borrowing – debt – interest

Don’t Borrow

Don’t Borrow on July 2, 2011

The latest financial bailout of Greece, announced last week, has once more put off the day of reckoning for the European Union and maybe for the worldwide financial system, but that day is merely postponed, not cancelled. The problem is systemic. If democratic politicians want to be re-elected, they must borrow to pay for the free lunches on which they themselves have made the peoples insist, but the folly for individuals, families or nations of taking out loans upon loans cannot last for ever, and one day it comes to a crashing halt. Such peoples and politicians have today long been on the wrong road, because the decision to heap up loans is ultimately stupid or criminal.

It is stupid if the basic wisdom has been forgotten of three lines of Shakespeare, worth volumes written by professional “economists”:— “Neither a borrower nor a lender be / For loan oft loses both itself and friend / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” In other words a habit of borrowing accustoms one to not “husbanding” or looking after the resources one has. For instance, at least to begin with, money borrowed comes too easily, thus undermining the sense of money’s value and the sense of reality, for instance how hard money can be to earn or eventually to pay back. As for lending, says Polonius (Hamlet, I, 3), not only are loans often not paid back, but also if I have lent to a friend who cannot pay back, he can be too afraid or ashamed to come near me again.

However, not all lenders are stupid. A number of them are criminal, because they know that by lending money at usurious rates of interest they can reduce individuals, families and nations to poverty and slavery – “The borrower is servant” (or slave) “to him that lendeth” (Prov. XXII, 7). Certain credit cards are now paying between 20 and 30% rates of interest, yet the Catholic Church has always severely condemned usury. Usurers are criminals who destroy the fabric of society by impoverishing and enslaving their fellow men, or whole nations.

In modern times usury takes different forms, say the Popes, and this is why the whole world should now be waking up to the fact that it has let itself be enslaved by the cunning money-men, who use their money to master the media and politicians in particular, and thus buy control of an entire society giving itself over to Mammon. The question then arises, how can God have allowed such a state of affairs to come about, and how can he now be meaning to allow the immense suffering that will come with the imminent financial crash and/or World War, both of which will have been engineered by his enemies to give them, as they hope, total world power?

The answer is that he has granted such power to his enemies because their cruelty and inhumanity serve him as a scourge to be laid across the back of a world that has turned away from him, and has preferred to take Mammon for its master – you cannot serve both God and Mammon, says Our Lord (Mt. VI, 24). And God will allow a great deal more suffering in the near future, because “In suffering is learning” (Aeschylus), and in fact only heavy suffering will today be enough to enable any significant number of souls worldwide to learn that their materialism and worship of Mammon are treacherous enemies of their one true interest, the salvation of their eternal souls.

Mother of God, obtain mercy for us poor sinners!

Kyrie eleison.

Stay Awake!

Stay Awake! on April 16, 2011

In a situation of the world so serious that there are even rumours of Japan’s recent peacetime disaster, with its estimated 27,000 people dead, being not an act of God but an act of man (look up HAARP tsunami on the Internet), what can a Catholic do to save his soul? In all truth he cannot do much for the world, but the very least he can do for himself is watch, or stay awake.

It is Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane who puts watching, i.e. keeping our eyes open and not falling asleep, even in front of praying (Mt. XXVI,41). The reason is obvious. If, like Peter, James and John, I do not keep watch (Mt.XXVI,43), I will cease to pray, maybe, as in their case, when Our Lord most needs it. How many Catholics in the 1950’s and 1960’s, especially the clergy, were not watching the signs of the times in Church and world, and so were caught completely on the wrong foot by Vatican II? That is why “Eleison Comments,” as “Letters from the Rector” used to do, are constantly turning on economics and politics, to get Catholics to wake up to their religion and its demands, far outweighed by its promises (I Cor. II,9).

Thus an expert on Wall Street (see JSmineset.com, March 30, 2011) may say, “The financial system is screwed up beyond repair. On top of that there is no desire to repair anything because the wise guys know it is impossible. It is the world that the flushing of Lehman has created. It is not a brave new world” . . . Jim Sinclair says it does not matter how much “funny money,” as one can call it, the central banks go on creating . . .”The damage is done and there is no solution . . . please get physically self-reliant” (his words, my underlining).

Still, even Traditional Catholics are being tempted to doze off, not to say fall asleep. Here are two recent testimonies. The first is from a teacher in a Traditional school:— “I feel awfully alone in the battle, not the battle with external enemies in the world, but the battle inside the Society of St Pius X, which is being waged with such subtlety that nobody seems aware of it. It is the same as it was in the mainstream Church in the 1960’s, the same slow gradual shift in behaviour.”

The second comes from an inside observer of today’s Traditional Catholic scene in the USA:— “ It appears to me that Catholic militancy is declining. I see many Traditional Catholics, especially family fathers, accepting the ways of the world. The fight is no longer important to them. They are happy to have their beautiful Mass on Sunday, but on Monday send their children to public school. Each November they go out and vote for the lesser of two evils, watch (conservative?) Fox News and declare the (conservative?) Republican Party to be the answer to all of the world’s problems. In my humble opinion this lack of militancy is becoming more and more pervasive in the Traditional Catholic world. Are we (the laity) returning to the same set of circumstances that led to Vatican II? Is the Sunday Catholic now the predominant majority in the Traditional movement? I’m afraid that the answer to both of these questions may be, yes.”

For is it not so much easier to give up trying to swim against today’s current, so much cosier to fall into the arms of Sleep? The very least one can do for oneself is throw out that television set.

Kyrie eleison.

Capitalism Unfolding

Capitalism Unfolding on December 18, 2010

Selfishness cannot make a society. Now money represents essentially its owner’s claim upon the services of the rest of his society. If then capitalism be defined, in anything more than just economic terms, as a way of organizing society whereby every citizen is to be left free to make as much capital, i.e. money, as he can and will, then capitalism is riddled with contradiction. It is trying to make a society requiring selflessness out of encouraging everybody to be selfish.

Thus capitalism can only survive for as long as members of a capitalist society still have pre-capitalist values, such as common sense, moderation in the pursuit of money, and respect for the common good. But capitalism as defined above does nothing to promote any such pre-capitalist values. On the contrary, it works against them, as selfishness works against selflessness. Therefore capitalism is a parasite, living off a social body whose pre-capitalist values it works to undermine.

This internal contradiction of a society built upon the pursuit of money is reaching its devastating conclusion in the present state of world finance and the world economy. Since the end of World War II especially, the peoples of the world have more and more sought money to provide the material comforts they now prefer to the spiritual comforts that formerly gave purpose to their lives. Admiring and seeking money, they have been happy to let the money-men take power over their societies. Admired and sought after, the money-men have taken to themselves more and more money and power. After all, what intrinsic brakes do money or power have to limit their own further acquisition? None. The bankers turn into veritable gangsters.

Hence, for instance, the invention 10 or 15 years ago of “derivatives,” financial instruments which make a fortune in fees for the banksters who purvey them, but which act upon the delicate mechanisms of world finance like weapons of mass destruction, because they easily fabricate an unreal world of colossal and unpayable debt. In this destabilized and fraudulent world of unpayable debt, a semblance of order is maintained by one government after another fabricating out of thin air vast quantities of “money” to “pay” the debt, but this process can only end up in an inflation which empties of any usefulness the currency involved. Thus all the world’s paper and digital money – for years it has had no other – is now doomed.

But money is to a society what lubricating oil is to an engine. Without oil, an engine seizes up and is killed dead. Without money in a society, exchange becomes much more difficult, and commerce can be slowed to a standstill. If for any such reason the food-trucks (or lorries) could not run, and food ran short, especially in the big cities, what could a politician do to head off the food riots, and to stop the peasants from coming after him with pitchforks? Start a war!

World War III may not be far off. Lord, have mercy!

Kyrie eleison.

Rampant Reality

Rampant Reality on September 4, 2010

“But, your Excellency, how can you possibly declare (EC 163) that the Lord God is the one true solution for all social problems of a big modern city, such as your friend presented them to you in his own city three weeks ago? What does God have to do with politics or social problems? I always thought He was only concerned with things like religion and spirituality!”

Ah, my dear friend, who is God? Not only did He Himself create the soul of each one of us and the matter out of which our parents put together our bodies, but also He goes on creating them for every moment that they continue and will continue to exist. He is thus closer to each of us human beings than we are to ourselves. So the Church teaches that any offence against our neighbor is first and foremost an offence against God, because He is more deeply and closely within us than we are in ourselves. So whoever offends neighbor, offends more deeply God, and whoever never offends God will not offend his neighbor. If then in the parish and school of the Society of St Pius X (EC 163) parishioners and children learn to put God first and His Ten Commandments, are they not learning to solve all big city problems, between neighbor and neighbor, at their root?

Let us recall the social problems of my friend’s big city. In the outlying suburbs mostly white people are living beyond their means in falsely luxurious mansions. They wish to appear rich, and dream of being rich. Are they not worshipping materialism and Mammon, i.e. money? What is taught on the contrary in the parish? “You cannot worship God and Mammon. It is one or the other” (Mt.VI, 24). In the inner suburbs, mostly non-white people to a large extent neglect their housing, to the despair of city planners, no doubt. But is it not a similar form of materialism to measure the good life or the goodness of souls by the maintenance of one’s housing? Cleanliness may be next to godliness, as the saying goes, but what do the parishioners learn?—”Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added unto you” (Mt.VI, 33). In other words, seek godliness first, and the cleanliness will follow.

Finally in the inner city the city’s industrial life-blood is ebbing away. Why? Is it not capitalism itself that, in pursuit of greater profits by the subordination of industry to finance, has out-sourced American industry? Is it not the putting of money before men that is causing the ever worsening unemployment, the de-populating of the city-centres and the transfer of all power to the money-men who are using that power to transform faster and faster the once proud United States into just one humiliated part of their global police-state?

How could it happen? By the whites turning away from God, resigning (as my friend implied) from their God-given mission to lead the world to Him, and by their worshipping Mammon instead as the supreme reality. Long may the little parish and school of the Society of St. Pius X, outside the city, make the supremacy of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, rampant!

Kyrie eleison.

Wasteland Remedies – II

Wasteland Remedies – II on August 14, 2010

Why are modern ‘universities’ veritable dustbins or trash-cans of ‘democracy’? Because in a ‘democracy’ everybody must be equal, nobody may appear to be superior. But having a Degree makes someone superior. So everybody must have a Degree. But by no means all boys have the brains or bookishness to obtain a Degree. Therefore ‘universities’ will have to be dumbed down, and ‘Degrees’ extended to all kinds of dumb subjects, until every boy can get a ‘Degree,’ even if it will hardly be worth the paper it is written on. Today’s ‘university’ system is “totally bogus,” says an American friend and Professor, who knows it from the inside.

What is at the root of this modern stupidity? Once again, godlessness. All souls are absolutely equal before God, for eternity, before his judgment seat at death, which is all that matters, but they are in all respects unequal before men, for this short life, in human society. This is because God gives out his gifts very unequally, so that all men will be interdependent and have to look after one another. Accordingly a merely human ‘Degree’ as such makes anybody superior not before God, but only before foolish men who leave God out of account. Parents who take God into account will therefore discount ‘democracy,’ ‘equality,’ ‘universities’ and ‘Degrees’.

Their prime concern will be to form their boys in reality, so that they can get to the real Heaven of the real God, paying little attention to the unreality of a world falling in ruins all around them. First question for parents: what gifts did God give to this boy of ours, quite different even from our other boys? What does he incline to? God’s gifts to him will point to God’s will for him. Obviously more boys are gifted for hands-on work than for books. Moreover G.K.Chesterton once interestingly said that to seek mastery in any material domain, e.g. wood or metal, is an apprenticeship in reality. Then by all means let a boy go to a technical college and learn a real skill to become, for instance, a good carpenter or plumber or electrician or mechanic. Or has the boy an uncle with a farm? Send him there. Handling animals is a major school in reality!

To learn that reality let him shun a ‘Degree’. Today’s employers may still be requiring a ‘Degree,’ but tomorrow’s will soon be saying, “You spent three years wasting your parents’ money or running up a heavy debt, just to learn how to drink and throw frisbees and fool around with the girls? You don’t interest me!” On the contrary, if in addition to a practical skill a boy has learned at home honesty and hard work, he will be able to make more than just an honest living. His services will be much in demand in a world collapsing in the ruin of unreal values.

As for girls, let them learn the home realities of all time, like sewing, cooking, canning, music, the arts, in brief everything that lends delight to home life, but especially cooking. The world may fall in ruins, it may do whatever it likes, but the way to a man’s heart will still be going through his stomach. It is a man speaking!

Kyrie eleison.

Mane, Thecel . . .

Mane, Thecel . . . on February 13, 2010

Should a Catholic bishop leave to one side matters of economics on the grounds that he should keep to matters of religion? By no means! What a narrow view of religion one must take in order not to see that economics, or the art of managing the material goods necessary for life, is entirely governed by the view one takes of life, and the view one takes of life depends on religion. For how can religion (or its lack) be adequately understood except as the total view of life by which a man binds himself (or refuses to be bound) to the God who gave and gives him his life?

If multitudes of men today think that economics have nothing to do with God, it is only because beforehand they think that he is either non-existent or insignificant. And supposing that there is an after-life, think they, then Hell is either non-existent (“We all go to Heaven”) or unimportant (“At least all my friends will be there,” they joke). Upon which presuppositions follow the shift from the economics of yesterday, economics of thrift, to those of today, spendthrift economics.

Yesterday, do not spend more than you earn. Save, and do not borrow, to invest. Do not solve debt with more debt. Today, it is patriotic to spend. Everybody will be prosperous if you spend regardless of what you earn. Do not save, because idle money benefits nobody. By all means borrow to make profitable investments. And if your debts turn sour, borrow more to get out of them.

These eat-drink-and-be-merry economics were intellectualised in particular by the highly influential British economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), who once famously said, “In the end we all die.” By the 1970’s President Nixon (1913–1994) was saying, “We are all Keynesians now.” And since the 1970’s the Keynesian build-up has been continuous all the way to the 2000’s orgy of lending, borrowing and spending, made possible only by the people’s having given up on the old common sense of not spending more than you earn, and of shunning debt – “Owe no man anything but to love one another,” says the Word of God (Rom. XIII, 8), and “The borrower is servant to him that lendeth” (Prov. XXII, 7).

Right now the world is enslaving itself to the money-men, the orgy is collapsing, and the collapse is by no means over. Unemployment is far higher than the politicians can afford to admit, yet still they garner votes by promising jobs and free lunches for the people. The politicians have encouraged these unreal expectations by which they rise to power but on which they will not be able to deliver. The people are about to rise up, are rising up, in anger. The politicians will have to start foreign wars to take the people’s mind off domestic troubles. War is around the corner, to be followed, if God permits, by the usurers’ World Government. All because the people thought that God had nothing to do with life, and life nothing to do with God.

But see Daniel V, 5–6 and 24–28! The Lord God has our number (“Mane”), we have been weighed in his balance and found wanting (“Thecel”), our fun-land is over (“Phares”). It remains for us to take our medicine.

Kyrie eleison.