From Times Online | September 25, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI selects Rabbi to speak to Roman Catholic synod
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4825681.ece
In an historic move to reinforce Jewish-Catholic dialogue Pope Benedict XVI has asked an Israeli Rabbi to become become the first Jewish spiritual leader to address a Roman Catholic synod.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Shear-Yashuv Cohen, Grand Rabbi of Haifa, would address the two day Synod of Bishops in Rome next month, convened by the Pope to discuss the Bible, with the theme "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."
More than 200 bishops are expected to attend. Rabbi Cohen is to explain to the bishops the Jewish interpretation of the Bible, whose first five books comprise the Torah, Judaism's most sacred writings. He told the Catholic News Service (CNS) in Jeusalem that he saw the invitation as a "signal of hope bringing a message of love, coexistence and peace for generations."
Rabbi Cohen is already well known in Italy and the Vatican for his active promotion of Jewish-Catholic relations. In April Pope Benedict, who has followed John Paul II in giving priority to Jewish-Catholic dialogue, became the first pontiff to enter a synagogue in the United States.
James B. Phillips writes:
Lies, lies, lies.
I don't think I will ever see the world in the same way after reading Hoffman's incredibly superb (and I believe historically significant) book.
***
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Mortgaging the Nation
"The US Treasury does not have $700 billion on hand with which to buy the troubled assets from the troubled institutions. The Treasury will have to borrow the $700 billion from abroad."
The bailout scheme depends on foreign willingness to loan us money
Mortgaging the Nation:
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation
By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09242008.html
Remember the good old days when the economic threat was mere recession? The Federal Reserve would encourage the economy with low interest rates until the economy overheated. Prices would rise, and unions would strike for higher benefits. Then the Fed would put on the brakes by raising interest rates. Money supply growth would fall. Inventories would grow, and layoffs would result. When the economy cooled down, the cycle would start over.
The nice thing about 20th century recessions was that the jobs returned when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and consumer demand increased. In the 21st century, the jobs that have been moved offshore do not come back. More than three million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost while Bush was in the White House. Those jobs represent consumer income and career opportunities that America will never see again.
In the 21st century the US economy has produced net new jobs only in low paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, and retail clerks. The kind of jobs that provided ladders of upward mobility into the middle class are being exported abroad or filled by foreigners brought in on work visas. Today when you purchase an American name brand, you are supporting economic growth and consumer incomes in China and Indonesia, not in Detroit and Cincinnati.
In the 20th century, economic growth resulted from improved technologies, new investment, and increases in labor productivity, which raised consumers’ incomes and purchasing power. In contrast, in the 21st century, economic growth has resulted from debt expansion.
Most Americans have experienced little, if any, income growth in the 21st century. Instead, consumers have kept the economy going by maxing out their credit cards and refinancing their mortgages in order to consume the equity in their homes.
The income gains of the 21st century have gone to corporate chief executives, shareholders of offshoring corporations, and financial corporations.
By replacing $20 an hour U.S. labor with $1 an hour Chinese labor, the profits of U.S. offshoring corporations have boomed, thus driving up share prices and “performance” bonuses for corporate CEOs. With Bush/Cheney, the Republicans have resurrected their policy of favoring the rich over the poor. John McCain captured today’s high income class with his quip that you are middle class if you have an annual income less than $5 million.
Financial companies have made enormous profits by securitizing income flows from unknown risks and selling asset backed securities to pension funds and investors at home and abroad.
Today recession is only a small part of the threat that we face. Financial deregulation, Alan Greenspan’s low interest rates, and the belief that the market was the best regulator of risks, have created a highly leveraged pyramid of risk without adequate capital or collateral to back the risk. Consequently, a wide variety of financial institutions are threatened with insolvency, threatening a collapse comparable to the bank failures that shrank the supply of money and credit and produced the Great Depression.
Washington has been slow to recognize the current problem. A millstone around the neck of every financial institution is the mark-to-market rule, an ill-advised “reform” from a previous crisis that was blamed on fraudulent accounting that over-valued assets on the books. As a result, today institutions have to value their assets at current market value.
In the current crisis the rule has turned out to be a curse. Asset backed securities, such as collateralized mortgage obligations, faced their first market pricing in panicked circumstances. The owner of a bond backed by 1,000 mortgages doesn’t know how many of the mortgages are good and how many are bad. The uncertainty erodes the value of the bond.
If significant amounts of such untested securities are on the balance sheet, insolvency rears its ugly head. The bonds get dumped in order to realize some part of their value. Merrill Lynch sold its asset backed securities for twenty cents on the dollar, although it is
unlikely that 80 percent of the instruments were worthless.
The mark to market rule, together with the suspect values of the asset backed securities and collateral debt obligations and swaps, allowed short sellers to make fortunes by driving down the share prices of the investment banks, thus worsening the crisis. With their capitalization shrinking, the investment banks could no longer borrow.
The authorities took their time in halting short-selling, and short-selling is set to resume on October 3 or thereabout.
If the mark to market rule had been suspended and short-selling prohibited, the crisis would have been mitigated. Instead, the crisis intensified, provoking the US Treasury to propose to take responsibility for $700 billion more in troubled financial instruments in addition to the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG bailouts. Treasury guarantees are also apparently being extended to money market funds.
All of this makes sense at a certain level. But what if the $700 billion doesn’t stem the tide and another $700 billion is needed? At what point does the Treasury’s assumption of liabilities erode its own credit standing?
This crisis comes at the worst possible time. Gratuitous wars and military spending in pursuit of US world hegemony have inflated the federal budget deficit, which recession is further enlarging. Massive trade deficits, magnified by the offshoring of goods and services, cannot be eliminated by US export capability.
These large deficits are financed by foreigners, and foreign unease has resulted in a decline in the US dollar’s value compared to other tradable currencies, precious metals, and oil.
The US Treasury does not have $700 billion on hand with which to buy the troubled assets from the troubled institutions. The Treasury will have to borrow the $700 billion from abroad.
The dependency of Treasury Secretary Paulson’s bailout scheme on foreign willingness to absorb more Treasury paper in order that the Treasury has the money to bail out the troubled institutions is heavy proof that the US is in a financially dependent position that is inconsistent with that of America’s “superpower” status.
The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will.
Washington still hasn’t learned this. American hubris can lead the administration and Congress into a bailout solution that the rest of the world, which has to finance it, might not accept.
Currently, the fight between the administration and Congress over the bailout is whether the bailout will include the Democrats’ poor constituencies as well as the Republicans’ rich ones. The Republicans, for the most part, and their media shills are doing their best to exclude the ordinary American from the rescue plan.
A less appreciated feature of Paulson’s bailout plan is his demand for freedom from accountability. Congress balked at Paulson’s demand that the executive branch’s conduct of the bailout be non-reviewable by Congress or the courts: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion.”
However, Congress substituted for its own authority a “board” that possibly will consist of the bailed out parties, by which I mean Republican and Democratic constituencies. The control over the financial system that the bailout would give to the executive branch would mean, in effect, state capitalism or fascism.
If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration’s success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.
The US might also be on the verge of a decision by foreign lenders to cease financing a country that claims to be a hegemonic power with the right and the virtue to impose its will on the rest of the world. The US is able to be at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and is able to pick fights with Iran, Pakistan and Russia, because the Chinese, the Japanese and the sovereign wealth funds of the oil kingdoms finance America’s wars and military budgets. Aside from nuclear weapons, which are also in the hands of other countries, the US has no assets of its own with which to pursue its control over the world.
The US cannot be a hegemonic power without foreign financing. All indications are that the rest of the world is tiring of US arrogance.
If the US Treasury’s assumption of bailout responsibilities becomes excessive, the US dollar will lose its reserve currency role. The minute that occurs, foreign financing of America’s twin deficits will cease, as will the bailout. The US government would have to turn to the printing of paper money as did Weimar Germany.
For now this pending problem is hidden from view, because in times of panic, the tradition is to flee into “safety,” that is, into US Treasury debt obligations. The safety of Treasuries will be revealed by the extent of the bailout.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions." He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
For serious thinkers and scholars:
Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/page1/news.html
The bailout scheme depends on foreign willingness to loan us money
Mortgaging the Nation:
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation
By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09242008.html
Remember the good old days when the economic threat was mere recession? The Federal Reserve would encourage the economy with low interest rates until the economy overheated. Prices would rise, and unions would strike for higher benefits. Then the Fed would put on the brakes by raising interest rates. Money supply growth would fall. Inventories would grow, and layoffs would result. When the economy cooled down, the cycle would start over.
The nice thing about 20th century recessions was that the jobs returned when the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and consumer demand increased. In the 21st century, the jobs that have been moved offshore do not come back. More than three million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost while Bush was in the White House. Those jobs represent consumer income and career opportunities that America will never see again.
In the 21st century the US economy has produced net new jobs only in low paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, and retail clerks. The kind of jobs that provided ladders of upward mobility into the middle class are being exported abroad or filled by foreigners brought in on work visas. Today when you purchase an American name brand, you are supporting economic growth and consumer incomes in China and Indonesia, not in Detroit and Cincinnati.
In the 20th century, economic growth resulted from improved technologies, new investment, and increases in labor productivity, which raised consumers’ incomes and purchasing power. In contrast, in the 21st century, economic growth has resulted from debt expansion.
Most Americans have experienced little, if any, income growth in the 21st century. Instead, consumers have kept the economy going by maxing out their credit cards and refinancing their mortgages in order to consume the equity in their homes.
The income gains of the 21st century have gone to corporate chief executives, shareholders of offshoring corporations, and financial corporations.
By replacing $20 an hour U.S. labor with $1 an hour Chinese labor, the profits of U.S. offshoring corporations have boomed, thus driving up share prices and “performance” bonuses for corporate CEOs. With Bush/Cheney, the Republicans have resurrected their policy of favoring the rich over the poor. John McCain captured today’s high income class with his quip that you are middle class if you have an annual income less than $5 million.
Financial companies have made enormous profits by securitizing income flows from unknown risks and selling asset backed securities to pension funds and investors at home and abroad.
Today recession is only a small part of the threat that we face. Financial deregulation, Alan Greenspan’s low interest rates, and the belief that the market was the best regulator of risks, have created a highly leveraged pyramid of risk without adequate capital or collateral to back the risk. Consequently, a wide variety of financial institutions are threatened with insolvency, threatening a collapse comparable to the bank failures that shrank the supply of money and credit and produced the Great Depression.
Washington has been slow to recognize the current problem. A millstone around the neck of every financial institution is the mark-to-market rule, an ill-advised “reform” from a previous crisis that was blamed on fraudulent accounting that over-valued assets on the books. As a result, today institutions have to value their assets at current market value.
In the current crisis the rule has turned out to be a curse. Asset backed securities, such as collateralized mortgage obligations, faced their first market pricing in panicked circumstances. The owner of a bond backed by 1,000 mortgages doesn’t know how many of the mortgages are good and how many are bad. The uncertainty erodes the value of the bond.
If significant amounts of such untested securities are on the balance sheet, insolvency rears its ugly head. The bonds get dumped in order to realize some part of their value. Merrill Lynch sold its asset backed securities for twenty cents on the dollar, although it is
unlikely that 80 percent of the instruments were worthless.
The mark to market rule, together with the suspect values of the asset backed securities and collateral debt obligations and swaps, allowed short sellers to make fortunes by driving down the share prices of the investment banks, thus worsening the crisis. With their capitalization shrinking, the investment banks could no longer borrow.
The authorities took their time in halting short-selling, and short-selling is set to resume on October 3 or thereabout.
If the mark to market rule had been suspended and short-selling prohibited, the crisis would have been mitigated. Instead, the crisis intensified, provoking the US Treasury to propose to take responsibility for $700 billion more in troubled financial instruments in addition to the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG bailouts. Treasury guarantees are also apparently being extended to money market funds.
All of this makes sense at a certain level. But what if the $700 billion doesn’t stem the tide and another $700 billion is needed? At what point does the Treasury’s assumption of liabilities erode its own credit standing?
This crisis comes at the worst possible time. Gratuitous wars and military spending in pursuit of US world hegemony have inflated the federal budget deficit, which recession is further enlarging. Massive trade deficits, magnified by the offshoring of goods and services, cannot be eliminated by US export capability.
These large deficits are financed by foreigners, and foreign unease has resulted in a decline in the US dollar’s value compared to other tradable currencies, precious metals, and oil.
The US Treasury does not have $700 billion on hand with which to buy the troubled assets from the troubled institutions. The Treasury will have to borrow the $700 billion from abroad.
The dependency of Treasury Secretary Paulson’s bailout scheme on foreign willingness to absorb more Treasury paper in order that the Treasury has the money to bail out the troubled institutions is heavy proof that the US is in a financially dependent position that is inconsistent with that of America’s “superpower” status.
The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will.
Washington still hasn’t learned this. American hubris can lead the administration and Congress into a bailout solution that the rest of the world, which has to finance it, might not accept.
Currently, the fight between the administration and Congress over the bailout is whether the bailout will include the Democrats’ poor constituencies as well as the Republicans’ rich ones. The Republicans, for the most part, and their media shills are doing their best to exclude the ordinary American from the rescue plan.
A less appreciated feature of Paulson’s bailout plan is his demand for freedom from accountability. Congress balked at Paulson’s demand that the executive branch’s conduct of the bailout be non-reviewable by Congress or the courts: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion.”
However, Congress substituted for its own authority a “board” that possibly will consist of the bailed out parties, by which I mean Republican and Democratic constituencies. The control over the financial system that the bailout would give to the executive branch would mean, in effect, state capitalism or fascism.
If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration’s success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.
The US might also be on the verge of a decision by foreign lenders to cease financing a country that claims to be a hegemonic power with the right and the virtue to impose its will on the rest of the world. The US is able to be at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and is able to pick fights with Iran, Pakistan and Russia, because the Chinese, the Japanese and the sovereign wealth funds of the oil kingdoms finance America’s wars and military budgets. Aside from nuclear weapons, which are also in the hands of other countries, the US has no assets of its own with which to pursue its control over the world.
The US cannot be a hegemonic power without foreign financing. All indications are that the rest of the world is tiring of US arrogance.
If the US Treasury’s assumption of bailout responsibilities becomes excessive, the US dollar will lose its reserve currency role. The minute that occurs, foreign financing of America’s twin deficits will cease, as will the bailout. The US government would have to turn to the printing of paper money as did Weimar Germany.
For now this pending problem is hidden from view, because in times of panic, the tradition is to flee into “safety,” that is, into US Treasury debt obligations. The safety of Treasuries will be revealed by the extent of the bailout.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions." He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
For serious thinkers and scholars:
Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/page1/news.html
***
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
Augustine, Abortion and the Democrats
The Talmud is the source of dissent and confusion within Christendom over abortion
Cardinal Egan and Bishop Chaput: Clean your own house, first.
Catholic bishops led by Bishop Chaput lecture Democrats on abortion, while child molestation facilitators such as Cardinals Roger Mahony and Bernard Law, and Bishop William Skylstad, remain as shepherds of the Catholic flock.
Chaput has nothing to say against abortion-by-bombing, in aggressive wars such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and state terror against Arab and Muslim women and children, perpetrated by Republican "pro-lifers" like George W. Bush. In August of 2006 America's military, political, economic and diplomatic ally, "Israel," bombed cities in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians including mothers, children, pregnant mothers and their unborn children. Perversely, these murders do not register with "pro-life" Catholic and evangelical supporters of President Bush and Sen. John McCain.
St. Augustine followed Aristotle and the Talmud in believing that life does not begin at conception; Nancy Pelosi is only echoing the Orthodox rabbinic teaching on abortion. Do Catholics dare expose the Talmudic root of early-stage abortion and thereby bear faithful witness to the Gospel?
On EWTN, the Catholic television network which offers some undoubtedly edifying and worthwhile programs, the host (Mr. Arroyo) proclaimed this morning on air, in response to Pelosi, that the Catholic Church's position on abortion is unchanged for 2,000 years and suggested that Pelosi was in error when she cited patristic disagreement on when the unborn child became human. Roman Catholicism has been influenced at various times by rabbinic tradition. Rabbinic influence on Roman Catholic prelates and scholars didn't start in the 1960s. As the Washington Post reported Aug. 27:
Augustine accepted the distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses found in the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22-23. While the Hebrew text provided for compensation in the case of a man striking a woman so as to cause a miscarriage, and for the penalty to be exacted if further harm were done, the Septuagint translated the word "harm" as "form," introducing a distinction between a "formed" and an "unformed" fetus. The mistranslation was rooted in an Aristotelian distinction between the fetus before and after its supposed "vivification" (at forty days for males, ninety days for females). According to the Septuagint, the miscarriage of an unvivified fetus were vivified, the punishment was a capital one.
Chaput has nothing to say against abortion-by-bombing, in aggressive wars such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and state terror against Arab and Muslim women and children, perpetrated by Republican "pro-lifers" like George W. Bush. In August of 2006 America's military, political, economic and diplomatic ally, "Israel," bombed cities in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians including mothers, children, pregnant mothers and their unborn children. Perversely, these murders do not register with "pro-life" Catholic and evangelical supporters of President Bush and Sen. John McCain.
St. Augustine followed Aristotle and the Talmud in believing that life does not begin at conception; Nancy Pelosi is only echoing the Orthodox rabbinic teaching on abortion. Do Catholics dare expose the Talmudic root of early-stage abortion and thereby bear faithful witness to the Gospel?
On EWTN, the Catholic television network which offers some undoubtedly edifying and worthwhile programs, the host (Mr. Arroyo) proclaimed this morning on air, in response to Pelosi, that the Catholic Church's position on abortion is unchanged for 2,000 years and suggested that Pelosi was in error when she cited patristic disagreement on when the unborn child became human. Roman Catholicism has been influenced at various times by rabbinic tradition. Rabbinic influence on Roman Catholic prelates and scholars didn't start in the 1960s. As the Washington Post reported Aug. 27:
"Bishop William E. Lori, chairman of the bishops' doctrine committee, noted in a statement yesterday that in the Middle Ages, the church distinguished between penalties for very early and later abortions....Pelosi refused to back down yesterday. A spokesman said she has studied the matter closely and her views have been influenced by St. Augustine, a leading 4th century theologian." (End quote from the Post).
From the Augustine encyclopedia:
Augustine accepted the distinction between "formed" and "unformed" fetuses found in the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22-23. While the Hebrew text provided for compensation in the case of a man striking a woman so as to cause a miscarriage, and for the penalty to be exacted if further harm were done, the Septuagint translated the word "harm" as "form," introducing a distinction between a "formed" and an "unformed" fetus. The mistranslation was rooted in an Aristotelian distinction between the fetus before and after its supposed "vivification" (at forty days for males, ninety days for females). According to the Septuagint, the miscarriage of an unvivified fetus were vivified, the punishment was a capital one.
Augustine disapproved of the abortion of both the vivified and unvivified fetus, but distinguished between the two. The unvivified fetus died before it lived, while the vivified fetus died before it was born (nupt. et con. 1.15.17). In referring back to Exodus 21:22-23, he observed that the abortion of an unformed fetus was not considered murder, since it could not be said whether the soul was yet present (qu. 2.80).
The question of the resurrection of the fetus also exercised Augustine, and sheds some light on his views on abortion. Here again he referred to the distinction between the formed and unformed fetus. Though he acknowledged that it was possible that the unformed fetus might perish like a seed, it was also possible that, in the resurrection, God would supply all that was lacking in the unformed fetus, just as he would renew all that was defective in an adult. This notion, Augustine remarked, few would dare to deny, though few would venture to affirm it (ench. 33.85). At another point Augustine would neither affirm nor deny whether the aborted fetus would rise again, though if it should be excluded from the number of the dead, he did not see how it could be excluded from the resurrection (civ. Dei 22.13). End quote. Source: Allan D. Fitzgerald (ed.) Augustine Through The Ages: An Encyclopedia (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), p. 1.
What is omitted from both the Augustine Encyclopedia and the debate over what the Fathers of the Early Church believed about the pre-born child, is the rabbinic doctrine that influenced Augustine, that the fetus is not a human being for the first forty days after conception. There is also a halachic loophole that allows the Judaic mother to kill her baby at any time during her pregnancy, not just the first 40 days (see Judaism Discovered, pp. 878-885).
In admitting the degree to which a few church fathers were influenced by rabbinic tradition (the overwhelming majority were vigilant opponents), we are not providing a loophole for Joe Biden or Pelosi to wiggle out of the repercussions attending their odious "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but..." clause.
Rather, we are calling to account both the left and the right wings of the Kabbalistic bird of prey that Christians are being lured into supporting, including some Catholic bishops who are beating the drum for the Republican presidential candidate, in the hope that we will forget that both Obama and McCain are morally objectionable.
The transformation of the USA from a Constitutional Republic to a Talmudic dictatorship will escalate under a McCain presidency; as will health care for the rich, while the poor are left to die of neglect. Perpetual war for perpetual peace will be cranked up to new heights of homicidal fury. These Republican policies are not Biblical values. God told Jeremiah that He hates oppression of the poor.
Presidential candidates Ron Paul and Bob Barr are outside the Left-Right snare that so-called Christians continue to monotonously fall for, every four years. We cannot endure four more years of the erosion of the Constitution and the murder of Afghan, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. With the Orthodox Talmudist Sen. Joseph Lieberman at his side, John McCain will bomb Iranian civilians and play nuclear brinkmanship with Russia.
How can Christians - whether Catholic or Protestant - ally with antichrist Talmudists, finance and fight their bloody and unjust wars, and get dragged into even more wars on their behalf?
With regard to abortion, show me where in the Gospel Jesus made one violation of God's law the sole litmus test? The single-issue anti-abortion campaign is a trap that ensures the election of presidential mass murderers. The reason "conservative" Christians are not passionately opposed to the mass murders of children by Pres. Bush is because these children have been derogated -- the humanity of Arabs (including Arab Christians) and Muslims has been diminished by Orthodox Judaism and its widespread influence over Churchianity.
The pompous, self-righteous Phariseeism of Catholic and evangelical supporters of McCain and Bush is grotesquely sinful and nauseating. (I say the same about "Christian" support for Obama and Biden). God will not bless America or any political movement implicated in the killing of the innocent, whether born or unborn, no matter what Catholic prelates who are complicit with or complacent toward the priestly molestation of children, proclaim or abjure.
Copyright©2008 www.RevisionistHistory.org
***
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
