems utterly laughable.

What kind of God allows a beloved son to suffer from cancer and die at the age of 9? What kind of God says "I am with you no matter what", and then allows or causes all hell to break loose in our lives? What kind of God allows over 100,000 people to be swept away in an instant by a tsunami He darn well could have prevented?

If our job as "believers" is to help people by being nice and not causing pain and helping relieve painful circumstances and bring comfort in pain, then why doesn't our God simply arrange things so that people don't experience hard circumstances? Why in the world would He need me to be a pain-reliever? What lunacy!

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know that the God I see in the scriptures is not the tame and kindly old grandfatherly figure much of Christendom seems to imagine and teach. The God in these stories is terrible and wild and utterly beyond our comprehension. He keeps the universe spinning, for pete's sake. Does He actually need us to be nice to other people? The sheer folly of such thinking simply overwhelms me. If He was incarnate in Christ, (and I believe with all my heart that He was), then what do all these things tell us about God? I just don't think it tells us to be nice people, to say nive things and think nice thoughts and be a postive influence. I'm really not sure what it tells us, but a God who names the stars, puts the planets in place, sets the galaxies spinning, builds an earth that wipes out people as if they were nothing more than kindling for a fire, presides over cancer and AIDS and divorce and alzheimers and even became a man and DIED a horrible, humiliating death, such a God certainly has absolutely no need of me for anything. The whole idea of "morality" utterly pales before such a God.

For some reason I keep thinking of that story where Jesus was teaching in somebody's house and these guys cut a hole in the roof and lowered their paralyzed friend through the hole right down in front of Him. Jesus looked at the paralyzed guy and said, "Your sins are forgiven you." And then, because He knew the Nice People, the Moral People, the Upright People, were all pissed off about that and saying to themselves, "who does He think He is", Jesus said to them, "I know you are offended that I granted this man forgiveness for sins. You concept of God does not allow me to do that. So just to show you that your concept of God is completely wrong…" and then He turns to the paralyzed guy and says, "Get up. Take your mat and go home." And the guy gets up. And takes his mat. And goes home.

Who is this God? And how could I dare imagine He needs anything from me? My intellect is not merely humbled, it is driven speechless to the ground where it wallows face down in the dirt. My emotions short circuit from the nearness of His overwhelming power. My very body wants to find a small, dark place to tremble in fear and hide.

This God is not what I would have imagined, not what I would choose, and certainly not what I have been taught.

But I want to know Him. Dear god, I want to know Him...

Old Friends, New Friends

2005-01-19T23:11:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I have come to realize that I like weird people. I like the folks who fall outside the bell curve of "normality". Don't know why, all I know is that freaks never freaked me out. I always kinda enjoyed their weirdness. Some folks are weird just for the sake of being weird, and in my mind, they are just poseurs and are as ignorable as the 68% of the population that fits neatly inside the mouth of the bell. But other folks just genuinely look at life differently, and that makes them fun, interesting, intriguing. As the bumper sticker says, "why be normal?"

Alex is one of those people. I've known Alex for several years - we work in the same company and in fact I actually interviewed him when we were hiring. I've always liked him - he's really different. He is very ethnic looking - in actuality I think he is part cuban, part japanese, part I-dunno-what, but he could pass as any number of ethnicities or nationalities. He was raised in Europe, was recruited by the CIA right out of high school and quit his high-paying job as a QA manager for a big Fortune 500 company to become an entry-level programmer. Did I mention he is brilliant, gentle and interesting?

We had a drink together tonight, solved the problems of the world together, and I thought to myself, "why are we not better friends?" I honestly don't know the answer to that question. But I am determined to change that. Alex is an extraordinary man - he challenges my thinking in some ways, and agrees with me in others, but he is most of all his own person.

So tonight I give thanks for a new old friend. To Alex, who dares to be simply who he is. Next time, the drinks are on me.

Return to the Dark Ages?

2005-01-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

Those who know what is happening in my life now may find it ironic that I link this article by Joe Sobran, but there it is. I agree with Sobran - the "bright new day" the Progressives envision for us is in practice a dark, dark night. Speaking as one who has been living in darkness for as long as I can remember, I ought to know.

I won't blame "Progressives" for all the societal ills from which we suffer, but they certainly bear significant responsibility for changing our societal paradigm from one which tolerates deviance to one which revels in it. Jonah Goldberg makes the case more clearly than I could.

I face an awful lot of fear now. I just wrote a note to my pastor and one of the elders describing all the things that scare me in my life: living alone, being barred from worship, the effects of this situation on my family... Panic lurks under the surface.

The really, really, really weird bit is that I have more of sense of being in God's hands and more sense that He is actively at work to do me good than I have had in a Very Long Time. Go figure.

More Thoughts on Mercy

2005-01-10T17:23:00.000-07:00

Mercy comes in painful packages as well.

The last few days have been some of the most difficult, painful and strangely liberating of my life. A personal crisis has forced into the open some issues in my heart that I never recognized, and the recognition has been not merely a revelation but an epiphany. It is as though I had spent my entire life viewing the world through the wrong end of a telescope, always running into things and tripping over things, never really seeing or experiencing the world the way "normal" people do. And suddenly, I understand why.

Now, that doesn't mean the pathology is not still there. But what it does mean is that the first step to finding a solution is identifying the problem. I've been in the IT biz for a long time, and it is axiomatic that you cannot solve the problem if you cannot identify the problem.

Well, now I know the source of the problem.

It's a relief, really, even though my life externally appears to be in worse shape than ever. In reality, what might appear to an onlooker as the first day of a disaster was in reality the first day of healing. Although the metaphorical cancer is still inside me, at least I now know the nature of the problem.

I fight self-pity a lot, which is both self-indulgent and stupid. God is actively at work on my behalf, sorting out the mess that I have made of my life, redeeming that which seems irredeemable, making something beautiful out of something horrendous. I am not in control - He is. But the illusion of control is hard to relinquish.

My family suffers because of me. That is my excruciating reality. Yet they too are in God's more-than-capable hands. I do not understand His ways, but I have reached a point of desparation where I must entrust myself and my family to those ways, opaque though they may be. And in abandoning my delusion of control, I find freedom. Paradoxical, eh?