A year ago, Long Island Judge Jeffrey Spinner concluded that a mortgage company’s paperwork in a foreclosure case was so flawed and its behavior in negotiations with the borrower so “repugnant” that he erased the family’s $292,500 debt and gave the house back for free.

The judgment in favor of the homeowner, Diane Yano-Horoski, which is being appealed, has alarmed the nation’s biggest lenders, who say it could establish a dramatic new legal precedent and roil the nation’s foreclosure system.

It is not the only case that has big banks worried. Spinner and some of colleagues in the New York City area estimate they are dismissing 20 to 50 percent of foreclosure cases on the basis of sloppy or fraudulent paperwork filed by lenders.

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Robert H. Frank of Cornell University, Adam Seth Levine of Vanderbilt University, and Oege Dijk of the European University Institute recently wrote a fascinating paper suggesting that inequality leads to more financial distress. They looked at census data for the 50 states and the 100 most populous counties in America, and found that places where inequality increased the most also endured the greatest surges in bankruptcies.

Here’s their explanation: When inequality rises, the richest rake in their winnings and buy even bigger mansions and fancier cars. Those a notch below then try to catch up, and end up depleting their savings or taking on more debt, making a financial crisis more likely.

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A bishop who is converting to Rome has likened the Church of England to a ”˜coffee chain going out of business’.

The Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, said there were signs the Church was losing a sense of where it came from.

He said: ”˜If Costa Coffee, every time you went to a branch, did something different and you didn’t know what the product was, they would go out of business.

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The threat from al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen is growing, but the U.S. military has few quick options to respond to the increasing danger, analysts say.

Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is reluctant to be viewed as being dependent on the United States, fearful that it will strengthen his critics, according to analysts.

“Ali Abdullah Saleh has made it clear on several occasions that he does not want any form of intervention or occupation,” said Bob Sharp, a professor at the Pentagon-funded Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. “He is managing huge problems in the country.”

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The U.S.-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki made what looks to be his most threatening message yet: calling on Muslims to kill Americans at will, because it is “either us or them.”

The video posted on extremist websites Monday may be Awlaki’s attempt to capitalize on his recent notoriety. Awlaki, who the United States believes is in Yemen, is accused by Yemen of playing a role in the sending of bombs through the mail in packages addressed to Chicago.

“I would think he would see his growing prominence as something he should exploit,” said Robert Grenier, the former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center.

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Responding to today’s announcement, the Rt Revd Jonathan Gledhill, Bishop of Lichfield, said: “I am very sorry to hear that Bishop Andrew Burnham is leaving us. As our local ”˜flying bishop’ we have worked together well and he has always been frank and courteous. We have agreed on most things and I have received much from him. He has had a huge territory to cover from the South West of England to the North West midlands and has looked after his churches well. I wish him well as he transfers to the Roman Catholic Church. We have increasingly good relationships with Catholics here so our loss will be their gain.”

In words designed to reassure those traditionalist congregations who had petitioned for alternative episcopal oversight, he added: “The Archbishop of Canterbury is moving immediately to appoint fresh ”˜flying bishops’ and there will be no gap in pastoral care for those churches in our Diocese who have looked to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet. I am going to arrange a meeting in January for all who are anxious about the possibility of women bishops and wish to ask my colleagues and me about the future.

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Last week we talked about the first stage of the U.S. fiscal crisis: the slow erosion of long-term growth because of mounting government debt. This phenomenon arises from a straightforward application of conventional supply-side economics. Government borrowing absorbs private saving that would otherwise be used for capital formation. The diminished capital stock reduces productivity, growth, and competitiveness.

This week we look at stage two: a rapid economic meltdown precipitated by an untamable accumulation of government debt. Stage two is much more difficult to understand than stage one. Government debt in distress is not something that gets much attention from economists who study developed countries. It’s not something they were taught when they went to economics school. So as the possibility of a crisis has become more real, they are trying out a lot of new ideas.

One nice thing about this otherwise gloomy state of affairs is that politics has not yet infected the economics. The research that you see is not by economists who are pushing a partisan agenda, but by people who are genuinely concerned that the economy may be running itself off a cliff.

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A Muslim advocacy group filed suit Thursday (Nov. 4) in Oklahoma, saying a just-passed amendment forbidding judicial use of Islamic law is unconstitutional.

The suit, filed by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, seeks a federal district court’s order to prevent board of elections officials from enacting the constitutional amendment. Seventy percent of Oklahoma voters Tuesday approved State Question 755, which bans the use of Shariah law in state courts.

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How did the pastor of a church of 30 to 50 congregants, someone who was already known locally as a publicity-hungry crank, become so “relevant” and “culture-shaping” that President Obama, General Petraeus, and nearly every Christian leader imaginable felt the need to weigh in?

Mostly because Jones took advantage of an impoverished media environment that values outrage and eyeballs above all else. Publications that have not been able to con-vince their online readers to pay for articles must instead find as many people as possible to read them for free. The more eyeballs, the more ad impressions, the more revenue. Pageviews have become the metric most synonymous with success in our media landscape.

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O Thou who sittest on the throne, making all things new: Renew our faith, and hope, and love. Renew our wills, that we may serve thee more gladly and watchfully than ever; renew our delight in thy Word and thy worship; renew our joy in thee; renew our longing that all may know thee; renew our desires and labours to serve others; that so we may walk in the light of thy love and in the power of thy Spirit, now and for evermore.

And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who is seated on the throne, saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And from the throne came a voice crying, “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great.” Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready….

Revelation 19:4-7

We start tonight and go through Wednesday midday.

Even the poorest families in Afghanistan have matches and cooking fuel. The combination usually sustains life. But it also can be the makings of a horrifying escape: from poverty, from forced marriages, from the abuse and despondency that can be the fate of Afghan women.

The night before she burned herself, Gul Zada took her children to her sister’s for a family party. All seemed well. Later it emerged that she had not brought a present, and a relative had chided her for it, said her son Juma Gul.

This small thing apparently broke her. Ms. Zada, who was 45, the mother of six children and who earned pitiably little cleaning houses, ended up with burns on nearly 60 percent of her body at the Herat burn hospital. Survival is difficult even at 40 percent.

“She was burned from head to toe,” her son remembers.

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It is undeniable that we are on the path to fiscal collapse. This decline will occur in two stages. First there is the decay as the swelling national debt wears away the economy’s foundations and commits more and more future income to foreign creditors. We are already in stage one.

In stage two a lethal combination of phenomena arises in quick succession: greater default risk, looming inflation, higher interest rates, declining growth, financial market instability, and an acceleration of government borrowing. They feed on each other. The economy heads on a downward spiral. Between stage one and stage two there is a tipping point. Experts know it will come, but nobody wants to predict when. (See below.) This article is about the slow economic decline of stage one. Next week part 2 will describe the hell of a full-blown fiscal collapse.

There is no question economics has failed us. The old paradigms have been made obsolete by the hard reality of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and soaring government debt. But some ideas can be salvaged from the wreckage.

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The calls for changes in the law led to a public statement by Melbourne’s archbishop, Denis Hart, dated Oct. 7. The renewed push in Victoria and other parts of Australia to allow assisted suicide is misplaced compassion, he explained.

“Euthanasia and assisted suicide are the opposite of care and represent the abandonment of older and dying persons,” he stated.

As medical technology advances, and we have greater numbers of elderly people, they should not be looked upon as a problem for society, Archbishop Hart insisted. Instead we should see our care of the elderly: “as repayment of a debt of gratitude, as a part of a culture of love and care.”

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After giving a lecture on the meaning of heresy throughout history, Dr Williams was asked whether there was a future for the Anglican Communion, which is estimated to have around 80 million members in 44 regional and national member churches.

Addressing an audience at Telford’s International Centre in Shropshire, Dr Williams replied: “I do see the Communion as worth working for because I believe that a model of real international unity by consent is a very precious gift to the Christian world at large.

“That’s what I want to work for.”

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Pope Benedict XVI has summoned cardinals from around the world to a day-long summit in Rome next week on the clerical sex abuse scandal and other issues facing the Catholic Church, the Vatican said Monday.

The Vatican called the session “a day of reflection and prayer” that also will include discussions on threats to religious freedom, relations with other religions and procedures for disaffected Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. Five Church of England bishops announced Monday they were converting to Catholicism following Benedict’s invitation to disaffected Anglicans.

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Yes.

Taken together, the mortgage and non-mortgage series reported here indicate a change in consumer behavior other than delinquency and default. While borrowing contributed an annual average of about $330 billion to consumers’ cash flow between 2000 and 2007, by 2009 consumers reduced their cash flow by $150 billion to reduce these debts. This represents a $500 billion change in cash flow in just two years.

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…a new analysis of Census data being released Monday by the Commerce Department…found that the percentage of households that connect to the Internet using broadband grew to 63.5 percent in 2009 from 9.2 percent in 2001, reflecting increases across nearly all demographics.

The report ”” prepared by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Economics and Statistics Administration ”” is based on a Census survey of about 54,000 households conducted in October 2009….

Among the major findings:
Ӣ 94.1 percent of households with income exceeding $100,000 subscribed to broadband in 2009, compared with 35.8 percent of households with income of less than $25,000.
Ӣ 84.5 percent of households with at least one college degree subscribed to broadband last year, compared with 28.8 percent of households without a high school degree.

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Washington and Delhi’s relationship will be one of the century’s defining partnerships, President Barack Obama and Indian PM Manmohan Singh have said.

On a visit to Delhi, Mr Obama said India was a world power, and both countries would work together to promote stability and prosperity.

In a speech to parliament later, he said he would address Delhi’s bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat.

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As news of his retirement made headlines around the globe, Bishop V. Gene Robinson paid a quiet visit to a small parish in Wolfeboro, N.H., yesterday, leading services for a vacationing rector and meeting with the church board, but only briefly mentioning that he was stepping down as leader of the state’s Episcopal Diocese.

Friends and parishioners say it was typical Robinson, who remained the approachable, empathetic, and motivated spiritual leader that many in the state know simply as Gene, even as he became an international figure at the center of a rift in the Anglican Communion and a target for death threats which, he acknowledged in a speech Saturday, have exacted a price.

“The fact is, the last seven years have taken their toll on me, my family, and you,’’ Robinson, 63, told the annual convention of his diocese, disclosing that he will step down in January 2013 after nearly a decade as bishop, nearly seven years shy of the mandatory 72-year-old retirement age. “Death threats, and the now-worldwide controversy surrounding your election of me as bishop, have been a constant strain, not just on me, but on my beloved husband, Mark, who has faithfully stood with me every minute of the last seven years.’’

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Unlike some Episcopal meetings, the Toledo gathering should slip under the media radar with no controversial issues on the agenda.

A group of about 30 clergy and lay delegates from northwest Ohio, bearing 93-page handbooks filled with pie charts and proposals, met last week in the basement cafeteria of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in West Toledo to discuss plans for the convention on Friday and Saturday.

“We’re beginning the process to get ready for convention. I’m not going to pretend to get you ready in an hour,” said the Rev. Bradford Purdom III, the Cleveland-based canon for congregations.

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[Brian] Wilson has created some controversy with the cross-armed salute he offers up at the rear of the mound after every save. The gesture has been taken by some opposing players as a sign of disrespect, and Casey Blake of the Los Angeles Dodgers even went so far as to mimic it on the bench last year after hitting a home run off him.

Wilson said the gesture is a salute to his religious faith ”” he became a devout Christian four years ago ”” and to his father, Mike, who made his career in the Air Force and who died when Wilson was 17 and attending high school in Londonderry, N.H.

“He taught me that you don’t get anything for free,” Wilson said of his father. “You have to work for it. Nothing ever comes easy. That’s the way I’ve been, and that’s the way this team has been. We had to fly back to Philly” for the clinching game of the N.L.C.S. “We had to win in Atlanta in Game 4. It had to come down to the last day of the season. That’s our baseball team. That’s me.”

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The head of the Anglican Church has made an outspoken intervention in the debate on welfare reform, criticising plans to force the long-term unemployed into four-week work placements.

Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, said on Sunday that ministers, by putting such pressure on those out of work, could accentuate “a sort of downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair”.

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Enlarge our hearts, O God, that we may love thee more and more; kindle our souls that we may praise thee aright; and so order our thoughts, words, and deeds that we may serve thee and glorify thee for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Turn again, O God of hosts! Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock which thy right hand planted.

–Psalm 80:14-15

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said today that the provision of mental health services in the countryside must not be cut under the current Government Comprehensive Spending Review. He said this was his greatest concern when looking at the possible shrinkage of services in the rural communities.

He described mental health problems in rural areas as “a huge problem”, where the isolation and hidden depravation are significant problems. Describing the burden placed on voluntary support services as already extreme, he said this provision must remain.

Dr Williams also spoke of the ‘opportunity and challenge’ for the Church to get across to those driving the Big Society what is already happening in the countryside through the rural church and community groups.

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