Watching Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania in this video is really sobering - he explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars" :
I wonder if the line we heard repeated over & over again in the U.S. after 9/11/2001:
is actually more accurately a description for what accelerated globally on 9/18/2008. Whether we call this a massive recession or the Great Deleveraging or the Next Depression or Hank, it seems clear that we are living in a moment of profound awakening and re-ordering.
Jordon Cooper remains one of my fav bloggers - he is actually one of the 2 people who inspired me to start blogging. He points to a really powerful post by Barbara Ehrenreich, the American feminist, socialist and political activist, on the impact of 9/18 already:
Ever on the lookout for the bright side of hard times, I am tempted to delete “class inequality” from my worry list. Less than a year ago, it was the one of the biggest economic threats on the horizon, with even hard line conservative pundits grousing that wealth was flowing uphill at an alarming rate, leaving the middle class stuck with stagnating incomes while the new super-rich ascended to the heavens in their personal jets. Then the whole top-heavy structure of American capitalism began to totter, and –poof!—inequality all but vanished from the public discourse. A financial columnist in the Chicago Sun Times has just announced that the recession is a “great leveler,” serving to “democratize[d] the agony,” as we all tumble into “the Nouveau Poor…”
The media have been pelting us with heart-wrenching stories about the neo-suffering of the Nouveau Poor, or at least the Formerly Super-rich among them: Foreclosures in Greenwich CT! A collapsing market for cosmetic surgery! Sales of Gulfstream jets declining! Niemen Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue on the ropes! We read of desperate measures, like having to cut back the personal trainer to two hours a week. Parties have been canceled; dinner guests have been offered, gasp, baked potatoes and chili. The New York Times relates the story of a New Jersey teenager whose parents were forced to cut her $100 a week allowance and private Pilates classes. In one of the most pathetic tales of all, New Yorker Alexandra Penney relates how she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff and is now faced with having to lay off her three-day- a-week maid, Yolanda. “I wear a classic clean white shirt every day of the week. I have about 40 white shirts. They make me feel fresh and ready to face whatever battles I may be fighting …” she wrote, but without Yolanda, “How am I going to iron those shirts so I can still feel like a poor civilized person?”
But hard times are no more likely to abolish class inequality than Obama’s inauguration is likely to eradicate racism. No one actually knows yet whether inequality has increased or decreased during the last year of recession, but the historical precedents are not promising. The economists I’ve talked to-- like Biden’s top economic advisor, Jared Bernstein—insist that recessions are particularly unkind to the poor and the middle class. Canadian economist Armine Yalnizyan says, “Income polarization always gets worse during recessions.”
Cornel West once said that faith communities"... may be the last places left in our culture that can engage the public conversation with non-market values." One of the people I respect the most on how faith & economic can speak to one another is Ched Myers , the Catholic educator and activist. Myers has been writing & teaching on this for more than 20 years - I find great hope in the midst of change in his piece Jesus' New Economy of Grace:
If we are going to dismiss the Jubilee because Israel practiced it only inconsistently, we should also ignore the Sermon on the Mount because Christians have rarely embodied Jesus' instruction to love our enemies. But it is time to move beyond such rationalizing theology in our churches. We must rediscover the gospel as good news for the poor, and the economic disciplines of shabat as the path of humanization.
Even with the ascendancy of modern capitalism—with its fierce antipathy toward Sabbath economics—this vision has not been extinguished. We see it in tracts by the 18th-century "leveler" Thomas Spence in his struggle against the move to enclose (i.e. privatize) the Commons in early industrial England: "Since then this Jubilee/Sets all at Liberty/Let us be glad/Behold each man return to his possession." And we hear it in the 19th-century spirituals of African slaves sung in American fields: "Don't you hear the gospel trumpet sound Jubilee?"
Those of us who would insist that the Bible's ancient socioeconomic and spiritual disciplines remain relevant today have hard work to do. We must diligently and creatively explore what contemporary, concrete analogies might be to Jubilee practices of old. The task is as imperative as it is daunting; the alternative is the "capital-olatry" of the runaway global economy. In all of this, the church can help nurture commitment and creativity by promoting "Sabbath literacy," a spirituality of forgiveness and reparation, and practical economic disciplines for individuals, households, and congregations.
perhaps the most astute thing I've ever read about the economy>>>>you've nailed it. God is not in charge here in the US, we don't do animal sacrifices,,,,BUT the old Bible lesson that the latrine shall outside of the camp still rings true AND there is no doubt that forgiveness is the only way to make any human interaction work. praise Jesus that His death brings forgiveness to the spiritual realm...good luck in any effort to bring forgiveness into the economy of human to human transactions
Posted by: Bill | Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 02:55 PM