Setting the stage for a collision of religion and politics, Christian ministers from California and 21 other states will use their pulpits Sunday to deliver political sermons or endorse presidential candidates — defying a federal ban on campaigning by nonprofit groups.
The pastors’ advocacy could violate the Internal Revenue Service’s rules against political speech with the purpose of triggering IRS investigations.
The Archbishop of CanterÂbury this week preached at an interÂnational mass in Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees, as part of the 150th-anniversary celebrations of St Bernadette’s visions of the Virgin Mary.
Dr Williams was taking part in a pilgrimage of bishops, clergy, and laity from the Church of England, including the Suffragan Bishop in Europe, the Rt Revd David Hamid, which was organised by the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Society of Mary.
Banks throughout the United States carried on with the business of making loans yesterday even as federal officials warned again that their industry is on the verge of collapse, suggesting that the overheated language on Capitol Hill may not reflect the reality on many Main Streets.
The industry is resilient despite the struggles of some members. Washington Mutual, a troubled Seattle savings and loan that was among the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, yesterday was seized by the government and sold to J.P. Morgan Chase.
At the same time, many smaller banks said they were actually benefiting from the problems on Wall Street. Deposits are flowing in as customers flee riskier investments, and well-qualified borrowers are lining up for loans.
Matthew Taylor wasn’t sure what life held for him after leaving Fort Dorchester High School. But he knew what he had to do months later when airliners struck the World Trade Center towers.
The next day, Taylor and his father drove to a U.S. Army recruiting station on Rivers Avenue. Taylor knew that if he was going to seek justice for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he’d need a frontline fighting position. He enlisted in the Infantry.
“It was patriotism. He felt for all the people who had been killed,” his father, Don Taylor, said Wednesday. “He had an extreme sense of duty.”
With the twin towers still smoldering, Matthew looked to his father and said, “We need to go and deal with that.”
Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier.
I am worried for our country — not so much because of the tumult in the financial markets but because of the federal government’s response and its implications.
It seems that each new crisis is met with a new answer from the government. After Hurricane Katrina, the federal government assumed roles traditionally handled by state and local governments. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government federalized 25,000 workers through the Transportation Security Administration. The example of security-focused countries such as Israel, which elects to have that function handled by the private sector, did not matter. Now, our federal government is likely to commit three-quarters of a trillion dollars — more than last year’s Pentagon budget — to a bailout based on what happened in the credit markets last week.
An ever-expanding scope of federal commitment and power is not what made this country great. Expanded power in one place comes at a cost in other places. American cornerstones such as individual initiative and an entrepreneurial spirit — born in free and open societies with private property rights and the rule of law — have never fit particularly well within the context of an ever-growing federal government.
Congressman Paul Kanjorski was on CNBC earlier and said that his mail and calls on the Paulson plan are running 50-50: 50% no and 50% hell no.
“I’m a dirt farmer,” said Senator Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who still lives on his family homestead. “Why do we have one week to determine that $700 billion has to be appropriated or this country’s financial system goes down the pipes?”
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.
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.
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.
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.).
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
A democrat was quoted as saying the deal has “cratered.”
Ugh.
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.
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.
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.