Slouching to the Beast

The politicians and bankers will prop it up their economies, but they will be sowing the seeds that sprout into the next problem. That is fine, because political powers never want correct solutions. They cannot eliminate problems, because they need the next crisis to justify an expansion of power.

Mistakes by political leaders do not mean state power will diminish. State power will increase dramatically throughout the economy and society, as people demand political action to solve the problems their political leaders created. The main consequence of the credit crunch will be an enormous increase of state power throughout the world.

America is slowly grouching toward being the Beast. The home of market capitalism and the bastion of independence is becoming the breeding ground for state power. Faith in the state has been growing rapidly in the United States over the last few decades. The state has now made a huge series of interventions in the economy and most Americans are cheering. People who would not accept telephone number that includes the digits 666 are glad to have the state bailing out the banks and auto makers. They will never be a credible resistance against the creeping power of the state again.

The credit crunch will not destroy American power. The productive base of the United States is strong enough that after a brief hiccup its world empire will keep on expanding. The only impact of the credit crunch will be a sharp shift from freedom and independence towards state subservience and control. This radical change will happen without even a whimper of protest.

Uncertain Economy

At the moment, I am not certain how things will go. There are two possibilities.

1. The actions of the political and monetary authorities might be effective. Sometimes the wrong solutions are effective for a while, even if it stores up problems for the future. The capital injections of central banks may be enough to unclog the banking system. Collapsing gasoline prices and declining mortgage interest rates might make households feel confident enough to take out their wallets and start spending again. The world economy might respond by changing up a gear and moving slowly back into growth mode.
2. Government policies might fail. Unemployment could surge upward meaning that more and more households are unable to make their mortgage payments. An increasing number of mortgagee sales could cause house prices to collapse even further. More toxic bank debt might be exposed causing the banking system to implode. A big wind down in consumer spending could bring business activity crashing to a halt. These effects could join together in a vicious circle of decline.

The political and financial authorities hope that the first option will prevail, but they cannot be certain.

One outcome is certain. The credit crash will lead to an immense increase in state power. Huge losses in personal and economic freedom will be welcomed throughout the world by people who want to be rescued from troubles.

Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs has made a detailed study of the Great Depression and understands it better than the other famous student in high places. He is concerned about the Fed flooding the banking system with reseves. Excess reserves have gone from $2 billion to $559 billion in three months.

So much potential new money is now impounded in the commercial banks’ holdings of excess reserves that it is difficult to see how the Fed will be able to stem the flood once the banks begin to transform those excess reserves into normal loans and investments. If the Fed attempts to sell enough government securities to soak up the growing money stock, it will drive down the prices of Treasury bonds and hence drive up their yield, increasing the government’s cost of borrowing to finance the huge budget deficits the government will be running because of its various bailout commitments and so-called stimulus programs. This scenario holds the potential for a complete monetary crackup.

I have never been inclined toward touting doomsday financial scenarios. I raise the possibility now because I am unable to foresee how the Fed and the Treasury can navigate through these treacherous waters - waters that their own previous actions have whipped to a foam - without creating terrible financial and economic harm.

Fools at the Wheel

The biggest risk to the world economy is the men who pull the levers of power in the government and the financial system. They have considerable ability to get things wrong while trying to put things right. Most depressions are caused when unexpected events are exacerbated by political and financial leaders. The credit crunch is the result of foolish responses to previous troubles. The capabilities of our political leaders have not improved with time, so they still have massive ability to stuff things up.

The Federal Reserve is currently pumping credit like a thirsty man at a dry well. The Fed knows nothing else, but boosting credit is just more of the same; more of what created the credit crisis in the first place. Massive credit creation may limit the worst of the immediate damage, but it will spawn terrible problems for the future. Current policies will leave a lake of liquidity. When confidence conspires and leverage ramps up again, the world economy could spin into hyper-inflation.

The central banks are now pushing the banks to do more lending, but this is naive. Their solution is the same as the problem. Reckless lending got the world into a mess, so more lending will not save it. A new borrowing binge and spending spree will not restore the economy.

Bush’s $700 billion rescue package for the banking sector may restore banking confidence, but it will not resolve the problem, because it rewards weaker lenders with new capital. In free market, the competent and wise people who prepared for hard times usually take over the assets of the reckless and incompetent. This time the reverse is happening. Governments are taking from the prudent people and businesses that built up wealth and giving to the careless, foolish and bungling banks. That cannot be good for the economy.

The American financial system is seriously flawed. It will eventually collapse when God has had enough of American shenanigans, but until that happens, it will lurch from minor crisis to minor crisis and from power to more power.

Bernanke and Co Ltd are throwing the kitchen sink at the global credit crisis, but they produced the crisis, so it is unlikely that they understand the solution. That does not matter, as wrong solutions often appear to be efficacious, and appearances are all that count in the political world.

Easy Credit Easy Belief

During the easy credit era that began this century, everyone seemed to get in on the act. The financial sector got into leverage. Households started a building boom. It seems that the church all wanted its share of the cake. The New York Times reports that increasing numbers of churches are facing foreclosure, because they cannot afford to pay the mortgage on their building.

Some of the mentality that you saw taking hold of the residential marketplace probably shifted into the church. Lenders loaned far too much, they loaned into lofty projections of future growth, and they just saddled the churches with far too much debt.

What has happened to the idea that the church should be different from the world.

Who will rescue these churches? Bernanke or God?

Peter Schiff

Peter Schiff predicted the collapse of the housing bubble when most economists thought the new world had come. He is now concerned about the impact of the government pumping the supply of money.

For now the inflationary tide is being held back by the countervailing pressures of bursting asset bubbles in real estate and stocks, forced liquidations in commodities, and troubled retailers slashing prices to unload excess inventory. But when the dust settles, trillions of new dollars will remain, chasing a diminished supply of goods. We will be left with 1970s-style stagflation, only with a much sharper contraction and significantly higher inflation.

Credit Multiplier

Textbook teaching on the creation of money and credit usually describes an increase in the supply of money. Here is an example in an article prepared by an economist at a reputable central bank. She describes a situation where a deposit of $1,000 that comes into a bank from outside becomes $10,000 within the banking system. She assumed a credit multiplier of 10, but if the level of reserves held by the banks the lower, the credit multiplier would be even larger. More money must be good, so all this seems to be quite benign to a student of economics.

Textbooks rarely illustrate the opposition situation where $1,000 is taken out of a bank and the system loses $10,000. This is not quite so nice, but it is relevant to the current situation. If a bank has to write off a bad loan, its capital is reduced by the amount of the loan. The credit multiplier kicks in and reduces the money in the banking system by 10 times as much as was lost by the bank. This is sometimes called deleveraging. The credit multiplier can easily become a credit cruncher.

Lost Capital

Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.”

Mr John Mills, Article read before the Manchester Statistical Society, December 11, 1867, on Credit Cycles and the Origin of Commercial Panics as quoted in Financial crises and periods of industrial and commercial depression, Burton, T. E. (1931, first published 1902). New York and London: D. Appleton & Co

His Best Shot

Many Christians assume that human “free will“ prevents the Holy Spirit from fulfilling his commissioning to establish the Kingdom of god on earth. They cite human free will as the reason why things will get worse and worse on earth. The Holy Spirit cannot prevent humans from doing their worst.

This view is that is based on a misunderstanding how the Holy Spirit operates. He is actually an expert on achieving his objectives by working through human free will. He does not work against free will. He works despite it. For example, the Holy Spirit has the ability to convict people of sin.

When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:11).

The Holy Spirit is able to convict those who are opposed to Jesus of their sin.

I know this is true, because it happened to me. I was moving away from God as far and as fast as I could. I had written a good essay for my course in Philosophy that proved that God did not exist. To my surprise, a number of things happened to me and a number of thoughts were put into my mind that caused me to repent and believe in Jesus. I had a turnaround that surprised even me, but throughout the conversion process my free will was not compromised and I was not forced to do anything against my will.

I could have rejected the wooing of the Spirit, but he so subtlety exposed the weakness of my foundations and so deftly destroyed my objections that it was almost impossible to resist. He knows the perfect way to challenge and draw each person.

Most Christians believe that the enemy can put thoughts in their mind that might cause them to fall into sin. We call that temptation. However, very few seem to understand that the Holy Spirit is able to do the same things even more effectively. He can prompt other unbelievers to do things that challenge an unbeliever. He can put thoughts in an unbeliever’s mind at any time. If he can do that for me, he can do it for anyone.

Many Christians seem to be more confident of the devil’s ability to tempt Christians into falling, than they are in the Holy Spirit’s ability to convict sinners into repenting. That is bizarre. The Holy Spirit is far more wise and far more powerful than the devil.

My faith in the Holy Spirit’s ability to convict sinners to repentance has an interesting implication. The reason that so many people in the modern world have not come to faith is not because the Holy Spirit is incapable of bringing them to faith in repentance. The church is not declining, because the Holy Spirit is not up to the task. The truth is that he has not been able to bring the modern world of sin and bring them to faith, because he has been held back. He has been held back because there are not enough Christians who are willing to work seriously with him at this task. He has also has been held back by God, because some other things must happen first. See the Game of Two Halves.

We have not yet seen the Holy Spirit having his best shot. Many think that because he has not done it yet, he cannot do it, but that is wrong. When the Father lets him go for it, most Christians will be totally amazed at what he does. He will make the devil look totally embarrassed and feeble.

Jim Rodgers

Jim Rogers says the government's $700 billion rescue package for the fiancial sector does not address how banks manage their balance sheets, and instead rewards weaker lenders with new capital.

What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets from the incompetent.

What's happening this time is that the government is taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics (Reuters).

Bernie Made Off with Billions

Bernard Madoff made off with about $30 billion. People are really upset and accusing him of fraud. They claim that he was operating a Ponzi scheme. So what is all the fuss is about.

Here is the relevant legal background. The economist Eric Posner wrote,

I deposit some cash with the bank, I don’t retain my property interest. Instead, I’m making a loan to the bank and I obtain a contractual right to repayment on demand. If I demand my cash (plus interest, if any) and the bank fails to pay me, then I can sue it for breach of contract and demand expectation damages…. I have to race other creditors for its assets; otherwise, my contract right is converted into a claim in bankruptcy, and I have to share with other creditors.

The most important legal decision on this topic is Foley v Hill

Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it . . . . The money placed in the custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of his principal....

Bernie Madoff’s activities seem to comply with these statements. It seems that once people deposited money with him, he was entitled to treat it as his own property and “do with it as he pleases”. All that the law requires was that he make the interest payments, he contracted to make. The law does not specify that he must employ the money in a particular way. Provided he returned any money entrusted within the contractually specified number of days ore receiving a redemption notice, he was not breaching the law. Bernie Madoff did nothing illegal, until he stopped meeting requests for redemption of funds.

Just kidding!

Posner’s quote above was a response to suggestions by Walter Block that fractional reserve banking is immoral. I quoted the decision in Foley v Hill in response to comments on a post disagreeing with the practice where banks treat demand deposits as their assets.

The similarity is quite disturbing. If what Bernie Madoff did complied with modern banking law, something is seriously wrong with modern banking.

Grace or Works

Celebrating Christmas has become hard work
Presents to buy
Meals to prepare
Then after Christmas
More work to pay for it all.
Christmas is about grace.
Why is celebrating God’s grace
such hard work?

A King for Christmas

The angel's message to Mary was interesting. He said nothing about salvation as we think of it.

But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end" (Luke 1:30-33).

The angel did not talk about Jesus dying on the cross. He talked about him reigning as a king, in a kingdom that will never end. We got a King for Christmas, but we are not sure about what do with him. We like to keep him in the manger where he is safe, and we are not challenged.

Compulsory Gifts

God gifted his son to us, because he loved the world,
not because he felt that he must.

When you feel that you have to give a gift,
it ceases to be a gift.

The marketers and merchants have conspired to make gifts
something that we have to do at Christmas.
They have ripped the heart out of the Christmas gift,
because a gift that is not bathed in love is just a duty.

Falling Prices (6) - Investment Strategy

If inflation stopped completely and prices began to decline slowly, investment strategies would also have to change dramatically. Buying an asset and just waiting for the capital gain would no longer be a feasible strategy. That would be a good thing for the economy, as investors would shift to assets that are actually productive.

Investment decisions would require real wisdom and prudence. Ownership of a house would not be viable unless it could be let out for a rental that covered all expenses and any decline in price. Most investors would have to switch to investments that produce something real and valuable.

Inflation has disrupted investment patterns in a very negative way. One of the reasons is that real incomes in the western world have not grown as much as we would like is that most savings (and massive imported savings) have been ploughed into residential dwellings. The problem is that residential dwellings do a produce a return that benefits the economy in turns of jobs and output.

If inflation disappeared, investment would flow into assets that are productive and produce goods and services that people are willing to purchase. Declining asset prices would push investors into more productive investments, which would be good for the economy. More productive investment would benefit society be increasing employment and wealth.

Falling Prices (5) - Houses Too

Inflation makes investment easy, people can buy assets, do nothing, and watch them slowly increase in price. The benefit comes at the expense of people on fixed incomes, as inflation robs them of their wealth. Of course, inflation does not affect all assets evenly. Some assets increase price more quickly than others, and housing has done better than most other asset types. People have brought dwellings and watched their wealth increase, as inflation pushed up the value of their homes.

Our long experience of house rising in price is actually an illusion. The reality is that houses age and suffer from wear and tear over time. Therefore to be a good indication for economic decision making, the price of dwellings should decline slowly to reflect that reality. In ten years time, my house will be ten years older, so its price should be less than it is now. If inflation were eliminated, residential dwellings would gradually decline slowly in price year by year, reflecting the fact that they are getting older and less modern. A thirty year old house would be worth less than a two year old house.

Unfortunately, people have become so used to inflation that the thought of their home not increasing in value over time is quite disturbing. The reality is that most capital goods decline in price over time. Manufacturing plant and equipment can be almost worthless when it has reached the end of its useful life. Nevertheless, business people are happy to buy plant and equipment knowing that its resale value will decline over time, because they can use it to produce goods that can be sold for a return that will compensate them for the depreciation in value of their assets.

In the same way, we have no problem with buying a car that will be worth less next year than it is this year, because the transport services that the car provides are worth more to us than the decline in price and the cost of maintenance.

The reason that we would be disturbed by a decline in the price of houses is that we tend to think of a home purchase as an investment. This is incorrect thinking. In the absence of inflation, the purchase of a home is consumption expenditure. The person buying a home consumes all the shelter services that it provides. The purchase price is actually an up-front payment for a very long-term stream of services. (Some of the shelter services that are not used up may be sold when the owner is ready to move on)

The only way to turn the purchase of a dwelling into an investment that produces a return is to rent it out to some willing to pay for the shelter services. In addition to providing a steam of income, the rent would compensate for any decline in price.

If there were no inflation, people would have to stop seeing their home as an asset that will increase in value over time. People would only buy a house to live in, if they valued the shelter services it could provide more than the decline in price and the cost of any maintenance.

Falling Prices (4) - Normal

Very few people realised that deflation should be normal. If governments did not inflate their currency, price inflation would not drop to zero. In a country where the monetary policy is neutral, the price level would gradual fall over time. A few prices might increase in response to shifts in demand, but the prices of most goods and services would fall, as new technology and economies of scale reduce the costs of production.

Declining prices are a powerful economic mechanism, because the benefits flow to everyone in the economy. People on fixed incomes benefit, because the things they have to buy get cheaper. Those who are weak and powerless benefit, because they can purchase more with what they have. Inflation benefits the few, who can work the system and know how to use debt to speculate in property. Falling prices benefit everyone.

One of the best ways to help the poor is to eliminate inflation. Even if price inflation is only three percent per year, poor people will be worse off unless they can increase their income by that amount. Poor people generally do not have sufficient political or market power to negotiate that kind of increase in their incomes, so inflation harms their situation. On the other hand, declining prices benefit the poor without any need for negotiation.

Over the last few years, cheap imports of electronics and clothing from China have been so pervasive that the level of consumer prices has generally declined slowly. This should have turned into a downward flood that brought increased prosperity to everyone, but unfortunately governments continued to inflate their currencies throughout the period. The world thinks that inflation has been low over the last few years, but that is wrong, because prices would have been falling much more, if governments had not been manipulating the money supply.

When economies of scale and technological advances should be reducing prices, even zero price inflation is harmful. Over the last decade, people on fixed incomes have been robbed of the benefits that would have come their way, by governments that have stopped prices from falling. This inflation has eased the pain of those who are heavily in debt. Inflation punished those on fixed incomes and benefits and benefits those in debt. Gradual deflation would benefit everyone, especially the poor.

Falling Prices (3) - Inflation is Good?

We have had inflation for so long, that people have begun to assume that inflation is good. For example, house prices are now so high, that home owners are only able to cope with the huge debt needed to buy a house, because the endemic inflation has reduced the burden of their mortgages. Over the last decade, inflation has made it possible for home owners to cope with really high debt levels, because rising house prices increase the equity of people with mortgages.

Governments are usually huge debtors. In the modern world, most governments have enormous public debt. They love inflation because even at low rates, it gradually erodes the burden of the outstanding debt. The declining value of debt, allows the government to increase debt further. Politicians like debt, because it allows them to spend money, without having to raise taxes.

Many people now believe that a little inflation is a good thing, but it reality inflation is a two-edged sword. It might reward those who are in debt, but it punishes savers. The value of savings is eroded by inflation. Even if inflation is between two and three percent, which most government see as a noble goal, the value of a responsible person’s savings will be halved in fifteen years. In thirty years, the saving will be worthless. Any phenomena that hurts saving and rewards debt is dangerous for an economy.

God’s blessing falls on lenders and not on borrowers.

For the LORD your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you (Deut 15:6).

Borrowing is sometimes necessary, but is dangerous because it removes freedom.

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender (Prov 22:7).

Inflation blesses debtors and harms lenders. God works the other way round. Being free from the need to borrow is a fruit of his blessing.

You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom (Deut 28:12,13).

Inflation fights with against God’s blessing.

Falling Prices (2) - Borrowers Punished?

The other concern of the columnists is that deflation punishes borrowers.

A prolonged period of deflation can have a pernicious affect on an economy. The other main reason why deflation can cause so many problems is that it serves to make debt more expensive. Here's why. If you borrow £1,000 at the start of the year to pay for a new sofa, the cost of the loan does not change throughout the year. It remains at £1,000. But the sofa is falling in price. So at the end of the year – when you are still paying back the loan – you have ended up taking out £1,000 to pay for a sofa now worth just £900 or £800. Think of it as negative equity on a grand scale, spreading itself into every corner of consumer credit. Of course, in theory there are some winners: savers (Harry Wallop, Daily Telegraph).

The curse of deflation is that it increases the burden of debts. Incomes fall: debts stay the same. This way lies suffocation…. The great credit bubble of the last 20 years has pushed debt levels in Britain, the US and other Western societies to unprecedented highs… Our sensitivity to debt deflation is therefore greater (Ambrose Evans Pritchard, Daily Telegraph).

This is twisted thinking. The curse of debt has been replaced by the curse of deflation. Evil is good. The lie is truth.

The commentators dislike deflation, because it rewards those who save and punishes those who borrow. Falling prices redistribute wealth – the wrong way (for the columnists). Savings appreciate, which is good for those who have saved. Income is transferred from those in debt to those who have saved. Income is transferred from borrowers and speculators to those who have been responsible. In the strange modern world of debt and leverage this is seen as bad.

Falling Prices (1) - Postponed Spending

Asset prices and commodity prices are falling rapidly as the impact of the global credit crunch permeates the world economy. Newspaper columnists are now starting to warn of the dangers of deflation. The first concern is that consumers defer their spending when prices fall.

Deflation has other insidious traits. It causes shoppers to hold back. They wait for lower prices. Once this psychology gains a grip, it can gradually set off a self-feeding spiral that is hard to stop (Ambrose Evans Pritchard Daily Telegraph).

It encourages people to defer spending, as they wait for prices to fall further. This in turn forces down the price – as retailers slash prices in a vain attempt to attract shoppers. As retailers cut prices, so too do manufacturers, who then have less money to invest in new technology, equipment and, crucially, staff.

Wages then start to fall – psychologically very damaging for consumers, even those that keep their jobs. As they fret about less money in their pockets and their job prospects, they further postpone spending, starting the deflationary spiral once again (Harry Wallop, Daily Telegraph).

These statements are nonsense. Falling prices do not stop consumer spending. Computer prices have been falling for the last twenty years, but spending on computers never stopped. Although prices of most consumer electronics have fallen dramatically over the last decade, sales have increased significantly. The reason is that when prices of things fall, more people can afford to buy them, so sales increase.

The benefit of falling prices is that consumers can buy things when it suits them. During inflation, people rush into purchases before they can afford them, because they are scared that the price will go up. They will often get into debt, trying to beat rising prices. Inflation forces people to make purchases at the wrong time.

Falling prices eliminate this problem. People are not put under unnecessary pressure to buy. They can save for something they need knowing that price increases will not push it beyond their reach. People are free to buy large items when the time is right for them. Falling prices increase freedom.

The related benefit of falling prices is that people get access to better quality goods. By waiting a little longer, they can get a later model, at the same price. This makes them better off.

Lost Shoes

What was wrong with the barefooted reporter who threw his George Bush. He seemed to think that America invaded Iraq to improve the lives of the Iraqi people. If he was a serious journalist, he would know that the purpose of the war was to allow Americans to sleep peacefully at night and to make the world safe for American business interests in the Middle East.

Where did he get the idea that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi women and children is something to be concerned about. Surely he knows that the American military does not count civilian casulties. These towelheads and hajiis were going to hell anyway.

The guy just does not get it. He has lost his shoes; he is luck he still has his marbles.

Salvation through Regulation

Bill Bonner at the Daily Reckoning on Regulation.

Markets can’t rule themselves” says Joseph Stiglitz. We need “better regulation,” he says. Now there’s a novel idea. The SEC was set up by the Roosevelt administration 70 years ago. They were actually watching over Bernie Madoff’s company...and actually did a review of it in 2005 and 2007. Somehow, these ace regulators didn’t notice the biggest Ponzi scheme in world history...a scheme approximately 5,000 times bigger than the scheme of the eponymous Ponzi himself.

Better regulation? We know how to get more regulation. But what we don’t know is how to get better regulation. We don’t even know what it means. There were thousands of regulators on the job in New York City. Not one of them seems to have caught on to any of the great scams that were going on.

God and Government

Christians believe that God is the King of all Creation.

How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth (Ps 47:11)!

For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods (Ps 95:3).

The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over
all (Ps 103:19).

The fact that God is a king means that he is very interested in the principles of government. Governing is the main role of a king. God is the king above all kings, so he must be the world’s top authority on good government.

If God is an expert on government, we would that he has shared his wisdom about government in the scriptures. The only place in the scriptures where he gives a full system of government is in Exodus and Deuteronomy. If we want God’s wisdom about government, we have to go back there.

The essence of government is good law. Every culture recognises the need for good laws. If God is an expert on government he must be an expert on law. He wants good government on earth, so we would expect him have revealed a good system of law to us. He is perfectly wise, so his laws will be the best laws available.

I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame (Ps 119:46).

The law of the LORD is perfect (Ps 19:7).

God’s system of perfect law is revealed in Exodus and Deuteronomy, all ready for us to use.

Modern debates about government focus on the election of governments. The emphasis is on developing a good system for writing laws. If God has already provided the best laws available, this is a waste of effort. Human legislators will always produce sub-optimal laws, so arguments about how politicians should be appointed are irrelevant. God has already given us the perfect laws that are essential for good government.

The Great Prostitute

The worldwide religion that will intoxicate the nations already exists. This religion is faith in political power and democracy. Faith in democracy has swept the entire world in the last century. Most of the world believes that democracy is the key to their salvation.

Go back to the nineteenth century and this faith did not exist. A peasant farmer in England had no expectation of the government in London. If he got into trouble, the Lord of the Manor might be generous, but mostly he depended on his family and relatives to get by. Even when he faced injustice, he did not expect the politicians to assist. They only cared about the powerful and the privileged.

If a farm worker moved to the city to work in a factory, he did not expect help from the government. His only contact with the government would be when they threw him in prison, if he got into debt. If he was really deep in debt, they might deport him to Australia.

The natives in Africa had no hope in their colonial governments. They knew that the powerful would look after the powerful. The best they could do was to go unnoticed.

All this changed during the twentieth century. Now everyone expects the government to rescue them from their problems. The poor person in Africa expects his government to provide capital and jobs. The clients of Northern Rock Bank expect the government to guarantee their deposits. The auto workers in Detroit expect the government to save their industry. The factory worker in China riots when the government allows his factory to close. Everyone assumes that democracy is the best hope for Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Faith in government salvation is now universal.
The entire world is intoxicated by democracy.

John saw a prostitute sitting on many waters. The angel explained what this meant.

Then the angel said to me, "The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages (Rev 17:15).

The great prostitute obtained her power from the peoples and multitudes. Democracy gives governments enormous political powers. That power comes from the people. Democratic government “sits upon the waters”, because it derives its authority from the people below.

Democratic government is the great prostitute. Democratic government draws salvation and authority from the people, whereas true authority and salvation is in Jesus alone. Seeking salvation from any other power or submitting to any other authority is prostitution. The great prostitute is not a future world religion. The great prostitute is already here and the world is already intoxicated by her power.

Intoxicated by False Religion

Last week, I listened to a talk about Revelation 17 by Mike Bickle. He taught that the chapter describes the emergence of a new world religion. In a few years all the religions of the world, including much of Christianity will merge to form a new false religion. He said that entire world would quickly be intoxicated by this new religion. Judging by their questions, the bright young audience was obviously impressed by his teaching.

I am puzzled at why people are not shocked by this teaching. The Holy Spirit has been struggling to establish a worldwide religion for two thousand years. Most Christians doubt that he will ever be able to do it, yet they are happy to believe that the devil can get the acceptance worldwide religion in two or three years. He can pull off a task that the Holy Spirit has failed to do.

Here are two interesting questions.

Do you believe that a false religion can sweep the entire world and intoxicate the nations in a few short years?

Do you believe that the Holy Spirit can sweep the world with a revival that will establish the Kingdom of God?

Which of these do you think is most likely? If you voted for the first option, you have more faith in the ability of the devil than you have in the Holy Spirit. You believe that evil is more powerful than righteousness.

In terms of ability and power, most Christians rank the Holy Spirit above angels, but well below the devil. Some Christians would prefer to have angels active in their lives, which suggest that they rank the Holy Spirit below the angels.

Many Christians see nothing wrong in believing that a false religion could sweep the world in a few years. They declare, “The Bible says it, I believe it”, but do they have the same fervency about what Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would do?

Two and Halfism

The view that the Kingdom is “not yet” and will come when Jesus returns in power is the last residue of dispensationalism. The truth is that the kingdom described in the New Testament cannot be established by his returning in power, because there are only two ways that he could do it.

1. Human nature could be changed so that all people would lose the freedom to sin, but then it would be a kingdom of automatons.
2. Jesus could use force to coerce unwilling men to accept his authority, but then it would cease to be the voluntary kingdom.

In either case, the resulting kingdom would be much diminished from the Kingdom described in the New Testament.

The only way for this kingdom to come is for people to freely choose to accept Jesus authority. That can only happen through the Holy Spirit renewing human hearts. God has set things up so that can happen now. Jesus had to go away so that could happen.

The widespread view that this cannot happen, is actually a belief (unbelief) that the Holy Spirit can not do it, but Jesus can. This is a distorted form of Trinitarianism, where there is one God in two and half persons.

Bush to Iraq

According to reliable media reports, George Bush visited Iraq over the weekend. A spokesperson confirmed that the President Bush was looking for a site to build the presidential library which will house the documents, artifacts, gifts of state and museum exhibits related to his life and career. He said,

The President has gone off the idea of building a library in Texas, as it would be to vulnerable to terrorist attacks by unemployed auto workers. Now that the war has been won, Iraq is one of the safest places on earth to live, so it is the ideal place to build a Presidential Library. The other advantage is that prices on commercial land are sharp and Iraq is handy to the Bush Family oil interests in the Middle East.

A report that Mr Bush has made an offer on a presidential palace overlooking the Euphrates River could not be confirmed.

Oil Prices (2)

The factors I described in the last post have been working in both directions over the last few years. World-wide economic growth over the past decade created an enormous demand for oil. This demand reached peak in July, as China stockpiled oil for security during the Olympic Games. Productive capacity was unable to match this peak in demand, so the price rocketed up to $150 a barrel.

During the latter part of 2008, the world economy stropped growing and many western countries moved into recession. This caused a sharp decrease in the demand for oil. The politicians who control oil production have refused to reduce production, so the oil price has plummeted, as supply exceeds demand.

Motorists are really appreciating the drop in prices at the pump. However, we should not become complacent in response to the decline in fuel prices, because the high oil prices last year are a warning of what could happen in the future, if strong demand comes up against limited supply. When the world economy moves back to full speed, strong demand for oil will once again push hard against limited production capacity. The problem is that most of the easy oil has now been found. Production is declining at several of the largest oil fields. Many more oil discoveries will be made, but they will be much more expensive to bring on line, so much higher prices will be needed to make them economic.

The current low price of oil is probably temporary. Enjoy it while it lasts, but this is not the time to buy a bigger better gas guzzler.

Oil Prices (1)

Back in July 2008, the price of oil peaked at nearly $150 a barrel. By November the price had dropped under $50. This is an amazing change in prices over a short period.

The usual pattern for most goods and services is that prices rise and fall to clear the market. If demand increases, the prices rise and supply increases to meet the new demand. If demand declines, the price will fall slightly, causing the supply to fall.

If either the supply or demand for a good does not respond quickly to small changes in price, bigger price changes may be needed to clear the market. This is the situation with oil. (Economists describe this as inelasticity with respect to price, but you can forget that if you are not an economist).

The reason for the recent sharp fluctuation in the price of oil is that production does not respond quickly to changes in price. Prospecting for oil is a hit and miss affair that takes time. Bringing a new oil field into production takes several years. When there is no spare capacity, an increase in price does not lead to increased production, because producers cannot bring new fields into production quickly.

The other reason is that most of the large oil fields in the world are owned by government authorities. Politicians do not like reducing their spending. So when prices fall, state-controlled oil companies do not cut production, because the politicians do not want to reduce their spending.

This problem has been evident over the last few months. OPEC agrees that the logical response to the falling price of oil would be to cut production to maintain the price at least $80, but they have been unable to take action, because none of the OPEC member states are willing to cut production. The politicians avoid economically sensible actions, because they have a short-term focus that makes them unwilling to think further ahead than the next election, or the next coup.

The complexity of the production process and the complicity of the political process prevents oil production from responding quickly to changes in price. This means that changes in demand can produce sharp fluctuations in price.

Lost Photo Found

Lasst week, the curator of a small museum in Washington found a copy of an historic colour photo that was previously thought to be lost. The photo shows Karl Marx, Fredrik Engels and Vladimir Lenin at an historic meeting called to form the Comintern in 1848. This organisatation, also called the Third International, was formed to work for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and advance the cause of Socialism in Europe and the Americas.

Aborted in Italy

When I visited Italy a couple of years ago, I saw plenty of materialism, a lot of religion, quite a bit of atheism and tonnes of dead cultures from earlier ages. I did not see much evidence of the Kingdom of God.

My father’s younger brother died in Italy during the Second World War. He was a kind, peaceful young men who loved God and was skilled at growing vegetables and raising animals. I sometimes wonder what he died for. He death did not advance the Kingdom of God. I suppose that he must have died to advance materialism and atheism. I wonder if he looks down from paradise, if he thinks that it was worth the cost. We do not have the right to say that it was.

A young life was lost, but that was not all. A young woman lost the husband that God had prepared for her. The children and grandchildren whom God knew before the foundation of the world had their lives cut off. An entirely family line was aborted in Italy.

I am constantly amazed that those who are most angry about abortion are often those who are quite happy for an entire family line to be aborted when a young man or women is sent to fight in pointless war. I wonder how many children will not be born, as a consequence of the war in Iraq.

Not Pacifism

I hate war, but I am not a pacifist.

If I come home from work and find my daughter being beaten up, I will not tell her to turn the other cheek.

If she is being attacked by one person, I will use force to try and set her free. Force is justified when protecting a person in harm.

If she was being attacked by ten men, my response might be different. Trying to force them to stop would probably be a waste of time. I could do four different things.

1. I could challenge them and warn them that what they are doing is wrong. That works in some situations.
2. I could offer myself as a victim in her place. This is probably the Christian thing to do, but I doubt that I have enough courage for that one.
3. I could quickly invite the Holy Spirit to intervene. This is the most important thing to do.
4. I would call some of neighbours to help. Once several of us had gathered, then force might be sufficient to prevent the attack.

If my neighbourhood was being attacked by thugs, I would join with other people from my community to force them out and prevent them from returning.

If the southern island of New Zealand was being invaded by an army from overseas, I might join others to try and stop the invasion, but I would only do this if I thought there was a reasonable possibility of success without too great a cost in human lives. (I might be among the cowards who get sent home).

If defence of the island was futile, I would not fight. I know that my freedom comes from God, so no invader can steal my freedom to serve him. They could steal my property, which would not be nice, but they cannot take away my salvation. They could take my life, but that would just speed me on my way to heaven, which is not the worst thing that could happen. I find it ironic that people who say their home is in heaven are often those who would advocate the death of other people to protect their own life on earth.

The invaders might attempt to suppress the gospel, but I am not sure how bad that would be. The gospel is not doing very well under our democratic, materialistic freedom, and there is considerable evidence that the gospel does better when it is opposed.

I would join together with several other groups with in a fourth-generation defence of our land. I would not join with a tanks and bombs defence that would do more harm than good.

I would not fight to defend New Zealand, because it is not an entity that God cares about. There are many good things about our system of government, but it is not the same as the Kingdom of God.

I will not fight to establish the Kingdom of God. It comes by different methods.

War Rarely Works

I dislike war, because the benefits seldom outweigh the costs. The situations where war has positive benefits are extremely rare. Here are some of the possible options.

1. When a large country is attacked by a small country, fighting to defend the large country does make sense, but this situation is very rare, as most small countries would not run the risk of getting a hiding by taking on a big one.
   
   Georgia did not under stand this reality. A country that has a mini-empire as a near neighbour has its options really constrained. For Georgia, a war with Russia was bound to end in failure.
2. When a small country is attacked a big country, fighting is a waste of time, because the small country is going to get beaten anyway. The people might as well give up and seek the best possible terms for peace. Jesus talked about this situation (Luke 14:31-32).
3. Sometimes a small country may persuade a powerful ally to help defend it against attack by a large country. This often does not work, as the powerful ally usually have its own agenda. The big country will only defend its smaller ally when it suits them.
   
   This was Georgia’s problem too. The president of Georgia expected assistance from the United States, if Russia counterattacked. Unfortnately, Big George needed help from Russia to put pressure Iran, so he talked tough, but did not come to little Georgia’s aid.
4. A small country being attacked by another small country is about the only situation where war might work, as collateral damage is likely to be limited. However, if the two countries are evenly matched, the war might drag on with many casualties and no benefit. There are many places in the world today where this is happening.
5. War between one empire and another empire never works. Two many nations and people get drawn in and the costs escalate without decisive result (The First World War was a good example of this situation).

Many politicians see war as just another policy option. War is not a policy option. War is a failure of the human spirit.

The Real Enemy

Our struggle is against principalities and powers (Eph 6:12). We should be attacking them, not people. We must not demonise people. People are on our side. They are fighting against the same enemy as us, but they just do not know it. If we are attacking people, we have lost track of our enemy.
Putting a bullet into an attacking soldier does not destroy his demons. They remain free to attack me.

Our real struggle is against principalities and power. When we participate in a war, we stop fighting against the principalities and powers and start working with them, because they are the experts at killing, destroying and stealing (John 10:10).

We are called to overcome evil with good (Rom 12:24). God has promised that good will triumph in the end. We must be careful not to slip into believing that we can overcome evil with lesser evil, because lesser evil eventually corrupts the good.

Moral Precision

I take a morality approach to economics. I am not interested in what will work. My focus is on what is right or wrong.

The consequence of this approach is that it is important to be precise about which actions are wrong and who is taking the wrong action. Vague statements will no do.

1. The exact action that is morally wrong must be identified precisely.
2. The moral actor who is taking the wrong action must also be identified.
3. Laws that legitimise immoral actions are particularly insidious, so they must be accurately identified.
4. The politicians responsible for passing the immoral law must be clearly specified.

This is why I have investigated the concept of bailment when discussing the banking system. I wanted to establish whether banks are acting immorally or not. My conclusion is that when a bank takes a demand deposit and records it as an asset on their balance sheet, they might not be stealing, but they are being very devious, because they make very little effort to explain to depositors the legal implications of their action. They do not say, “You have just become a creditor of the bank”.

On person made the following response.

The focus should be on fiat currency. That is where the fraud is occurring. That is where the thieving is going on.

This raises an important issue, but the comment is too vague. Fiat currency may be morally wrong, but we must specify more precisely the actions that are morally wrong. The moral agent responsible for the fraud or theft must also be clearly specified. Is it the government, or the banks, or people accepting the fiat currency?

Marginalised?

James Dobson warns that Christians will not be ignored by the Republican Party.

We’ve never been that marginalized in our culture and government — and won’t be anytime soon, the efforts and epithets of big media notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, he is wrong. Unless the there is dramatic change in the American church, it will become more and more marginalised.

The last election proved one thing. The Christian vote is no longer united or large enough to swing an election. Politicians watch the way the wind is blowing. Those who watched the last election carefully realise that while Sarah Palin won additional votes for the Republican Party, she lost more votes than she brought in. The Republican Party will never trust its future to a hard-core Christian again. A seriously evangelical Christian candidate is no longer electable in the United States.

Conservatives Christians will continue to rant against the lying liberals, but the reality is that more and more Americans are becoming liberal, just as the number of conservative Christians is declining.

Those who think that Christians will continue to hold sway in the political sphere are living in the past. The reality is that the Christian influence on America culture is declining fast.

This has already happened in my country, only a couple of decades earlier. When I was young, a majority of Members of Parliament from both political parties were Christians. The Prime Minister carried a copy of the Ten Commandments in his brief case. When the church spoke on political issues, the politicians took notice.
Over the last few decades, the percentage of Christians in our nation has declined dramatically, partly under the influence of secular media and education. Now a Christian in Parliament is a rarity.

For a long time the Church continued to strut and speak as if it was an important voice, just as James Dobson is speaking now. However, the politicians soon realised that strutting is not the same as substance and now the church is mostly ignored.

The future is here. The American church is heading rapidly down the same path. It is just a few years behind. Unless things change dramatically soon, the church will become marginalised.

The good news is that God will not be marginalised, but that is a different thing.

Order (2)

The problem described in the previous post also affects the United States of America. For the first couple of hundred years, most migrants came from Europe, so they accepted Christian moral standards, even if they were not overtly Christian themselves. Regular revivals refreshed the wells of Christian faith and expanded the acceptance of Christian values. Migrants from Africa usually accepted Christianity soon after they arrived. This unity of values sustained an orderly society.

During the twentieth century, two things happened. The United States started accepting migrants from a diverse range of nations and cultures. At the same time, the church went to sleep on the job. The revivals which had swept a Christian perspective across recent newcomers came to an end. The United States is now a strange and diverse ethnic and religious mix without any unifying culture. This diversity would fling society apart, if it was not held together by force.

I read the other day that there will soon be 20,000 uniformed troops based in the United States to maintain homeland security. This is the inevitable consequence of the loss of a unifying culture. The homeland security troops will keep the lid on, but the tensions will always be there ready to emerge, when the right trigger comes along. They will establish an uneasy order, but it will not be the same as the order that comes from human responsibility and cooperation.

Unless the church in the United States forgets about waiting for Jesus to come and gets off its bum and spreads the gospel, the situation will get worse. Society will become more diverse and more divided. If there is no revival, the “United” will shrink and the “State” will expand to counteract the shrinking until it becomes “The State”.

I have real doubts as to whether the American church is capable of preventing this from happening. It is so blinded by end-times teaching and properity prophecies that it could not cope with a real revival. I think we have already moved onto Plan B in which God prepares a remnant to survive the ensuing chaos. Plan A where the church rises up to proclaim the gospel in the power of the Spirit to tranform the nation and unify the culture has already passed its use-by date. I hope I am wrong, but most of the evidence points the other way.

Order (1)

Last week I wrote these words.

Most of order in a society does not come from government,
but from people being responsible and cooperating with each other.

The statement is true, but it only applies in those societies where there is a culture that unifies people round a common set of moral standards that encourages respect for other people.

When unity of values or respect for people disappears, cooperation and responsibility no longer sustains an orderly society, so those with power eventually resort to political and military force to keep order. The problem is that force can only produce a semblance of order with the forces of disharmony smouldering just below the surface. The other problem is that soldiers and police can punish the people who attempt to destroy a society after the event, but they cannot prevent them from their harm. A society held together by force will be an unpleasant place.

Democracy cannot produce a unified culture, because it is a winner-takes-all system that decides which cultural group shall dominate all other cultural groups in society. The democratic process exacerbates cultural tensions.

Iraq and India are examples of this divisive diversity. They both contain an amazing range of ethnic and tribal groupings, laced with diverse religious beliefs. In absence of a unifying culture, such societies can only be held together by force. Saddam Hussein achieved this in Iraq. The United States military power has also managed go create an uneasy order, but Iraq will never have more than that without a unifying cultural force.

The British Empire created a semblance of order in India, but it never had the true order produced by cultural unity. Since the British left, many assumed that democracy could be a unifying objective. However, under democracy the winner takes all. The strongest cultural group gets to control the less powerful groups, so actually democracy is a divisive force. Democracy cannot provide the cultural unity needed to hold a diverse society together. Recent events in India are the natural consequence of intense cultural diversity breaking through the restraints of political and military force.

Nice System

Bill Bonner describes the Wall Street rescue package.

The U.S. government borrows money from taxpayers...gives it to Wall Street so they can lend it back to the taxpayers at a profit. Wall Street borrows ‘our money’ from the Fed at, say, 1%...then they lend it back to us at, say, 6% or 7%. That way, Wall Street makes money and we can still borrow what we need.

Confirming Gods Word

We should be careful about saying that Christian scientists have confirmed God’s word by their research. Scientists test hypotheses by doing experiments. They cannot repeat the creation of this world, so it is logically impossible to prove what happened using the scientific method. When Christians claim they can prove what happened at the beginning of time, they fall into the same trap as the evolutionists.

The other problem is Genesis 1 does not contain hypotheses in a form that can be tested using the scientific method. Therefore the best that a Christian scientist can do is test a scientific hypothesis they think is consistent with Genesis 1, which is a very different thing. Christians should be really careful about going beyond God’s word.

God does not need us to confirm his word. He will do that himself.

Short Term

All over the world, credit markets are drying up. One of the worst problem areas is the commercial paper market, which is the source of operating funding for many banks and large corporation. The important question is seldom asked. Why are so many businesses, so dependent on commercial paper? The reason is very illuminating.

Short term interest rates are generally lower than longer term rates, because lenders demand higher returns to compensate them for the greater risk involved in tying up their money for a long time. Businesses and banks have taken advantage by substituting towards raising a considerable part of their funding on a short-term basis.

Banks have raised funding on the 90-day bill market to fund 15 year mortgages. Businesses have been raising funding using short-term commercial paper to fund equipment with a productive life of up to ten years. This has been profitable while short-term funding was abundant, but it was very risky. Short term funding is cheaper, but it is risky to use it to fund long-term liabilities. Hedge funds have funded some of their activities using overnight funding.

Borrowing short term to fund long-term liabilities is quite risky. If the short-term credit market dries up, the business or bank will be in trouble. They might be unable to roll over the credit, or they might have to pay very high interest rates to do it. That is what is happening now. Many businesses and banks that have borrowed short term to get lower interest rates are finding that they cannot role over their short term loans. The low interest rates were not the bargain they appeared to be.

Leverage

Leverage has leached into every corner of life.

• A young person buys a new television with no deposit, no interest and no repayments until 2010.
• A woman who inherited a house from her parents uses the equity to buy four more.
• A hedge fund uses bank credit to amplify the profit from trading in shares and commercial paper.
• A young man leases a new truck from General Motors for three years.
• A young woman maxes out four credit cards to spend $20,000 on a trip to Asia.
• A new married couple takes a 100 percent mortgage to buy their first house.
• A church pays for a new building with a mortgage, assuming that future tithes will pay the interest.

Leverage was everywhere. Everywhere that leverage went, pain is following close behind.

G20

The G20 pledged that they would do everything possible to boost the international economy

The problem is that the G20 is a meeting of governments. Most of what a government does harms the economy, so it is hard to understand how twenty governments working together will make the economy better.

The People Have Spoken

On election day, while making his victory speech, our new Prime Minister used the favourite quote of politicians, when he said,

The people have spoken

This statement has several flaws.

1. The people have spoken; past tense; completed action. They have completed their speaking for three years when they will get to speak again at the next election. In the interim they have handed all authority of to the new Prime Minister and his team. He has authority to keep on speaking and he has the power to do his will. They have finished speaking.
2. Only half of the people who spoke were head. Less than half of the people voted for the new government. They will feel that they have been heard. The other half spoke for losing parties. They spoke, but their voice will be ignored, because they did not pick a winner.
3. The truth is that the people did not speak. They only ticked. They could only choose between various politicians and parties and tick the ones that they preferred. They could not speak what was on their hearts. They could speak about what they believed. They could not speak about the laws that they wanted to change. All they could do was tick. Ticking is not speaking.

Politicians love the idea of the people speaking, because it authenticates their position and authority. The idea that they embody of the voice of the people warms their hearts, but it is a nonsense. The people can never speak; they only get to tick; and then suffer in silence.

Order

Most of order in a society does not come from government, but from people being responsible and cooperating with each other.

Stop the Nonsense

An Australian military chaplain leading a memorial service in France on Armistice Day spoke of the young men who had sacrificed their lives resisting tyranny and fighting for peace during the First World War. It is time that we stopped believing this nonsense.

• The Great War had nothing to do with fighting tyranny. Some of the nations involved were ruled by democratic governments and others by kings and Kaisers. Each side spread propaganda proving that the other side was evil, but contrary to these lies, they were not tyrants. The Great War actually paved the way for tyranny to emerge. Hitler and Stalin were the real tyrants of Europe during the twentieth Century. If there had been no war, the communists would never have gained control in Russia. Without the war, the Nazis would never have come to power in Germany. The Great War gave both Hitler and Stalin the breaks they needed to become tyrants. Those who were fighting in that war were not resisting tyranny, but paving the way for it.
• The young men who died in the trenches in France and Brussels were no fighting for peace. If they really understood peace, they would not have been pushed into fighting by the pompous political leaders who started the Great War. They would have told the leaders who wanted a war to fight it themselves; to stop sipping tea and whiskey in their gentlemen’s clubs and go and stand in the mud and shoot at each other.
• We should stop perpetuating the myth that young men sacrificed their life for Australia, or whatever nation they came from. To be a sacrifice, a death must benefit someone. A young Australian who climbed out of his trench and was cut down while running through the mud, the rain and barbed wire towards a machine gun nest has provided no benefit to his nation. His death did not achieve anything. It was a total waste. The claim that he sacrificed his life for his nation is a stupid lie.
• We should stop talking about the glorious dead. It is not glorious to be dead, if you are only 21 and have not fulfilled God’s purpose for your life. Please do not say that God’s purpose for these young men was to die on the battlefield. The young men who died in the Great War are not gloriously dead, they were robbed of living.

Armistice Day

11 November is Armistice Day. On that day in 1918, the Great War came to an end. I was in Australia for Armistice Day this year and was amazed at the fuss that was made, particularly on television. When I got home, I was told that we had had the same fuss here.

I am amazed at the number of young people who are visiting the battlegrounds of Europe and attending memorial services. When I was young, men who had fought in the Great War were living among us, but Armistice Day almost passed without notice. Now they are all dead, Armistice Day is suddenly becoming a big thing. What is going on?

I sense that the decline of Christianity and the rise of materialism in modern life have robbed young people in the West of any transcendent experience. The death of transcendence has left an emptiness that needs to be filled.

Young people who would never visit an old lady who lives alone three doors down the street will stand in a war cemetery and weep for a great great uncle who died nearly a hundred years ago. Standing on a battlefield and pondering young men who travelled across the world to live though hardship, pain and death is the closest thing to a transcendent experience for young people who have never known anything but comfort.

Bailments not Bailouts

The previous post described the situation under law, but there is no reason why the relationship between a bank and a depositor should be decided by judges. Banks are providing a service to their customers. The customers are entitled to demand whatever service they want. If enough customers demand a particular service, an astute bank will provide that service. If enough people demanded a different service, several banks might start to provide it.

Many people will be happy to accept the service provided by banks under the current legal arrangements. They are happy for the bank to take control of their money and use it as they please, provided they can get good interest and no fees on their cheque account. If that is what they want, that is fine.

However, many other customers will want a different type of account. They will prefer a bailment-type cheque account in which their money does not get transferred to the balance sheet of the bank, but remains the property of the depositor. Many customers do not want to become creditors of the bank. They want to be the owner of their money.

Modern banking law does not prevent banks from contracting with depositors to provide a bailment-type account. The money in this account would not become an asset of the bank. It would not be available for the bank to use. It would be stored in the same way as a storage warehouse stores my furniture.

When my salary goes into my cheque account, I want it to be available when I demand it. I do not want to the bank to treat my money as its own property. I do not want the bank to loan my money out to someone else. If the bank provides this service well, I am happy to pay a small fee for that service.

I do not want the bank to decide when I am not going to use my money. I am capable of doing that myself. If I do not need some of my money for a time, I will move it into a term deposit, so the bank can lend it out for a time, but I do not want the bank just deciding it can lend the money in my cheque account whenever it chooses. I do not want the bank treating my money in the way described by Lord Cottenham in my previous post. I want a cheque account that is a bailment. If enough customers were to demand this service, some innovative bank should provide that service.

We should stop talking about bailout of banks and start demanding bailment from banks.

Bailment (2)

If a deposit in a cheque account is a bailment, then the bank could not record the cash as an asset on its balance sheet. It could not use the cash for its own purposes.

During the 19th century, the British Law Lords ruled that a demand deposit is not a bailment. This decision has since between adopted by courts all over the world.

In a case in 1811, Sir William Grant ruled that money paid into a bank is not a bailment, but a loan. The banker is not a bailee, but a debtor (Carr v Carr). In a subsequent case, he said, “The money paid into a banker immediately becomes a part of his general assets and he is merely a creditor for the amount" (Devayne v Noble).

Lord Cottenham summed up the early decisions in Foley v. Hill and Others.

Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it . . . . The money placed in the custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of his principal....

According to modern law, a bank deposit is not a bailment, so the bank is entitled to record the deposit as an asset on its balance sheet.

I doubt that this is understood by most bank depositors.

Bailment (1)

Bailment is an important legal concept.

Bailment is the process of placing personal property or goods in the temporary custody or control of another. The custodian or holder of the property, who is responsible for the safe keeping and return of the property, is know as the bailee. The person who delivers or transfers the property to the bailee is known as the bailor. For a bailment to be valid, the bailee must have actual physical control of the property. The bailee is generally not entitled to the use of the property while it is in his possession, and a bailor can demand to have the property returned to him at any time (Lawyers.com).

A bailment is not the same as a sale, which is an intentional transfer of ownership of personal property in exchange for something of value. A bailment involves only a transfer of possession or custody, not of ownership. A bailment is created when a parking garage attendant, the bailee, is given the keys to a motor vehicle by its owner, the bailor. The owner, in addition to renting the space, has transferred possession and control of the vehicle by relinquishing its keys to the attendant (Free Dictionary).

The main distinguishing feature of a bailment is that possession of the property is transferred to the bailee, but ownership remains with the bailor. Trusting my furniture to a warehousing company for storage is an example of a bailment. The warehouse has possession my furniture, but I am still its owner.

The second feature of a bailment is that the bailee is not entitled to use the property for their own purpose. The warehouse company is not entitled to use my furniture.

Who Should Decide

Who should decide if money in a cheque account is not being used and is available for lending to someone else? In the modern system the bank makes this decision. However, the bank cannot read the minds of its depositors, so it does not know what they are planning to do with their money, or when they will want to spend it. Banks can only work on average behaviour and past experience. Neither are good predictors of the future.

The person who is best placed to decide whether money is available for lending is the depositor. They know their plans for the money. They know what they are planning to do. They are best placed to decide how much they need to hold back to deal with unexpected expenses.

If banks only paid interest on term deposits and there was a small fee for the operation of an account where the money is available on demand, then people would respond to these incentives. They would quickly identify money that they do not need immediately and transfer it into a term deposit that paid interest. The bank would then know that it was available for lending to others, without having to make guesses about the depositor’s intentions.

The banking system would function better if banks stopped deciding when money was available for lending and left these decisions to depositors.

Controlling Assets

Some people think that I should not worry about the bank recording my deposit as an asset on their balance sheet. They do not under the nature of modern banking law. When a person deposits money in a bank, they change from being an owner of an asset into a creditor of the bank. They give up a property right in exchange for a contractual right. They swap the ownership of an asset for a promise to receive repayment on demand.

Owning an asset is generally better than being a creditor. If I get a 3 year loan of $30,000 from General Motors, I can buy a new truck. My balance sheet looks like this.

Liabilities
Loan 30,000
Total 30,000
Assets
Truck 30,000
Total 30,000

Before making the sale, the truck was on the General Motors balance sheet, as part of its inventory. Once they have sold the truck to me, it becomes my asset. I can drive wherever I like in the truck. I can paint it bright blue, if I choose. General Motors have lost control of the truck. They cannot control its use it any more.

General Motors has swapped the truck for a credit contract for the money that I have borrowed. They cannot demand it back until the three years are complete. A contractual right is less certain than a property right. When they owned the truck they knew exactly what they had. The credit contract is more risky, because they cannot be certain that they will get their money back when it is due. I may get into financial trouble and be unable to repay the loan. The bank has the uncertainty of a credit contract, whereas I have a property right in the truck. The one holding the property right is in a better position than the one holding the credit contract.

In the same way, holding cash provides more security than holding a credit contract. Being a creditor of the bank is not the same as being the owner of cash. If I demand repayment and the bank fails to pay me, I cannot charge it with theft. All I can do is sue the bank for breach of contract and demand payment of damages. If the bank defaults, my contract right is converted into a claim in bankruptcy. I have to line up with other creditors and take my chances.

All that a bank depositor “owns” is the right to enforce the bank to keep its promise. I believe that most people want better security for their money. We need banks that offer a different option.

Bill John and Pete

Before assuming that Bank No 2 described in my previous post, read this example.

If John returns from overseas and puts $10,000 in his check account, the balance sheet of the bank shows an increase of $10,000 under cash. If John were the first client of the bank, its balance sheet would look like this.

Liabilities
Deposits 10,000
Total 10,000

Assets Cash 10,000
Total 10,000

It is true that the bank also records a liability to John. However, because the bank has control of the cash, it has a stronger position. John has become a creditor of the bank, so he is now very dependent on the bank honouring its obligations.

If the bank thinks that John is unlikely to withdraw its money, it may make a loan to Pete. Its balance sheet would then look like this.

Liabilities
Deposits 10,000
Total 10,000

Assets
Loans 10,000
Cash 0
Total 10,000

Pete buys a truck from Bill, who deposits the cash he received in the bank. The bank’s balance sheet now looks like this.

Liabilities
Deposits 20,000
Total 20,000

Assets
Loans 10,000
Cash 10,000
Total 20,000

The banks cash to asset ratio is fifty percent, so the bank now complies with the Basel Accords. It easily meets the standards set by governments all over the world.

Despite this compliance, we now have a strange situation where the bank only has $10,000 cash, yet both John and Bill think they have $10,000 in the bank. If they both try to withdraw their cash out at the same time, they will not be able to get it. The bank cannot call in the loan from Pete, because he no longer has the cash. He has brought a truck.

Bill and John’s cash is not lost, but they cannot get hold of it when they demand it. The best the bank could do is to give $5,000 to both Bill and John and make them wait for the rest of their money. The bank could force Pete to repay his loan, but if he has to sell the truck quickly, he might only get $5,000 for it. John and Bill would then be in trouble, as one of them would have lost $5,000.

Two Banks

Imagine two banks.

Bank No 1 says,

We will store your money and keep it safe. We will not use your money as if it belonged to us. We will deliver it to any person, as you instruct us. To cover the cost of providing this service, we will charge a small monthly fee, but you can be sure that your money will be here when you want it.

Bank No 2 says,

We will look after your money for you and we will deliver it to anyone according to your instructions. However, if we see that you are not using your money, we will lend it to someone who can make use of it. The interest will compensate you for the risk.

The risk you run is that when you want your money, the person who borrowed it may not have returned the money back to us. We will have to borrow the money from some else to repay you, so you may have to wait to get your money. If for some reason a whole lot of people all decide to withdraw their money at the same time and there is a run on the bank, many of you could lose your money. This risk is unlikely and the benefit is that you will have no fees.

Which bank would people choose?

I do not care which bank people would choose. They can work out the risks and the benefits and do what is best for them. If they prefer the cheaper option, they are free to choose it, provide that they do not expect me to rescue them, if things go wrong.

The problem today is that we do not have a choice. Most people think that they are dealing with Bank No 1, whereas there bankers believe they are Bank No 2. There is a dangerous disconnect between the understanding of risks and expectations.

Regulating Banks

Many commentators are urging greater regulation of the banking system to prevent future banking crises. These efforts will fail, because they do not deal with the basic flaw with the modern banking system.

When I give some share certificates to a courier to deliver to another person, the courier company does not claim ownership of my shares. They do not add my shares onto their balance sheet as an asset, because they realise they belong to me.

When I put some of my goods in a warehouse for storage, the warehousing company does not claim ownership of my goods. The goods they are storing are not recorded on their balance sheet as their assets. They realise that they goods in storage still belong to their owners.

Banks are in the business of storing and delivering money. I store my income in a cheque account until I am ready to spend it. I write a cheque on my account to get the bank to deliver money to a person to whom I owe money.

Although they are in the business of providing delivery and storage services, banks do something odd with the money that is entrusted to them. They claim ownership of the cash that is put into cheque accounts and other demand deposits and include them as assets on their balance sheets. If they think that I will not use my money for a while, they will lend it to someone else.

This creates a strange situation where I think that I own the money in my bank account, but the bank also claims to own it. The only word to describe their behaviour is fraud. Governments everywhere have legitimised this theft.

I think that I can spend my money when I choose, but the bank has most likely lent it to someone else, who has already spent it. This is the basic flaw in the modern banking system. It creates a system where two people end up owning the same money.

This basic flaw is the reason for bank runs in troubled times. It is the reason why banks can be highly leveraged (the cause of the current crisis). This flaw is the reason for the credit multiplier that has exaggerated the effects of the credit crunch. Regulation will not eliminate these problems, because it will not deal with the basic flaw.

The only solution is honest banks, which start treating money entrusted to them with the same integrity as courier companies and warehousing companies. If we demanded that all banks act in this way, most financial crises would disappear.

More on this topic here.

Election Day

Today is election day in New Zealand. The speeches are finished and the bribes are on the table. All that remains is for the votes to be counted, but one vote counts more than all the rest.
Who did God vote for?

Nebuchadezzar was the most powerful ruler in Mesopatamia, but when he lost God's vote, he ended up eating grass,
until he honored and glorified him.

His dominion is an eternal dominion;
his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?"

I doubt that God has voted for any of the people wanting to be our leaders.

What is the future of a nation when God votes against all its potential leaders?

At least we are good at growing grass in New Zealand!!

The kings of the earth take their stand
and the rulers gather together
against the LORD and against his Anointed One.
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
I have installed my King (Psalm 2:2,4,6)

He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty (Luke 2:52,53)

.

United or Kingdom

During his acceptance speech, Obama Barack talked about the diversity of people and then said,

We will be the United States forever

This is not true. The time will come when the American people will give up on the United States to become part of the Kingdom of God. They may choose this willingly, or the united states will be swept away by chaos as the Kingdom emerges.

King Obama

Listing to the euphoria in the United States, I can understand the excitement their would have been in Israel, when the finally got a king. If they had listened to Samuel's warning (1 Sam 8), they might not have been so excited.

Second World War (4) My Thoughts

1. America did not singlehandly win World War 2 war. On a per capita basis, New Zealand had twice as many casualties as the United States. However, the real price for the war was paid by the Soviet Union with 20 million deaths. It was the eastern front that broke Hitler, not D Day. The Russians had effectively defeated Hitler, before D Day had even begun.
2. The real winner of the Second World War was Stalin’s Russia. He gained control of most of Europe. The winner in the East was Communist China. Claiming a victory, but leaving warlords and dictators in control seems to be the American way.
3. In the parts of the world where America gained most control, West Germany and Japan, the kingdom of God has gone backwards. The problem is that that pushing the American way is not the same as preaching the gospel. When I visited South Korea recently, I saw far more evidence of the American spirit, than I saw of the gospel. In contrast, the numbers of believers have increased in the Soviet Union and China.
4. America financed the war and supplied most of the military equipment, but it prospered through doing so. The war created the military industrial complex that is so powerful in America today.
5. The common claim that NZers would be speaking German, if the US had not come to our rescue is a canard. Even if we had been conquered, the gospel might be more effective than if it is now.
6. God does not use nations to establish the Kingdom of God. He does not use military power to build his Kingdom. He will advance his Kingdom through the Holy Spirit working in his church.
7. I do not assess any event by whether it advanced democracy or freedom. My single criterion for assessing an historical event is whether it creates conditions that advance the kingdom of God. Looking at modern Europe, it is clear that the Second World War did not advance the Kingdom of God.

Second World War (3) Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan takes a similar view in Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost its Empire and the West Lost the World.

1. The problem started at the end of the World War 1, when large regions with a majority of German speaking people were put into Poland and Czechoslovakia. This gave Hitler a justification for attacking these nations.
2. British leaders made a serious blunder when they capitulated to US demands in 1921 and threw over a faithful Japanese ally of 20 years. Tokyo took its revenge, 20 years later, by inflicting the greatest defeat in British history, the surrender of Singapore and an army of 80,0000 to a Japanese army half that size.
3. The fatal blunder was the decision in March 1939 to hand a war guarantee to a neo-fascist regime of Polish colonels who had joined Hitler in the rape of Czechoslovakia. Britain gave Warsaw a blank check to go to war over a town, Danzig, the British themselves thought should be restored to Germany. The result was the Hitler-Stalin Pact and a six-year war that left scores of millions dead, Europe in ruins, the British Empire bankrupt and breaking, 10 European nations under the barbaric rule of Joseph Stalin and half a century of Cold War. Had there been no war guarantee to Poland, there might have been no war, no Nazi invasion of Western Europe and no Holocaust.
4. Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did not save Poland, but she did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose victims outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September 1939, and who joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all of Poland, and all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe.
5. In March 1939, Britain gave a blank check to Poland in its dispute with Germany over Danzig, a town of 350,000 Germans. Should war come, Britain would fight on Poland's side. Poland refused to negotiate, Adolf Hitler attacked, and Britain declared war. After six years, the British Empire collapsed. Germany was burnt to ashes. Poland entered the slave quarters of Joseph Stalin's empire.
6. Hitler did not want to fight the British. He wanted to be accepted by them. He wanted to fight Stalin, partly because he thought he was superior and partly because he saw him as a threat. Hitler understood the threat of the Soviet Union more clearly than either Roosevelt or Churchill.

Second World War (2) Human Smoke

I recently heard an interview with Nicholson Baker, an American novelist and author of Human Smoke: the Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilisation. He has studied newspaper commentary on the war and has some interesting thoughts about it. He challenges some widely held beliefs about the war.

1. The Western response made everything worse.
2. The Western leaders decided on a military response to Hitler. The result was the second worst five years of human history.
3. The bombing gave power to the most rabid Nazis and justified their attack on the Jews. War distorts everything.
4. The people who saw most clearly the threat to Jews from Hitler were pacifist voices. They said that a military response would make things worse for the Jews. Declaring war and closing the borders with Germany, trapped Jews who were in the process of escaping. It would have been better to have kept the borders open and allowed more Jews to escape. They were opposed by militarists in the Britain and the United States. The sad reality was that it was easier for Roosevelt and Churchill to fight a war than to let more Jews into the United States or the United Kingdom.
5. The bombing of Germany did not make sense. Churchill believed that a slow war of attrition would cause Germans to overthrow Hitler. It actually propped up the most extreme elements in Germany by uniting the people behind them.
6. The air raids against Germany strengthened the violence against Jews. The Nazis could slaughter the Jews with nothing to lose.
7. The attempt to starve Germany into a revolt against Hitler was a crazy idea. The idea of making Germany surrender through bombing raids was completely flawed and had the opposite effect. Both ideas came from Winston Churchill.
8. The advocates of war always exaggerate the benefits of war and minismise the costs. They often cover up their real objectives. If the war is won, the advocates of war write the history, but these initial histories of war are generally unreliable, because they are written to justify the actions taken. Often, the generation who believed their claims and fought the war have to pass on, before the truth about the war can emerge.
9. Churchill was a great writer. He wrote the history of both world wars. Unfortnately, he was also a key participant in both events, so he was not an unbiased commentator.