Here in the heart of Kansas, the sky isn’t falling and Chicken Little isn’t running around without a head. Community banks like mine are still making loans and serving the needs of customers.

I used to worry about competing in the world of mega “too-big-to-fail” banks. But now I know community banks offer something the monsters can never offer — real personal service. Many financial-type businesses say they offer the same thing, but they usually don’t list personal numbers in the phone book and probably aren’t driving the volunteer fire truck. My father always told me that character repaid many more debts than collateral ever would. Community banks form long-term relationships with customers.

During the farm crisis of the 1980s the over-line credits we had placed with the city correspondent banks were called. A community bank used to rely on participating loans with large metro banks. For example, if my bank had a regulatory loan limit of a million dollars and I made a two million dollar loan, I would “sell” the over-line to a large bank. These large banks suddenly suspended and called all rural credits. This is probably similar to what is happening to borrowers who use super-large banks in today’s panic environment. There was nothing wrong with these loans but every small bank suffered from this irrational wrath.

Read it all.

A successful plan to stabilize the U.S. economy and prevent a deep global recession must do more than buy back impaired debt from financial institutions. It must address the fundamental cause of the crisis: the downward spiral of house prices that devastates household wealth and destroys the capital of financial institutions that hold mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.

The recently enacted financial rescue plan does nothing to stop this spiral. Credit will not flow and liquidity will not return to the banking system until financial institutions have confidence in the solvency and liquidity of other banks.

Because of the 20% fall in the price of homes since the bursting of the house-price bubble, there are now some 10 million homes with mortgages that exceed the value of the house. Residential mortgages are generally “no recourse” loans, meaning that if the homeowner stops making payments, the creditor can take the property but cannot take other assets or attach income. Individuals with loan-to-value ratios greater than 100% therefore have an incentive to default even if they can afford their monthly payments, and to rent an apartment or other house until house prices stop declining. When individuals default and creditors foreclose, the property is added to the stock of unsold homes. That depresses prices further, increasing the number and magnitude of negative equity houses.

The prospect of a downward spiral of house prices depresses the value of mortgage-backed securities and therefore the capital and liquidity of financial institutions. Experts say that an additional 10% to 15% decline in house prices is needed to get back to the prebubble level. That decline would double the number of homes with negative equity, raising the total to 40% of all homes with mortgages. The mortgages of five million homeowners would then exceed the value of their homes by 30% or more, which could prompt millions of defaults.

Read it all.

Weather services reported an 8 m.p.h. wind in Chicago on Friday. They failed, of course, to factor in the collective sigh of Cubs Nation.

“Good grief!” fans shrieked, as the Cubs stumble toward a possible Saturday elimination.

Holy Cow, oh wow, it’s deja vu all over again.

How””just how””they asked, could the team with the National League’s best record deliver this 72 hours of ineptitude and misery?

I do not even know if I can bring myself to watch. At least they have the starting pitcher I feel best about on the mound this evening. Read it all.

Eleven months after being barred from performing episcopal acts, an ecclesiastical court has determined that Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E. Bennison should be deposed from the ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.

The Court for the Trial of a Bishop, which spent four days in June hearing the case against Bennison, ruled September 30 that deposition was appropriate “in recognition of the nature of the offense and because [Bennison] has failed to demonstrate that he comprehends and takes responsibility for the harm that he has caused.”

Bennison was determined by the court in June of having engaged in conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.

“We are extremely disappointed with the Court’s decision today,” Bennison’s Philadelphia attorneys James A. A. Pabarue and Carolyn Bates Kelly said in a statement emailed to ENS. The statement said that the court’s determination in June “was completely wrong” and that a sentence of deposition would be “utterly immoral in light of the Bishop’s four decades of faithful service to the Episcopal Church.”

Read it all.

A nine-member church court has ruled unanimously that the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., the inhibited Bishop of Pennsylvania, should be deposed from ministry in The Episcopal Church.

The court ruled on June 25 that Bishop Bennison was guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. The court found that Bishop Bennison failed to report that his brother, the Rev. John Bennison, had engaged in sexual relations with a female member of the youth group at St. Mark’s Church, Upland, Calif., when Charles Bennison was rector there in the early 1970s. The court also found that he failed to protect the young woman from further sexual advances by his brother, or to provide adequate pastoral care to the young woman or her family.

Brad Babbitt and Hamilton Doherty, Jr., two attorneys who helped the Court for the Trial of a Bishop conduct the trial, released the sentencing documents late Friday morning. The two documents ”” the sentence and an order denying Bishop Bennison’s final motions to dismiss the case ”” are both dated Sept. 30.

Read it all.

1. Under the Canons and Constitution of the Diocese and the Episcopal Church, it is not possible for the Diocese or parishes within the Diocese to leave the Church. People may leave the Church; dioceses and parishes may not. Therefore, parishes, clergy and laity that wish to remain in the Episcopal Church will not recognize the legitimacy of “realignment.”
2. At the close of Convention on October 4, we will no longer recognize those members of the current leadership of the Diocese of Pittsburgh who “realign” as being legitimate. Ecclesiastic authority will shift to those members of the Standing Committee who are known to be remaining in the Episcopal Church.
3. Soon after October 4, the remaining members of the Standing Committee will determine whether any of the other members of the current Standing Committee are remaining in the Episcopal Church. Those who are not will cease to be recognized as members of the Standing Committee. The remaining members of the Standing Committee will appoint two additional individuals to serve as members of the Standing Committee.

Read it carefully and read it all.

When the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh meets in convention October 4, in addition to considering whether to align with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, deputies will be asked to create four new parishes.

Seeds of Hope, Bloomfield; Charis247 Community, Coraopolis; Somerset Anglican Fellowship, Somerset; and Grace Anglican Church, Slippery Rock, are all asking for admission to the diocese.

Admitting the four as parishes would add at least 12 votes (two deputies and one clergy person from each congregation) to total of those who will be asked to approve resolutions (see resolutions one, two and three here) to align with the Buenos Aires-based Southern Cone.

“This is the most important organizational decision that Pittsburgh congregations will face for years to come,” Jenni Bartling, the diocese’s congregational developer for church plants, said in July while announcing the anticipated vote. “Because all of our church plants will be directly affected by the decision[s] of Diocesan Convention, we believe it is important that as many as possible are able to vote on this issue, just like any other congregation of the diocese.”

Read it all.

Hundreds of clergy and lay leaders in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh are scheduled to vote today on whether to leave the New York-based church for a more conservative affiliation.

The voting at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Monroeville would occur about two weeks after a group of Episcopal bishops representing the U.S. church removed Bishop Robert Duncan as head of the Pittsburgh diocese for supporting efforts to split from the church.

If a majority votes to leave the Episcopal Church, the Pittsburgh diocese will become a member of the more conservative Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in Buenos Aires, Argentina, “as soon as the gavel falls,” said Deacon Peter Frank, a diocesan spokesman.

Read it all.

Those on both sides expect the Episcopal Diocese to vote today to secede from the U.S. denomination and join an Anglican province in South America — but with at least 17 of approximately 73 parishes choosing to remain in the Episcopal Church.

In the first of two required votes, last year the laity voted 118-58 and clergy voted 109-24 to secede. While some think a reversal is possible, no one is predicting it.

Opponents were more optimistic earlier, when some church leaders who admired Pittsburgh’s then-Bishop Robert Duncan were nevertheless wary of secession, said Rich Creehan, spokesman for Across the Aisle, a group for those who intend to remain Episcopal. But the Sept. 18 vote of the Episcopal House of Bishops to remove Bishop Duncan changed that.

“They saw that action by the House of Bishops as an insult and said they didn’t want to be part of people who acted like that,” Mr. Creehan said.

Read it all.

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Update: The resolutions under consideration are here.

“There is one thing necessary to understanding what is happening and it is this: no one at U.S. banks, no one at the Federal Reserve, and no one in politics can accept the reality that real estate assets in this country remain oversupplied, overpriced and overleveraged.”

“It is that simple.”

—Kevin Depew, Five Things You Need to Know: Will the Bailout Succeed

FITCH SAYS THE U.S. WILL LIKELY OVERTAKE FRANCE AND GERMANY TO BECOME THE MOST HEAVILY INDEBTED “AAA” RATED NATION IN 2009.

So, when the prospect of “leaving” the Episcopal Church (I’ve always contended that we were staying, they had left, but those are just different words now) presented itself before last year’s convention, I began analyzing every possible reason not to: We don’t need another Protestant split, we need to stay and fight, what witness will be left if we go, no one is preventing us from preaching the gospel, and on and on. But gradually, as each argument failed, I found myself staring at the one big elephant left in the room: What will ministry life be like outside of the comfort, security, and status I had known all my life in the Episcopal Church? A question I had talked a good game about but never really faced seriously, and it was daunting.

Of course, some of that concern is natural; we all want a job so we can feed our families, and most people prefer provision, beauty, and comfort over poverty and pain, but, for me, they had become somewhat of an idol, a dependency that had exerted more influence on my thinking than I realized.

The testimony in all this is that, over time, through no contribution on my part, except resistance, that dependency and fear has been gently lifted and in its place a small gift of faith that has allowed me the freedom to face and even embrace the prospect of ministry outside of the Episcopal Church.

Read it carefully and read it all. And please join me in praying for all who gather in Convention in Pittsburgh this weekend.

Go here, then go to grandparents day album and you will see the picture on the top row the third on over from left to right.

I’m posting this here and on Anglicana, as I’m really scratching my head here, and would be grateful for any sensible explanation of what’s gone wrong and when and how it will be remedied.

I have two questions:

1) What happened to epiScope?…

2) What on earth has happened to the Episcopal News Service?….

And while I’m thinking of it, that leads to a third question:

3) Where’s the accountability?

Read it all.

The House of Representatives gave final approval on Friday to the $700 billion bailout for the financial system, reversing course to authorize what may be the most expensive government intervention in history.

At 1:21 p.m., applause and cheers echoed through the House chamber as the number of “aye” votes crossed the threshold needed for passage with just seconds remaining in the official 15-minute voting period. The vote was 263 to 171.

And in a sign of the urgency surrounding the package, Congressional staff rushed the newly printed legislation into a news conference where Democratic leaders gathered after the vote and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, signed it, at exactly 2 p.m.

Within an hour, the legislation had been conveyed to the White House and signed by President Bush. Standing in the Rose Garden shortly before signing the document, the president thanked Congressional leaders of both parties by name and said they had achieved something “essential to helping America’s economy weather the financial crisis.”

Read it all.

Way to go, Selimah!

A church court of Pittsburgh Presbytery ruled 9-0 that the Rev. Janet Edwards did not violate scripture or the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) when she conducted what she has always said was the marriage of two women in 2005.

Since church and state define marriage as between a man and a woman, she cannot have done what she was accused of, the court ruled yesterday.

“It can’t be an offense to the constitution to attempt to do the impossible,” said the decision, read by the Rev. Stewart Pollock, chairman of the Permanent Judicial Commission of Pittsburgh Presbytery.

Read it all.

Corinne Ware remembers being struck by how tall the church was.

She was in England doing graduate work and happened upon St. Margaret’s Church, a 16th-century sanctuary next to Westminster Abbey. Everything seemed vertical ”” the pillars, the stained glass windows, the massive organ.

“I thought, whoever these people are, they understand mystery,” she recalled Monday morning as we sat in her office at the Seminary of the Southwest, an Episcopal seminary just north of the University of Texas. Ware, a slender, elegant woman who teaches ascetical theology, was sharing her own story as she explained to me the different types of worship Christians gravitate toward.

A Southern Baptist, Ware loved her church and the foundation it laid for her. But that day at St. Margaret’s, she realized she had a thirst for that kind of church experience. She would eventually become an Episcopalian.

Read it all.

The government is out with more bad economic news this morning: The job market began to deteriorate even before the financial crisis reached a more serious stage two weeks ago.

Employers cut 159,000 jobs in September, more than twice as many as in August or July, the Labor Department reported. It was the biggest decline since 2003, when the economy was still losing jobs in the wake of the 2001 recession.

Economists had been expecting a loss of about 100,000 jobs in September.

The new number was especially worrisome because the government conducted its survey during the week of Sept. 8, before the credit crisis took a new turn for the worse on Sept. 17.

Read it all.

Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign.

It was not a tipping point for the embattled Republican presidential ticket, the bad night that many Republicans had feared. But neither did it constitute the turning point the McCain campaign was looking for after a stretch of several weeks in which Senator Barack Obama seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the race. Even if he no longer has to be on the defensive about Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain still faces a tough environment with barely a month until the election, as he acknowledged hours before the debate by effectively pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a Democratic state where Mr. McCain’s advisers had once been optimistic of victory.

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. “But this alone won’t change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states.”

Read it all.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, alarmed by the ongoing national financial crisis, warned Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson on Thursday that the state might need an emergency loan of as much as $7 billion from the federal government within weeks.

The warning comes as California is close to running out of cash to fund day-to-day government operations and is unable to access routine short-term loans that it typically relies on to remain solvent.

The state of California is the biggest of several governments nationwide that are being locked out of the bond market by the global credit crunch. If the state is unable to access the cash, administration officials say, payments to schools and other government entities could quickly be suspended and state employees could be laid off.

Plans by several state and local governments to borrow in recent days have been upended by the credit freeze. New Mexico was forced to put off a $500-million bond sale, Massachusetts had to pull the plug halfway into a $400-million offering, and Maine is considering canceling road projects that were to be funded with bonds.

Read it all.

IFILL: Governor, Senator, neither of you really answered that last question about what you would do as vice president. I’m going to come back to that…

Read it all.

The diocese of Algoma on Oct. 2 elected Rev. Stephen Andrews, who is General Synod prolocutor, as its new bishop.

Bishop-elect Andrews, who is president and vice-chancellor of Thorneloe University in Sudbury, Ont., was elected on the ninth ballot, according to a brief announcement at the diocesan Web site, www.dioceseofalgoma.com

A respected New Testament scholar, Bishop-elect Andrews was a member of the Primate’s Theological Commission that published the St. Michael Report, a 2005 Canadian theological paper which concluded that the blessing of same-sex unions is a matter of doctrine, but not core doctrine. He was also a member of the team that presented the Canadian church’s view on same-sex blessings to the international Anglican Consultative Council in 2005.

Read it all.

Well, I’ll give Carlos Zambrano credit. His head didn’t explode. He didn’t break Mark DeRosa over his knee like a maple bat. Didn’t try to stuff Derrek Lee down the dugout drainage pipe like a piece of used chaw.

As his Chicago Cubs fell into an 0-2 NLDS sinkhole, as his team melted into a little Cubbie-blue puddle of Game 2 errors, Zambrano at least tried to do his part. But it didn’t matter. Almost nothing matters now as this series is all but over except for the champagne spray.

“It’s hard when your teammates make things difficult for you,” Zambrano said. “Like I said, it’s not an excuse.”

“We didn’t help him out much, that’s for sure,” Cubs shortstop Ryan Theriot said.

Read it all. I can’t talk about it rationally.

Desperate to avoid another market-crushing defeat, House leaders won key converts Thursday to the $700 billion financial industry bailout on the eve of a make-or-break second vote.

President Bush and congressional leaders lobbied furiously for the dozen or so supporters they’d need to reverse Monday’s stunning setback and approve a massive rescue plan designed to stave off national economic disaster.

Read it all.

Update: I see over on Intrade this morning that the chances of the bill passing by October 31th are up to 94.

From here:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Yesterday was a difficult day in the House of Bishops and the Episcopal Church. I want you to hear directly from me about the House of Bishops’ vote to depose the Bishop of Pittsburgh for abandoning the communion of this Church. The House of Bishops reached this decision after weighing considerable evidence. We also prayed and listened intentionally to each other; our decision was careful and informed.

The Bishop of Pittsburgh has led the efforts to separate the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh from The Episcopal Church by advocating for changes in the accession clause in that diocese’s constitution and canons. He also supports a canonical change which would move the diocese to the Province of the Southern Cone. His actions supporting these changes were never in dispute. Critically, he presided at the Diocesan Convention in 2007 at which the change in the constitution of diocese was approved in the first reading. His failure to rule the resolution out of order and his clear advocacy for its full passage at the upcoming convention in October by a second vote are demonstrative. The judgment of the House of Bishops was that by these actions Bishop Duncan made an open renunciation of the discipline of this church, thereby abandoning the communion of this Church.
There is an effort underway to suggest that the House of Bishops did not follow the canons of our Church in these proceedings. However these are the same procedures followed in three other depositions in the last few years, none of which were protested under the rules of the House of Bishops. When these procedures were challenged, the House of Bishops sustained the ruling of the president. It has also been suggested that the abandonment of communion proceedings do not permit the bishop in question the benefit of due process. Bishop Duncan could have ended these proceedings at any time by re-committing to the order and discipline of this Church and pledging to halt the contemplated actions of the convention by ruling the anticipated vote out of order when it was presented to the convention. Furthermore, he could have come before the house and offered a vigorous defense. His failure to do either places the outcome completely on his shoulders.

Finally, I believe that yesterday’s action is essential to maintain the order and discipline of our Church and the collegiality of the House of Bishops. It permits the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh to move forward. Some individuals may decide not to do so, but your House of Bishops has empowered those committed to the mission of the Episcopal Church to carry forward that ministry in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. We acted as responsible pastors and stewards of the Church. I fully support the actions of our House of Bishops and voted for this action.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to forgive, yet we must also hold each other accountable. We must also pray for peace for all involved in these difficult events. I ask your prayers for Bishop Duncan and his family. Pray also for the people of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Faithfully,

(The Rt. Rev.) James R. Mathes is Bishop of San Diego

The world economy is on edge as it awaits the next round of American roulette. The US Senate has voted to create a $US700 billion ($880 billion) rescue vehicle for distressed debt. But the bill now goes to the House of Representatives, which has already rejected the idea once.

What will happen if the House says yes? And if it says no? What is the prize for winning this high-stakes game of chance? And the consequences of losing?

If you strip away the jargon, the core problem is pretty simple. There is an estimated $US2 trillion in dubious debt instruments, tied to the subprime mortgage market, outstanding at the moment. The US banks and institutions that hold them need to do one of two things – either sell them, or put a value on them in their financial statements.

At the moment, they can do neither. Why not? Because there is no functioning market. It’s not like the American sharemarket, where there are dedicated market-making firms that are charged with the job of standing in the market to buy shares, come what may.

Read it all.