Russia said on Thursday it was ready to consider helping Venezuela develop a peaceful nuclear energy program, a gesture that will displease Washington as two of its sharpest critics draw closer.

“We are all ready to look at the possibility of operating in the sphere of peaceful atomic energy,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said as he welcomed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for late-evening talks at his residence on the outskirts of Moscow.

Nuclear energy is a sensitive issue between the United States and Russia, which this week forced the scrapping of an international meeting to discuss sanctions against Iran over its atomic program.

Russia has stepped up cooperation with Venezuela, an arch-foe of Washington, since coming under strong U.S. condemnation for fighting a war against Georgia last month.

Read it all.

First, I am dismayed that Bishop Duncan has taken several actions that he has….

But the bulk of my sadness and anger is reserved for the Presiding Bishop and those who have attempted to buttress her course of action. No, I’m not a lawyer and I’ve never played one on TV. But I do read and write English with a modicum of fluency. I know what lots of words mean. I can diagram sentences. And I can spot ambiguity from a mile away. There is nothing ambiguous about Canon IV.9. That the HOB’s lawyer-bishops cast aside common sense in order to “find” ambiguity that they could then resolve in favor of the Presiding Bishop’s desires is to their shame. So ”¦ shame on them. As a result of their work, the best hermeneutical tool for understanding the polity and discipline of the Episcopal Church these days is, alas, Alice in Wonderland, where words mean only what those in power say they mean.

I am also sad and angry””well, mystified might be a more accurate term””at the tunnel vision of the HOB majority. It is actually doing harm to their own cause. Before they took on the Duncan matter, our bishops took some time to bask in the afterglow of the Lambeth Conference, wherein they made lots of new friends and reached deeper levels of mutual understanding with their episcopal peers from other provinces. So it is incredible to me that they cannot see how their action in deposing Bishop Duncan is likely to be interpreted abroad as a pre-emptive purge of an annoying colleague, convicting a man for what he thinks and plans rather than for what he has done (shades of the film Minority Report), yet another example of TEC’s “progressive” juggernaut steamrolling all opposition.

Read it all.

From here:

That this Synod: noting (1) the deposition of Bishop Bob Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh in The Episcopal Church, by the assembled bishops of that church, on 18 September 2008; (2) the good standing and high reputation Bishop Bob Duncan has as an orthodox Anglican bishop, as represented by statements of support being expressed in recent days by the Archbishops of Sydney, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southern Cone, West Indies, Kenya, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Singapore, numerous bishops within The Episcopal Church itself, and the Bishops of Winchester, Rochester, Chester, Exeter, Blackburn and Chichester; (3) various developments in The Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church of Canada in recent years which place increasing pressure on faithful orthodox Anglicans to conform to changes in theology, liturgy and ethics rather than to uphold and maintain the 2000 year old teaching of the church; offers its support to Bishop Bob Duncan, to the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and to all bishops and dioceses in The Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church of Canada as they seek to find a way forward which embodies the true spirit of orthodox Anglicanism.

There are good reasons for Congress to feel unease about the administration plan, beginning with its $700 billion cost and the free hand sought by the Treasury Department. But there is no time for a normal legislative process. Congress, faced with a take it or leave it situation, should have the courage to act decisively now in a way that will sustain the economy.

The issue facing the Congress isn’t a political one. It is a technical financial question: what will it take to keep the American economy afloat in the immediate future, and at the least long-term cost?

Quibbling about the details at this time is like telling the surgeon in a life-or-death emergency situation that you’d like him to form a medical task force for your operation before going under the knife.

Read it all.

A high-profile White House meeting on Treasury’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan ended on a sour, contentious note Thursday after animated exchanges among lawmakers laced with presidential politics just weeks before the November elections.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came up to the Capitol hours later to revive talks, but House Republicans did not participate, and Democrats warned that the whole process could collapse unless President Bush gets them to come to the table.

“Unless this fourth leg shows up at some point, this could fall off very quickly,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.).

Read it all.

The meeting revealed that President Bush’s $700 billion bid to combat the worst financial crisis in decades had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and most House Democrats.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson begged Democratic participants not to disclose how badly the meeting had gone, dropping to one knee in a teasing way to make his point according to witnesses.

And when Paulson hastily tried to revive talks in a nighttime meeting near the Senate chamber, the House’s top Republican refused to send a negotiator.

“This is the president’s own party,” said Rep. Barney Frank, a top Democratic negotiator who attended both meetings. “I don’t think a president has been repudiated so strongly by the congressional wing of his own party in a long time.”

Read it all.

So, let’s use the next few years to plan, mapping out a program of energy conservation, reconstruction and renewable power. Let’s get the public sector and the universities working on it. And let’s prepare the private sector so that when the credit crunch finally ends, we’ll have the firms, the labs, the standards and the talent in place, ready to go.

Some will ask if we can afford it. To see the answer, don’t look at budget projections. Just look at interest rates. Last week, in the panic, the federal government could fund itself, short term, for free. It could have raised money for 30 years and paid less than 4 percent. That’s far less than it cost back in 2000.

No country in this situation is broke, or insolvent, or even in much trouble. For once, Wall Street’s own markets speak the truth. The financially challenged customer isn’t Uncle Sam. He’s up on Wall Street, where deregulation, greed and fraud ran wild.

Read it all.

While most of the nation’s attention is focused on saving behemoth financial firms, small businesses are struggling to ride out a perfect storm of tougher credit conditions in a badly hobbled economy.

The result is that the finance sector’s woes””which has spawned new lending prudence””is exacerbating, rather than relieving, economic weakness.

Even government programs designed to help small business are falling down on their mandate just when they are needed most, says small business advocates.

“It’s always been difficult for small business but now it is become almost impossible” to survive, say Marilyn Landis, chairwoman of the National Small Business Association (NSBA). “Many factors are coming together to make this a perfect storm for small businesses.”

Read it all.

Watch it all.

Talks over a massive bailout for the U.S. financial system stumbled as they entered their most critical hours, with some Republicans working yesterday to undermine a deal between key congressional leaders and reinvent the plan put forward by the Bush administration one week ago.

Early yesterday, Democratic and Republican leaders said they had reached agreement on the “fundamentals” of a deal. But at a meeting later at the White House that included President Bush, top lawmakers and both presidential candidates, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) mentioned a new plan for addressing the crisis that has hobbled global markets.

Under the plan, the government would set up an expanded insurance system, financed by the banks, that would rescue individual home mortgages. The government would not have to buy up the toxic mortgage-backed assets that are weighing down financial institutions.

The proposal angered Democrats, who accused Boehner of acting on behalf of GOP presidential candidate John McCain (R-Ariz.) in trying to disrupt a developing consensus. It also displeased White House officials, including Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who — half-jokingly — dropped to one knee and pleaded with the lawmakers not to “blow up” the deal, according to two people present at the meeting.

Read it all.

Apparently the government brokered the deal for JPMorgan to acquire the WaMu deposits. Of interest, the deal will not impact the FDIC Insurance Fund.

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

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

Read it carefully and read it all.

A democrat was quoted as saying the deal has “cratered.”

This is like living through a national soap opera–KSH

JOE [KERNEN]: But when the more dire it looked, in terms of communicating, with some of these Senators, the three-month or one-month bill, again, started acting similar to what was happening on Thursday[of last week]. Now we averted that disaster on Thursday, but it’s already been three or four days. It’s almost as if these guys already forgot about the position that we were in. Do you think that accounted — we’re still susceptible to that happening again if it looked like they’re not going to go through with this?

[WARREN] BUFFETT: No, it would get worse. Last week will look like Nirvana (laughs) if they don’t do something. I think they will. I understand where they’re very mad about what’s happened in the past, but this isn’t the time to vent your spleen about that. This is the time to do something that gets this country back on the right track. What you have, Joe, you have all the major institutions in the world trying to deleverage. And we want them to deleverage, but they’re trying to deleverage at the same time. Well, if huge institutions are trying to deleverage, you need someone in the world that’s willing to leverage up. And there’s no one that can leverage up except the United States government. And what they’re talking about is leveraging up to the tune of 700 billion, to in effect, offset the deleveraging that’s going on through all the financial institutions. And I might add, if they do it right, and I think they will do it reasonably right, they won’t do it perfectly right, I think they’ll make a lot of money. Because if they don’t — they shouldn’t buy these debt instruments at what the institutions paid. They shouldn’t buy them at what they’re carrying, what the carrying value is, necessarily. They should buy them at the kind of prices that are available in the market. People who are buying these instruments in the market are expecting to make 15 to 20 percent on those instruments. If the government makes anything over its cost of borrowing, this deal will come out with a profit. And I would bet it will come out with a profit, actually.

—From a CNBC interview yesterday (all three parts of which are worth the time)

However, the Conservatives without quite realising it have already embraced part of the answer to the current economic crisis ”“ localism. The economic disaster now engulfing us is a direct result of financial globalisation and the resultant monopoly and speculation that this has encouraged. For instance the “free market” allowed a monopoly accrual of debt (which is what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac achieved in the US) and the speculative reclassification of this debt as an asset. Securitising this debt across the globe as a stable income stream allowed the huge augmentation of credit and the initiation and expansion of the asset price bubble. However this process undermined the very assets on which the original debts were written ”“ since other debts subsequently made to the both the prime and subprime market were written not on ability to pay but on the now speculatively enhanced asset price itself. This system fed on itself until someone somewhere became unable to pay, as happened in the subprime crisis where, because of the hidden penal interest rates levied on the poor, the whole system unraveled.

The current Conservative emphasis on decentralisation and the development of local societies offers a real though unexplored alternative to much of the foregoing. If localism is to flourish it needs a corresponding political economy, so far the Tories have defined this in terms of disaggregating to communities state funds and public grants. Yet there is another source of disempowering monopoly: the market. Corporate capital has outcompeted local small businesses so that our towns and cities have become clones of each other with the same chain stores, restaurants and retail outlets. All of this sucks money out of the regional economy, with only 50 pence of every pound spent in corporate outlets returning to the locality ”“ as against £2 returning to the area for every pound spent in a local business.

If we were able to generate a local economy, then why not decentralise finance as well, and create, as David Cameron has already intimated, local cooperatives and indeed guilds around which people could invest? Then, we could reinvent capital as also local and not just global.

Read it all.

The number of primates and bishops in the Anglican Communion publicly supporting Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh is growing since the House of Bishops voted to depose him from the ordained ministry of The Episcopal Church on Sept. 17.

Six diocesan bishops from the Church of England -”‘ Blackburn, Chester, Chichester, Exeter, Rochester and Winchester -”‘ said they continue to regard him as a bishop in good standing of the Anglican Communion.

The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Schott-Joynt, has previously called for an “orderly separation” of liberal and conservative Anglicans following the Lambeth Conference last August.

The statement by the English bishops was preceded by statements of support for Bishop Duncan from the primates of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southeast Asia, the Southern Cone, Uganda and the West Indies.

Read it all.

The median August sales price was $350,140, down from $588,670 a year ago. CAR chief economist Leslie Appleton-Young said it’s too early to call a bottom for prices, which will “experience additional downward pressure as we move into the off-peak season in the coming months, and will continue to face pressure from distressed sales,” she said.

Read it all.

To call for an existence which is qualitatively more satisfying is of itself legitimate, but one cannot fail to draw attention to the new responsibilities and dangers connected with this phase of history. The manner in which new needs arise and are defined is always marked by a more or less appropriate concept of man and of his true good. A given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption. It is here that the phenomenon of consumerism arises. In singling out new needs and new means to meet them, one must be guided by a comprehensive picture of man which respects all the dimensions of his being and which subordinates his material and instinctive dimensions to his interior and spiritual ones. If, on the contrary, a direct appeal is made to his instincts ”” while ignoring in various ways the reality of the person as intelligent and free ”” then consumer attitudes and life-styles can be created which are objectively improper and often damaging to his physical and spiritual health. Of itself, an economic system does not possess criteria for correctly distinguishing new and higher forms of satisfying human needs from artificial new needs which hinder the formation of a mature personality. Thus a great deal of educational and cultural work is urgently needed, including the education of consumers in the responsible use of their power of choice, the formation of a strong sense of responsibility among producers and among people in the mass media in particular, as well as the necessary intervention by public authorities….

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards “having” rather than “being”, and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.75 It is therefore necessary to create life-styles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments. In this regard, it is not a matter of the duty of charity alone, that is, the duty to give from one’s “abundance”, and sometimes even out of one’s needs, in order to provide what is essential for the life of a poor person. I am referring to the fact that even the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice. Given the utter necessity of certain economic conditions and of political stability, the decision to invest, that is, to offer people an opportunity to make good use of their own labour, is also determined by an attitude of human sympathy and trust in Providence, which reveal the human quality of the person making such decisions.

—Centesimus annus

In reading through Prof. Davenport’s text, I was struck by how similar are the contours of the economic debates in this period of American history are to our own debates. There are those who are comfortable with the idea of a free economy as a necessary institution for providing material well being for the human family. It simply is not possible to support six billion people on a system of central planning or on agrarian or distributivist principles. At the same time, there are the Sojourners who feel grave discomfort at what they perceive to be the materialism of our age and thereby seek system-wide change. Finally, there are the moralists who minimize debates about politics and rather seek to inspire personal moral piety.

What we need to see is the greater compatibility between the three positions than is usually supposed, provided there is freedom in which the three approaches can work. No society under any economic system will be free of greed, but the free economy produces the wealth that also makes charity and philanthropy possible. In addition, for those who seek simpler lives and private piety, the free economic system provides the room and possibility to make that choice. Davenport does not appear to be what I would call a pro-market thinker, which is what I suppose I might be called. Nonetheless, this book has identified the critical issues of the debate in those times and in our own. Christianity has adapted itself to many cultures and settings, but the advent of capitalism did provide its own special challenges.

How can a religion born in a world of poverty, and centered on the eventual glory associated with death on a cross, thrive in a world of fantastic levels of material prosperity? The experience of Americans shows how, and the views of the thinkers highlighted in this volume explain how a reconciliation can occur. It comes down to the critical fact that the most productive economic system ever known also happens to be the one that is most respectful of human rights and dignity, and provides the freedom to worship.

Read it all.

[In Allentown, Pennsylvania] the latest details of the government’s proposed $700 billion rescue plan was not the main story in the local paper, The Morning Call, on Sept. 23 (an article about the end of a teachers’ strike was). But it is on people’s minds. For many of Allentown’s residents, the rescue is an occasion for anger, even if that feeling is at times blunted by fatigue and resignation. They dislike what goes on in Washington, but those ill feelings are nothing compared with their view of Wall Street. “People see that the chief executives of these finance companies are making millions on the backs of taxpayers,” says Ed Pawlowski, the Democratic Mayor of Allentown. They are worried about how the next generation will fare in an America that many feel has mixed up its priorities.

At Wal-Mart (WMT) SuperCenter Store #2641, Brett Slack, one of the owners of Lehigh Valley Paintball, was picking up groceries with his two-year-old daughter while his wife was at her part-time job as a cashier at Giant Food. He, like most others here, believes that the government has no choice but to intervene, since the consequences of inaction appear to be far worse. So fine: He can live with his tax money helping to prop up America’s financial system. But he wants the chief executives of those companies (unnamed by anyone in Allentown) to pay, too. “The government should go after the CEOs,” he said. “I own a business, and if I went under, the bank would come after me. They made bad decisions and figured the government would bail them out. If the CEOs end up sleeping in cardboard boxes, that would be O.K. with me. They don’t deserve to be multimillionaires.”

Slack, who is 32, has had to lay off 20 of his 35 employees in the past year as rising gas prices slowed business. He and his two partners took pay cuts, too. “That’s what CEOs and owners should do,” he says. He put all his savings into the company when he started it four years ago. “If I have money to invest one day, I’ll just start another business. I won’t invest in the stock market,” he says.

Read it all.

A PUBLIC appeal for help is being made by the Anglican church at Cornholme as a result of mounting debts.

St Michael’s Church, in Burnley Road, is hoping for a cash boost as arrangements are being finalised for an arts and crafts exhibition at the end of this month.

In this month’s parish magazine, assistant priest, the Rev Irene Greenman, writes: “It is the parish church of Cornholme, but it is supported by the donations of only a faithful few ”“ some good friends who would not like to see the church close down.

“We have our usual share to pay to the diocese ”“ this year almost £11,000, of which we have paid £7,204 so far.

Read it all.

What would you pay, sight unseen, for a house that nobody wants, on a hard-luck street where no houses are selling?

That question is easy compared to the one confronting the Treasury Department as Washington works toward a vast bailout of financial institutions. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is proposing to spend up to $700 billion to buy troubled investments that even Wall Street is struggling to put a price on.

A big concern in Washington ”” and among many ordinary Americans ”” is that the difficulty in valuing these assets could result in the government’s buying them for more than they will ever be worth, a step that would benefit financial institutions at taxpayers’ expense.

Anyone who has tried to buy or sell a house when the market is falling, as it is now, knows how difficult it can be to agree on a price. But valuing the securities that the Treasury aims to buy will be far more difficult. Each one of these investments is tied to thousands of individual mortgages, and many of those loans are going bad as the housing market worsens.

Read it all.

Hedge funds that bet on a decline in British mortgage lender HBOS Plc are “bank robbers” and “asset strippers,” according to the Archbishop of York John Sentamu, the Church of England’s second-ranking cleric.

“To a bystander like me, those who made 190 million pounds ($353 million) deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS, in spite of its very strong capital base, and drove it into the bosom of Lloyds TSB Bank, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers,” Sentamu told an audience of bankers at Drapers’ Hall in the City of London last night, according to his Web site.

Sentamu’s speech came as the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican church’s highest-ranking cleric, urged the British government to adopt more radical regulations, in addition to the temporary ban on short-sales of financial stocks in an article published yesterday on the Spectator magazine’s Web site.

“The question is not how to choose between total control and total deregulation, but how to identify the points and practices where social risk becomes unacceptably high,” Williams wrote. “The banning of short-selling is an example of just such a judgment. Governments should not lose their nerve as they look to identify a few more targets.”

Read it all.

The debate in Washington over the $700 billion bail-out plan for the US financial system is starting to resemble a plot from the television show 24.

—Gerard Baker in the (London) Times

I know you are having to shoot the financial rapids. Markets are in turmoil. Bear Stearns and Northern Rock are etched indelibly in your memory. And now we have the stories of Lehmann brothers and Merrill Lynch, AIG and HBOS.

To a bystander like me, those who made £190million deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS, in spite of its very strong capital base, and drove it into the bosom of Lloyds TSB Bank, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers!

We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from Alice in Wonderland, where the share value of a bank is no longer dependent on the strength of its performance but rather on the willingness of the Government to bail it out, or rather on whether the Government has announced its intentions so to do.

Our country has built its financial strength historically on the manufacturing of goods, where money was the medium of exchange. In the last week we have has seen its systems come close to ruin because now money is no longer being the medium of exchange for goods, but rather is the very item which is being traded.

Meanwhile talk of bonuses being paid out to the few whilst the many suffer, cocks a snook at any talk of “fairness” or “equity”.

Read it all and there is a press release here also.

Trading the debts of others without accountability has been the motor of astronomical financial gain for many in recent years. Primitively, a loan transaction is something which enables someone to do what they might not otherwise be able to do ”” start a business, buy a house. Lenders identify what would count as reasonable security in the present and the future (present assets, future income) and decide accordingly.

But inevitably in complex and large-scale transactions, one person’s debt becomes part of the security which the lender can offer to another potential customer. And a particularly significant line is crossed when the borrowing and lending are no longer to do with any kind of equipping someone to do something specific, but exclusively about enabling profit ”” sometimes, as with the now banned practice of short-selling, by effectively betting on the failure of a partner in the transaction.

This crisis exposes the element of basic unreality in the situation ”” the truth that almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders. But while we are getting used to this sudden vision of the Emperor’s New Clothes, there are one or two questions that, in government as in society at large, we at last have a chance to ask. Some of these are elementary and practical. Given that the risk to social stability overall in these processes has been shown to be so enormous, it is no use pretending that the financial world can maintain indefinitely the degree of exemption from scrutiny and regulation that it has got used to. To grant that without a basis of some common prosperity and stability, no speculative market can long survive is not to argue for rigid Soviet-style centralised direction. Insecure or failed states may provide a brief and golden opportunity for profiteering, but cannot sustain reliable institutions.

Without a background of social stability everyone will eventually suffer, including even the most resourceful, bold and ingenious of speculators. The question is not how to choose between total control and total deregulation, but how to identify the points and practices where social risk becomes unacceptably high. The banning of short-selling is an example of just such a judgment. Governments should not lose their nerve as they look to identify a few more targets.

Read it all.

Congress looked close to reaching a deal to approve a $700 billion plan to bail out the U.S. financial system and President George W. Bush called an emergency meeting for Thursday to hammer out details.

The move toward a deal will likely calm U.S. markets, which remained on tenterhooks on Wednesday as negotiations dragged on. Investors sought cash and safe-haven assets, briefly sending short-term interest rates below zero. Experts said banks were hoarding cash, fearful that if they loaned money to other banks they might not get repaid.

Most Asian stock markets were weaker and the U.S. dollar dipped against major currencies on Thursday on lingering worries about the timing and scale of rescue plan and fears of the financial contagion deepening.

On Wednesday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd expressed optimism a deal was nearing.

Read it all.

For background on this, please see this post from yesterday.

Watch Elmo and friends do their magic–heartwarming.

Have we come so far from our Catholic tradition that we have forgotten the power of martyrdom, on which the Western church is built? Does no-one in TEC understand any more the meaning of sacrifice?

Because a martyr is what Bob Duncan now is. The Episcopal Church should not need a heretically catholic Anglican such as me to tell it that the next step up from martyrdom is sainthood. Bishop Duncan’s office has been inundated with emails, phonecalls and letters of supportm since the ill-advised deposition. Since Friday, he has had personal messages from six primates, including ++Anis and ++Chew, indicating their intention not to recognise the deposition and to support the Pittsburgh “remnant”. There have been all kinds of other ones as well from various bishops, clergy and laity all over the world. They are being catalogued on a new site, set up specially to venerate the deposed bishop.

And now in England, six bishops are pledging their support and saying they will continue to recognise him. Surely that is momentous enough to warrant an archiepiscopal comment? Or perhaps all pretence of episcopal collegiality has been abandoned.

Read it all.