Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Bush's Ransom Demands

After the bailout failed the President gave a speech that frankly gave me the first impression that it was some kind of ransom demand. As if we're being held hostage and the kidnappers are demanding $700 billion in ransom.



"I assure our citizens and citizens around the world that this is not the end of the legislative process...it matters little what path a bill takes to become law, what matters is that we get a law."


Gee, I've always really kinda thought that it DOES matter what path a bill takes to become law, for instance, if the bill FAILS then it DOESN'T become law...seriously, is this some kind of a joke?

"I recognize this is a difficult vote for members of congress."


Um, maybe because the people they represent are wildly against it...could it be that? maybe?

"The consequences will grow worse each day if we do not act, ...it will have a direct impact on the retirement accounts pension funds and personal savings of millions of our citizens, and if our nation continues on this course the economic damage will be painful and lasting."


Are you threatening me? I'm sorry but it's the policy of the United States of America not to negotiate with terrorists...

"Our economy is depending on decisive action from the government ... we face the choice between action and economic hardship for millions of Americans."


I choose option b, economic hardship I can handle, but "decisive action from the government" frankly sounds kind of scary.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Where did all the money come from?

I'm not an expert in the stock market, or in economics or anything like that, but this graph brings up a few questions.


The main question is regarding the large increase in value starting about 1982. The early part of this graph shows an almost flat line. It looks as if you were to have put money into the market in 1971 and pulled it out in 1981 you would have gained very little, in fact the DOW was priced at $810.67 in November of 1971 and ten years later it was $852.45, and increase of just 4.9% in 10 years. Compare that to the next 10 years and we see an increase of 257% (1991 the DOW was at $3045.62) and then another ten years we get an increase of another 206% (Nov 2001 DOW was at $9323.54). So from 1971 to 1991 there was over a 1000% increase in the value of the DOW. Where did all the money come from? How did people make money on the stock market prior to 1982?

Here's my theory. First the early part of the graph is misleading because in the past people invested in a company in order to receive a dividend. The price of the stock was not the most important aspect of the company you were investing in. You would buy stock in a company, if the company made a profit it would pay that profit out to its shareholders in the form of a dividend. Actual cash money. Then I suppose people would take that dividend and put it in their accounts at their local banks and those banks would in turn use that money to lend out and promote business in their communities. However, in recent history we have moved to a model that speculates on massive stock trading and attempts to gain value by being less interested in the companies profitability and more interested in how many of the companies shares were trading and at what price . Dividends are less common today than they were in the past as most people are more concerned with the price of a given share, than on the dividend the share pays. In other words the market became much more speculative.

I suppose part of this came upon with the onset of computers and the ability to rapidly place buys and sells onto the market and the ability to update the price of a stock in real or near real time. Whatever the reason, the difference is profound. The graph above clearly shows a shift in the way we relate to the market where share price became the more predominate factor. But the question still remains: Where did all the new money come from?

Initially anyway, the new money came directly from people's savings accounts and from the profits of businesses. It happened like this: "In 1978, Congress amended the Internal Revenue Code, later called section 401(k), whereby employees are not taxed on income they choose to receive as deferred compensation rather than direct compensation." The law went into effect in 1980, and according to the above linked reference, by 1984 over 17,000 companies were offering 401k's. So basically congress set up a system to discourage people from holding their savings in the form of cash or other investments and to encourage them to put those investments into the stock market. Now instead of saving their earnings locally people were placing their savings in 401K's which were heavily invested in stocks traded on Wall Street. This was provided further incentive because employers would match the contributions of the employees, providing even more money for Wall Street.

In my opinion it's basically why we only have Wall Street shops like McDonald's, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart in our neighborhoods, and the shops that used to be owned by our neighbors have closed down. Access to capital is vital for a business to thrive and lending regulations make it much more difficult for a small business to negotiate terms with a banker that can help him to achieve success. The small businessman can all but forget raising capital investment in his own town, not only has most of the incentive for his neighbors to financially participate in his business been removed by tax law favoring investment in Wall-Street stocks, but he would also probably be thrown in jail for some kind of securities fraud for even trying.

It's funny how much difference a law can make. With the 401k law the government basically took away our Main Streets and replaced them with the all to familiar corporate counterfeits we have become so used to.

Maybe this financial meltdown will help us get back to an older and more honest way of doing business. But we would have to do this by working together as small, self sustaining communities of people who can and are willing to defend themselves.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Hallelujah! our financial saviour has arrived!

Just to show how much of a socialist scam our entire monetary system is, stocks SOARED today on NEWS that the all powerful Federal Government was going to step in and fix the banks.

Here's what Secretary Paulson said:

"What we are working on now is an approach to deal with the systemic risk and the stresses in our capital markets," Paulson said. "As we've said for some time, the root cause of the stress in the capital markets is the real estate correction. So again we're coming together to work for an expeditious solution which is aimed right at the heart of this problem." And, that is bad debts— or "illiquid assets" — on financial institutions' balance sheets, he said.


Translation: "A bunch of our banks made under collateralized loans to people who could not and will never be able to pay them back and now they don't want to carry those loans anymore, because...well they're worthless. For some reason, now they can't sell those loans to anyone and because of this they've lost a bunch of money. So obviously the Government should step in and help."

And our government responded:

"It will be the power — it may not be a new entity — it will be the power [for the government to be able to] to buy up illiquid assets," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, said.

Frank said there was "virtually unanimous agreement" among lawmakers in attendance that such legislation was needed.


Translation: "We'll just use taxpayer money to purchase these worthless notes. We'd hate to see our biggest campaign contributors go out of business for something as silly as blind, militantly ignorant greed. So instead we'll make a law that allows the government to spend money on NOTHING!!!!!"



I think Glenn Beck also has a good explanation of it, check it out.

So I wonder how this will work?

Since the government is purchasing these assets, I would assume that the government would be trying to collect on them as well. With the new bankruptcy laws the stupid people who took out these bad loans don't have many options anyway, and now they are going to have to negotiate these debts with the Federal Government instead of with the business that loaned them the money. That sounds like fun, and it sounds fair too. I mean we had to do this to save the economy, we can just let it fail? Can we? I mean we can't just let stupid people be punished by reality for doing stupid shit? Can we? Our big brother has to protect us, we can't handle this on our own. Thank goodness for Congress and the Federal Reserve.

The more I think about this, the more it just seems like a tax on the people in an effort to fund big business. I mean the government purchases all these bad debts using tax payer money, and then goes after those same taxpayers to collect on the debts.

This is terrible. It's a condemnation on us as a population that we are allowing this to happen with out a revolt...our country is in very sad shape.

[UPDATE] Sept 19, 2008: WORLD Markets Soar!

More fed funny money

Today the fed announced that they would be adding $180,000,000,000 to the money supply, two days ago they added $70,000,000,000 and don't forget they "loaned" AIG $85,000,000,000.


That right there is $335,000,000,000, or about 2.5% of our nations GDP in the last week!  No wonder Gold and Silver prices are soaring!  I guess people just prefer owning real money!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

More fun fed figures...

So the Fed is now going to bail out AIG by "loaning" them 85 billion dollars. Don't worry though, its all good because the Fed is watching out for our tax dollars by taking about an 80% equity position in AIG as collateral:


The interests of taxpayers are protected by key terms of the loan. The loan is collateralized by all the assets of AIG, and of its primary non-regulated subsidiaries. -The Federal Reserve

Doesn't that make you feel better? Never mind the fact that as of close of business today AIG's market cap was only $10 billion.




I wish I could get a loan like that:
Hey Mr Banker, I want to buy this $100,000 house, can I have loan for $850,000? No? Ok how 'bout if I give you an 80% equity position in the house? No? How about an 80% equity position in my neighbors house? Sweet!


Another thing I like about this is that the Fed "took" an 80% (actually 79.9%) ownership stake in the company.

The US government will receive a 79.9 percent equity interest in AIG and has the right to veto the payment of dividends to common and preferred shareholders.
- Federal Reserve

..what about the people that already owned AIG, you know those pesky shareholders? Did the fed "take" that from them, or did they buy it? If they did buy it, what price did they pay?

Did AIG own 80% of it's own shares?

85 billion dollars divided by 80% of 2.69 billion shares comes to $39.50 per share.

So basically AIG can buy the share from their shareholder at $3.75, or even better, NOT buy it and NOT pay dividends on it and then they can use that share as collateral on a loan (not sell it mind you) and receive $39.50. I wish I could collateralize other peoples property for a loan, that would be great, I could get all kinds of money and not have to worry about losing any of my stuff when I didn't pay it back...sounds like a sweet deal for AIG!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Ask for a raise!

If the mortgage bailout is going to cost us $800 billion dollars then you must ask for at least a 5.6% raise this year or you'll be taking a pay cut.

Here's how I figure it:

Total US GDP in 2007: $13,543,000,000,000
Total US Population in 2007: 301,139,947
GDP per Capita (GDP/Population): $44,972.44

Cost of Mortgage Bailout: $800,000,000,000

The cost of the mortgage bailout is equivalent to the government printing $800 billion in new dollars. This is the magic and wonder of the Federal Reserve System, it can create new money whenever it wants since our money isn't based on anything real like gold or silver.

Now if you add the cost of the mortgage bailout to the GDP and then divide that number by the population you get $47,629.02. This means that after the mortgage bailout it takes $47,629.02 to purchase what $44,972.44 would purchase before the mortgage bailout. Your dollar is worth about 5.6% less because of the mortgage bailout.

So if you don't get at a minimum a 5.6% raise this year then you are basically taking the equivalent pay cut thanks directly to the mortgage bailout.

So to figure out how much of a raise you need, just take your current salary and divide it by .944, that's how much you'll need to make next year in order to afford living in a country who's government creates $800,000,000,000 in new currency in order to facilitate a mortgage bailout. And this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that our government also engages in massive welfare programs, expensive foreign entanglements, and is generally wasteful and bloated.

So don't go blaming the Saudis, oil companies, or anything else until you first look at the real reason why prices are so high. The real reason is because you vote for people who promise to buy you stuff without raising taxes, the only way they can do this is by printing more money and that has the effect I described above, I think it's called inflation.

Tell your boss...

Monday, September 8, 2008

Leveraging selfishness and looking at what is missing from Christian Hedonism.

EDITORS NOTE:  When I say "we" I generally mean "I", it just makes it easier when I can lump you into it with me...and BTW this is a big ramble towards the end, I'm still processing how to put many of these thoughts and ideas into words, but that's the fun part isn't it?

Belief in God AND service to others that one views as equal to or greater than self is vital for communities to prosper.  This is true because people are completely self serving.  There are no completely self-less acts.  Even a man who "lays down his life for another" is doing so out of a sense of meaning either derived from belief in a higher being that rewards or is pleased by such activity, and/or a belief that serving others or service to the group to which a person belongs is a more meaningful expression of life that is the simple perpetuation one's own existence.  I'll go out on a limb here and say that even Christ in that "while we were still sinners Christ died for us", and even while he was acting not out of his own will but that of God's, was ultimately seeking that which would bring himself the most glory (and thereby enabling for us the most satisfaction in the participation in that glory).  Read John 17 and you'll see what I mean.  Overall this service to self is nothing new, it's a complete rip off of John Piper who by his own admission is ripping off the Westminster Catechism, which was ripping off other stuff all the way back to what the Bible itself teaches on the subject. Piper calls it "Christian Hedonism" which is great, but I think that it only addresses half the issue.

Christian Hedonism accomplishes the goal of a). fulfilling our purpose to bringing God glory and b). doing so while still ultimately satisfying the self in the only way the self was ultimately meant to be satisfied.  So in summing up the Law, Christian Hedonism perfectly addresses "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength", however it does not (directly anyway) address the second commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself".  I think this is important because we can basically see the results of this omission from the rifts that exist in the church based on basically minor theological or doctrinal issues, and in the churches irrelevance and impotence in addressing the needs of our communities.

The problem is, that in service of our selfish desires to be satisfied by God we tend to get too wrapped up in the study of Theology.  This is good and bad.  It's good because much of the time it helps us to understand and relate to God better and thereby increasing our satisfaction in Him.  It's bad because it tends to cause us to forget about the rest of the world.  The study of Theology is very good because it is what enables us to be "of God" and not "of the world", however we must still be "in the world".  Theology helps us to love God, but we still have to love our neighbors.  It easy when we are with our fellow believers sitting around talking about Theology and exploring the wonders of God together, however what about non believers?  How about people who don't like the church, or don't believe the Bible, or believe it differently than we do? Is there room to love others when we've figured out how to derive all our meaning from God? 

So should we just grit our teeth and obediently start loving our neighbors?  

  • Can you truly love someone out of obedience alone?  
  • Is it really loving your neighbor when your acts of service are born out of a love for God and not out of a love for the person? 
  • Is God pleased when we serve a person we despise in order only to be obedient?  

It's easier to obediently reach out to "the least of these", especially when I see them as lower than myself.  This is proof for me that my motivations in helping people have often been misplaced.   I don't love the people I'm serving...I love God and I love to prove it to Him by lording my own greatness over all of the "least of these" in my obedient acts of self indulgence.  I'm pretty sure it pisses God off.  And it probably doesn't make me a very good neighbor either. 

I keep mentioning "the least of these".  It comes from the parable of the sheep and the goats. The most striking thing to me about this parable is that the sheep didn't know when it was that they were serving Him, they asked him "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?".  They weren't really aware of their own good deeds, they just did them.  I'm acutely aware and proud of my own good deeds...there is definitely a work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer that enables this kind of behavior.  I pray that my good deeds would become less and less evident to me as they become more and more a natural expression of my true self in Christ.

Christ said that we have to make ourselves last to be first, that in order to be the greatest we have to be the least.  I think I get it.  I'm still not abandoning my premise that there are no self-less acts. If I can see everyone else as greater than myself, then I can derive great satisfaction by serving them...very selfish.   Maybe others would see me as greater than themselves, and derive great satisfaction by serving me...still very selfish, but I could see how this could make for a great community...maybe Jesus was on to something there...

still rolling this around, more later...


Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Daxological solution for defeating tyrants and terrorists...

I read a book called "The Different Drum", by M. Scott Peck and Ron Paul's book "The Revolution" and it got me to thinking, I came to the conclusion that the best defense against tyrants and terrorism is self sustaining communities of people that can defend themselves. It's really pretty simple,

Here are some definitions:

  • self sustaining: adequate locally available food, water, and energy needs.
  • communities of people: people who live close to each other geographically and who relate to each other in terms of meaning derived from their life together.
  • that can defend themselves: protect each other and their food, water and energy supplies from theft or other raiding.
Terrorism would be more difficult under this setup because it's a community, and in a community people know each other, even the bad things about each other, so locally born terrorists will probably be found out or tattled on, and foreign terrorist will just stick out.

Tyrants will have a hard time, especially if these communities can replicate themselves by evangelizing techniques and solutions that worked for them to other communities and then creating some limited interdependence on other communities for supplies and defense via simple and mutually beneficial trade. The only possible effective attack would be a massive air attack by a technologically superior air force...

A key point is that the community must have an identity of its own that the members of the community all buy into. The people of the community have to see it as a value to themselves, and they have to see the community as bigger than themselves. If a person does not accept the premise of the community then in service of their own self interests, the interests of the community will not be considered. They will likely "sell out" to any outside influence that offers an enticement that provides a momentary gratification greater than the perceived value of membership in the community.

The Acts 2 Church seems like a good model to promote and perpetuate this kind of community. It provides for the members needs, they protect each other, and the meaning of the community is based on a relationship with God who provides an infinite source of meaning greater than self, and on a relationship with the others in the community where the other members of the community are viewed as equal to or more important than the self (and in case you're wondering those seen as more important than self would include people who are not Christians as well as those who are, per the teaching of the Good Samaritan).

So, it also seems to me that this kind of community could also accommodate people of any religious persuasion even mixed religious persuasions, (ie Muslims and Christians, Calvinist and Armenians) without the two having to abandon their deeply held convictions.

Heck I could even see a community where Muslims, Christians, and whateverians (shoot, probably even homosexuals!) were able to live together, provide for each other, protect each other, and even argue with each other about who's right and who's wrong and who's a sinner and who's not without ever having to resort to violence against each other. In fact violence against each other would seem somewhat preposterous as it would be a threat to the health of the community.

If an aggressor were to attack the community, the community would respond in order to protect the lives of it's own people, and to protect it's life sustaining resources. It may choose to totally annihilate it's aggressing enemy in order to protect itself from future attacks, however I couldn't see it attempting to use force to perpetuate itself into other geographic areas. If membership in the community does not come from physical need AND individual intellectual will, then the community will be weak, so empire building would actually work against the strength of the community.

Imagine a whole nation built out of communities like this, independent yet interdependent communities of people that provide for and protect themselves. I hope to put some of this to practice in my own neighborhood, as well as in Liberia. I wonder why nobody has ever thought of this before?

Update on Liberia

Hello friends and family,

I wanted to give everyone an update about what is going in with DELTA Force, Fresh Start Fellowship, and West African Childrens Support Network (WACSN) in Monrovia, Liberia.

As many of you know a group of us went to Monrovia, Liberia, Africa in the beginning of August of this year. While we were there we did a variety of things including a VBS, teen conference, and training. Personally I had the privilege to preach the Gospel to the teenagers and also helped to build a computer network and trained some of the guys there how to administer it, I also made some great friends in the process (click here for some pictures). Most importantly however, we put on a pastors conference where we had over 150 pastors from all over Monrovia attend. Kris and Bryan spent a great deal of time with the pastors teaching them and encouraging them to get out and to love, minister to, and serve their flock, and also to work together to rebuild their communities, putting the Cross of Christ ahead of any other differences they may have in order to repair their broken land.

Well since we've returned home much has happened. Our group of 150 pastors has organized themselves into a network of 1000 pastors all hungry to go OUT and into their communities and to reach them in Love for Christ. We are now planning to hold a conference at the soccer stadium in Monrovia in December, it seats 45,000 people (which means 65,000 will attend), and it may be several days of conference, so we're talking over 100,000 people reached. This in combination with a continuation of our effort to train and encourage the pastors will lead to a great move of God. Our intent is not to go and simply provide a "mountain top" experience at the soccer stadium, but to use it as a catalyst to get people connected to the pastors and churches in their communities. However it is coming upon us quickly and we have to move fast.

We are literally scrambling right now to get a high speed Internet connection (Via satellite) installed at the WACSN compound in Liberia, so we can have much better communication capabilities with the pastors in Monrovia, and so also we can provide to them the resources on the Internet that we all take for granted each day (they can't just go to the local bookstore or library and pick up John Piper's latest book, many of them could barely if even afford a Bible). We hope to have this completed within the next month. This connection will greatly help our ability to plan this conference and to keep the vision strong among the pastors there in Liberia, however we also have a plan to the future to turn this Internet project into a sustainable Liberian owned business that will provide connectivity to the churches and to the people, and also employ several Liberians with good paying jobs.

Through DELTA Force we are working on several opportunities to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a plan to also develop sustainable business and community projects. To date we have placed a new van at the WACSN compound that is used to securely transport guests around the city, we have placed a new generator at the compound so that we can have reliable electricity, we have shipped a 40 foot shipping container full of food and other supplies, and are planning another container now with medical equipment and supplies to equip WACSN's new clinic. Plans on the radar are to provide for a fishing boat, water filtration, solar and wind energy, and many other exciting projects.

God is blessing our activities, for instance, after we purchased the Van, the office of the President of Liberia contacted WACSN and is now renting the van and providing a nice source of revenue. Our purchase of the Van gave us some good relationships within the Lebanese business community in Monrovia, this greatly helped in the purchase of the generator.

DELTA Force Missions is the path through which we provide our support to WACSN in Liberia. To date Fresh Start Fellowship (a small church in Fairview, OK), has provided a great deal of the giving needed to get these projects where they are today, however they are now needing to reach out and gain the support others who have a similar vision to help the least of these in our world.

Here is what you can do to help:

  • Donate funds to DELTA Force, 100% of the money will go to support the activities in Monrovia. Many things in Liberia are expensive, Internet for example costs MUCH more than it does here, for you techies, a 128/128k dedicated connection runs $1400.00 a month. This kind of stuff is vital to build a foundation for sustainability, and the world does not want us to succeed, the world wants to continue to oppress the Liberian people, this is truly a battle.
  • Contact us to have us come talk to your church or organization about our vision for Liberia. Let us cast a vision to your friends and family to truly help the least of these as Jesus commands us to. I know that Kris, Bryan and myself will readily make ourselves available to come talk to your group.
  • Raise money to help pay for people's travel to Liberia, or volunteer and raise money to go yourself (but be ready to work!)
  • PRAY: Pray that our vision will be clearly from God. Pray that God will move in the hearts of the people and that pastors in Liberia, pray that personalities and minor theological issues won't impede the forward progress of the Gospel, pray that communities will be built up strong in Christ. Specifially right now we need prayer that our shipping container full of food will be released from customs without us having to pay ridiculous import taxes etc. Also that the internet service will be installed quickly and with no show stopping technical challenges (but with a few technical challenges just to keep it fun for me!)
  • Adopt a child through WACSN, You can literally save a life, and change your own life. Liberia has been destroyed by years of war, many families cannot afford to feed or care for their own children, when you adopt from Liberia, many times you adopt not only a child, many times you adopt a family, and as is the case with many of my friends who have adopted, they adopted a whole nation. Get in contact with me an I can forward you to many families who's homes have been blessed by adopting from Liberia.

If you are interested in this vision, even if you have the least bit of interest, please contact me. Heck, even if you HATE the vision and think it's a stupid idea, contact me and at least give me a chance to talk you into it. We are working hard now to build a network of individuals interested in supporting and serving Liberia. PLEASE forward this email along to anyone you might think is interested in helping. We are on the precipice of a powerful move of God in Liberia that will impact thier nation in a very good way, I want to have a front row seat to that.