The California state treasurer called Wednesday on U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to extend debt guarantees through the Troubled Asset Relief Program to financially strapped states and local governments facing declining revenues.

Read it all.

They were singing without accompaniment. You know–Acapulco.

–Richard Lederer, Anguished English (New York: Doubleday, 1987), page 104

We have [the feeling] that the story we are reading is only a small part of a titanic drama, and that what we see here on stage begins and ends out in vistas infinitely larger than the size of the stage that we can see….[C.S.] Lewis’ fiction, we might say, reaches all the way to heaven and hell.

–Thomas Howard, “Terror and Sublimity for Everyman: C.S. Lewis’ Literary Achievement,” The Journal of Faith and Thought (Spring 1985), p. 3.

Where does this leave us? The Federal Reserve is caught; policymakers are warily watching the economy, worried that their liquidity injections will catch fire. On the other hand, they suspect that the economy will demand greater stimulus, if their estimates of the Taylor Rule are any guide. Caught, they want to remain flexible, and hence are unwilling to commit to numerical targets, either money growth or long rates. Hard to blame them; for the last decade, excessive easing has always caused something seemingly good that was followed by something very bad. But with the output gap certain to widen, the bias will be on the side of additional easing, while the timing will be data dependent. The green shoots story is looking a little tired today; a wide swath of indicators in the commodities market suggests that overall demand remains subdued. That will not stop a segment of market participants from playing up the green shoots story – they want to get ahead of the next big move. I remain wary that there is any room for an easy bounceback; I can’t shake off memories of 2001-2003, and I don’t see where we get another asset bubble in the US to crank up the wealth engine.

Read it all.

Tens of thousands of Christians are taking part in a huge, outdoor Mass in Nazareth being celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI on his Holy Land tour.

The event in the town in northern Israel, where Jesus is believed to have lived, is expected to draw the largest crowds during the Pope’s five-day trip.

The Catholic Church head will then meet Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, a day after backing a Palestinian homeland.

Mr Netanyahu does not support the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

Read it all.

The Bishop of Rochester has called on the Government to ensure that British policy is effective at tackling the syllabus in Pakistan’s madrassas. ‘

Bishop Michael Nazi-Ali said in the House of Lords that the education in the country’s madrassas were “fuelling international education”.

He called for an assurance that “British aid policy for education will be effective this time in changing the syllabus in the madrassas”.

Read it all.

Mr Holzer never knew whether his attempts to nudge ghosts to the Other Side (another of his coinings) were successful, or not. He did not make it sound particularly enticing. No angels, he said confidently, and no “fellows in red underwear with pitchforks” either. Disappointingly, the whole place was much like here, but with no sense of time and with everything “strung out further” in the thinner atmosphere. Even more disappointingly, it was run by a giant and orderly bureaucracy, in which spirits had to ask permission and list their motives if they wished to contact mediums and had to stand in line, waiting for a clerk to find suitable parents, in order to be born again. “They” used the word “clerk”, he said. And “they” had also instructed him to tell the world the truth about ghosts. They would be irritated if he failed, and would put him down for further education.

Read it all (emphasis mine). The whole time I was reading this last night I was thinking of C.S. Lewis when he wrote:

I like bats better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern

[The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1960), p. 9].

One of her credit cards started out charging 7 percent or 8 percent interest. It has now skyrocketed to 24 percent. Another card with a 2-3 percent rate is now charging her almost 18 percent.

The minimum monthly payments on all of her credit cards total about… one-third of [Carol] Hodges’ total monthly income. Even paying more than her minimums has had bad consequences.

“As I’ve chipped away and brought it down, they take away the credit [limit]. So as it went down, I had less credit available,” she says.

Before you click, you need to guess how much the woman featured in this story charged to her credit cards. What was her overall balance? Now, read or listen to it all.

The Rev. Paul F. Zahl, former dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, has announced his intention to …[reretire July 1] as rector of All Saints’, Chevy Chase, Md.

According to accounts from several members of the parish, Fr. Zahl, 58, said in his announcement during services on Sunday, May 10, that he felt called at this stage of his ministry to concentrate on teaching, preaching and reaching the unchurched as opposed to parish ministry.

Read it all.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Update:I received an email from Paul Zahl which says:

[The Living Church article is not correct]. I am not “resigning” from All Saints and June 15th is an error, too.
I am re-retiring from All Saints, having coming out of retirement in December 2007 in order to serve as rector of the parish.
In fact, I had retired officially in January 2007.
Mary and I have received the warm blessing of Bishop Salmon and of Bishop Chane to do this, and we shall be returning to our home in Florida.
The retirement takes effect on July lst.

Now, imagine a world in which China could borrow and lend internationally in its own currency. The renminbi, rather than the dollar, could eventually become a means of payment in trade and a unit of account in pricing imports and exports, as well as a store of value for wealth by international investors. Americans would pay the price. We would have to shell out more for imported goods, and interest rates on both private and public debt would rise. The higher private cost of borrowing could lead to weaker consumption and investment, and slower growth.

This decline of the dollar might take more than a decade, but it could happen even sooner if we do not get our financial house in order. The United States must rein in spending and borrowing, and pursue growth that is not based on asset and credit bubbles. For the last two decades America has been spending more than its income, increasing its foreign liabilities and amassing debts that have become unsustainable. A system where the dollar was the major global currency allowed us to prolong reckless borrowing.

Now that the dollar’s position is no longer so secure, we need to shift our priorities. This will entail investing in our crumbling infrastructure, alternative and renewable resources and productive human capital ”” rather than in unnecessary housing and toxic financial innovation. This will be the only way to slow down the decline of the dollar, and sustain our influence in global affairs.

Read it all.

A number of viewers wanted to know how results from the recently concluded meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council might affect convention. Bishop Jefferts Schori said the need to debate the proposed Anglican Covenant obviously was a moot point since it failed to pass during the ACC meeting in Jamaica last week.

In response to a question regarding the repeal of B033, the resolution approved at General Convention in 2006 that recommends caution in consecrating bishops whose manner of life might cause distress to other members of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Jefferts Schori said B033 would be debated, but that she opposes its repeal.

“I would far more prefer that we say here is where we are today,” she said, adding that it was a more positive way to express the mind of the church.

Read it all.

The USA is developing a stark generation gap between aging white Baby Boomers and a young, growing minority population, according to U.S. Census data released today.

The minority population increased 2.3% to 104.6 million from mid-2007 to July 1, 2008, or just over one-third of the total population, the Census Bureau reported.

Read it all.

Vauban, Germany–Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” ”” except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park ”” large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Read it all.

Nurses are to receive detailed guidance for the first time on how to help terminally ill patients end their own lives.

Assisted suicide remains illegal in Britain but the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says that many nurses are being asked by desperate patients about travelling abroad, such as to the Swiss clinic Dignitas, to end their lives.

The RCN has been opposed since 2004 to assisted suicide ”” actively helping people to die ”” but is consulting its 400,000 members about whether to reconsider this stance in the light of calls to change the law.

Read it all.

In a quaint, dimly lit sanctuary with stainedglass windows and hardwood floors, men dressed in Civil Warera outfits worshipped alongside women wearing bonnets and long antebellum dresses.

It was, after all, Trinity Episcopal Church’s 150th anniversary service Sunday, and churchgoers, ushers, the music director and even the pastor were all playing the role.

The entire service was a throwback to 1859, when construction began at Trinity Episcopal, the state’s oldest Episcopal church still being used for Sunday worship, according to the church’s rector, churchgoers and a historical book on the church.

“One of the great things about being a part of Trinity is that you have this wonderful history, but it’s a living history,” said the Rev. Walter Van Zandt Windsor, the church rector. “It’s sort of like being able to live in the presence of those who have gone before while still preaching the gospel in a modern world.”

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has conceded that ACC-14 in Kingston, Jamaica was a “failure” that disappointed many Anglicans across the Communion. However, the meeting of the Anglican Communion’s fourth ”˜instrument of unity’ had been a “glorious failure” that saw the Anglican Communion rise from its “deathbed” to address its own shortcomings, Dr Rowan Williams said in his closing presidential address on May 11.

It was unhelpful to establish criteria for success or failure for Anglican meetings, Dr Williams told delegates to the May 2-12 meeting in Kingston, Jamaica said, as there was “no absolute measure for achievement. In critical times ”“ small things might be large achievements. Our willingness in certain areas to act as one and to discover more deeply how we pray as one is, by God’s grace and gift, for no other reason, an achievement,” he said.

Read it all.

The controversy about the visit of Pope Benedict XVI is indicative both of the general political tension in our area, and of the loaded Catholic-Jewish relationship. Among its many paradoxes is the fact that this is a relationship between a small people of some 13 million, an ethno-religious group the majority of whom do not follow the religion of their ancestors anymore in any meaningful way but rather maintain a culture based on an ancient tradition in which that religion played a central role, and a worldwide religious body of some 1.5 billion members. We are talking about the relations between a gnat and an elephant, but the elephant, amazingly, developed from the gnat, and the gnat is a rare insect of tremendous importance.

The visit of John Paul II was an act that was hard to follow, and the present pope did his best in accordance with his personality and the tremendous pressures to which he is constantly subjected. It was not good enough. In his speech at Yad Vashem he used the term “compassion,” which was mistranslated into the Hebrew hemla (pity). Compassion means an effort to take part in someone else’s (harsh) experience, and is much more than top-down pity. It has a theological resonance in Christian thought and reflects Christian beliefs about the attitude of Jesus to human suffering.

THE POPE MEANT WELL, and tried to walk the tightrope between Arab-Palestinian-Muslim and Palestinian-Christian enmity to Israel and the Jews on the one hand, and the collective trauma of Jews in Israel and elsewhere regarding the Holocaust on the other.

Read it all.

The mayor of Providence wants to slap a $150-per-semester tax on the 25,000 full-time students at Brown University and three other private colleges in the city, saying they use resources and should help ease the burden on struggling taxpayers.

Mayor David Cicilline (sis-ah-LEEN-ee) said the fee would raise between $6 million and $8 million a year for the city, which is facing a $17 million deficit.

If enacted, it would apparently be the first time a U.S. city has directly taxed students just for being enrolled.

Read it all.

The barrage of tax increases proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget could, if enacted by Congress, kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery.

Historians and economists who’ve studied the 1930s conclude that the tax increases passed during that decade derailed the recovery and slowed the decline in unemployment. That was true of the 1935 tax on corporate earnings and of the 1937 introduction of the payroll tax. Japan did the same destructive thing by raising its value-added tax rate in 1997.

Read it all.

On a matter over which several years were spent in deep discussion, study, and work, around the world, and I know serious engagement at the ACC itself, decisions were apparently made within a confused and chaotic few minutes visible to the world at large that have serious consequences for the Communion, and whose propriety is now debated (and I and the ACI are hardly the initiators of or even strident voice in this debate), and the actual significance of which remains unstated and unknown. The initial work of providing resolutions for the Council regarding the Covenant was put into the hands of a small group that from the start simply did not appear representative of the views of the whole, and the sequence of events in the debate and resolution-voting, amending, and re-voting maintained a skewed dynamic of direction.

I am not persuaded by the explanations given by the ACO representatives at their press conference that somehow the process and the final outcome represents some otherwise undefined “sense” of the meeting, ascertained in the heat of debate by the Chair and President, especially when members of that meeting, including bishops from Nigeria and Egypt, are on record as strongly disagreeing with that “sense” and indicating that at least in some significant ways it did not jibe with the “mood” of many delegates. The point here, however, is not to accuse individuals of malicious intent, nor even to argue that these perceptions of mine and others are in fact accurate. There may indeed be good explanations for why things happened the way they did. But the concrete explanations have not been forthcoming, and on a matter of such importance, fraught with enormous tensions from the start, this lack of clear illumination cannot but be perceived as substantively obfuscating. The Communion deserved better, and at the least some admission of this fact would go some way to mitigating a lingering sense on the part of many ”“ I personally have no opinion on this matter ”” that this particular outcome was more important to some than the integrity of the means by which it was reached. It has left a bitter taste.

As to the outcome itself, I am deeply disappointed. My hope had been that the hard work of the Covenant Design Group, a work that even the Covenant’s detractors admitted had carefully assessed and appropriated the suggestions and critiques from around the Communion, would be allowed by the ACC to move forward to the Provinces for their decision-making.

Read it all.

The Covenant
We had come to Jamaica ready to move forward on the Covenant. The deliberations and decisions of the Council make clear that the ACC wants a covenant. Our disappointment was that we could not get it now. The decision to modify the timetable was by a very slender margin of only three votes. And many people took the middle road position in order to give time to improve the Covenant.

Interventions
Cross-provincial interventions are a serious matter. The Archbishop of Canterbury has given his assurance that the role of the Pastoral Visitors would take care of the need for a listening process for faithful Anglicans alienated from their churches and in a significant number of cases deposed from their orders in North America. Some of us who had previously had significant doubts about the wisdom of these interventions have become aware from those whose provinces have taken this bold step that these interventions were both necessary and justified, and others that they were understandable, as an answer to a distress call. We therefore urge the Archbishop to dispatch Pastoral Visitors immediately who will incorporate into their work a listening process because of the urgency of the situation.

Read it all.