Roman Polanski and Ethics 101

Anne Farley Rolle alerts me to this article:

'Father Polanski Would Go to Jail' Says Jesuit

This whole affair makes a perfect illustration for my ethics class when we study cultural relativism:

1) abuse is wrong if it occurs within a community for which it is wrong. (i.e., priests in the Catholic church are blameworthy for abusing young boys).

2) Child abuse is permissible if it occurs within a community that has not specifically defined it as wrong. (i.e, it is okay for Roman Polanski to commit statutory rape, because he is an Artist).

It is interesting that this is the same reasoning that passes in some discussions of homosexual activity:

a) homosexual activity is wrong if it is performed by a heterosexual.

b) homosexual activity is permissible if it is performed by a homosexual.

Overheard

"Oregon is California's Canada, and Washington's Mexico."

Jim Hawkins on Food Choices

here

Hilarious!

The Economic Insulin Pump

Why do I keep seeing the market in terms of a brittle diabetic? We've been gorging on "foods" with high financial glycemic levels and going without our insulin for too long. No wonder we crashed.

Now we've gotten a continuous insulin pump to regulate our financial glucose levels; but having to wear that unit and tube is pretty uncomfortable and many resent the limitations it places on their activities. No more swimming in the deep waters of derivatives!

Yet, if we refuse to monitor our sugars we will wind up dead.

No wonder economics is called the dismal science.

Meditation for Worship: Sept. 20, 2009

James 3:13-18

Jeremiah 11:18-20

Mark 9:30-37

Psalm 54


Lord,

I woke up yesterday to the sound of gentle rain,
Delicately dancing upon the oak leaves outside our window,
Tumbling tenderly to the waiting earth below,
And I thought of you.
You, my gentle Savior,
Who daily sustains me,
Sometimes so quietly and with such forbearance
That I confess I take You for granted.
Forgive me.

And yet this gentleness of Yours is not weakness, or nonchalance, or cowardice.
Oh no--it is power under perfect control.

At any moment You could tear the heavens open with lightning
And Your righteousness could explode in thunderous judgment
And we would be submerged, drowned by Your holiness.

But You contain yourself.
And meet us not as cataract but as Child;
Mary’s little Lamb,
the Lamb of God.

O Lord,
May Your Wisdom continue to sprinkle me
With showers of mercy,
taming me and tempering me,
that I might eventually become
gentle, pure and peaceable,
like You.

Minsky Moments and Ponzi Propensities

There's a lot of interest in an obscure fellow named Hyman Minsky these days. Witness the provocative article from the Boston Globe: "Why Capitalism Fails," and this one from The Economist:

STABLE economies sow the seeds of their own destruction. That sounds like Karl Marx but it is the basic insight of Hyman Minsky, an economist of the mid-20th century whose reputation is being revived. Minsky argued that the financial system played a big role in exaggerating the economic cycle, one that was understated by conventional theory.

Investors, banks, companies and consumers all tend to be guilty of the sin of extrapolation; they assume the future will be like the recent past. After several years of steadily growing output and low inflation, people develop a misguided confidence that such benign conditions will continue. They are thus happy to borrow, and lend, more. As they do, the riskiness of the system steadily increases.

Minsky divided the process into three phases. In the first, investors take on little enough debt that they have no trouble meeting their capital and interest payments. In the second, they stretch their finances so they can only afford the interest. In the third, or Ponzi, phase they take on debt levels that require rising prices to be safely financed; the homebuyers who took on 125% mortgages at the peak of the property boom were a classic example.

When markets reach this fantasy land, a small change in the fundamentals or in investor attitudes can be enough to cause the system to unravel. Once prices start to drop, borrowers start to default on their loans, or seek to sell their assets, causing prices to fall further.

The cost of capitalism, to use the title of a new book* that draws heavily on Minsky’s work, is first, that financial bubbles are created and second, that governments are forced to rescue the sector when those bubbles pop. Those who believe blindly in free markets are thus mistaken, in the view of Bob Barbera, a Wall Street economist and the book’s author.

Government action is inevitable. In conventional industries, the demise of companies leads to “creative destruction” with capital being reallocated to more productive areas. But in banking and finance, a crisis leads to “deflationary destruction” as capital is eliminated. Businesses, investors and consumers lose confidence; borrowers are unable to repay their lenders, who suffer as well.

But by stepping in to rescue markets when they wobble, central bankers create asymmetric risk. Hence Mr Barbera rejects the idea, popular in the era of Alan Greenspan, that central banks should do nothing to burst asset bubbles.

Instead, he suggests that central banks should build the level of corporate-bond spreads into their models. When spreads are low, risk appetites are high, as they were in 2005-06. That should lead central banks to tighten monetary policy. When spreads are high, they should ease.

Whether that would have stopped the housing bubble is open to question. The Federal Reserve did indeed raise rates in 2005-06, albeit in a steady and unthreatening manner. Nevertheless, the current crisis suggests that monetary and fiscal policy cannot be driven exclusively by economic fundamentals such as inflation and unemployment. When interest rates are low, consumers and businesses do not just borrow money; they borrow money to buy assets, setting up a feedback loop that can eventually lead to a bubble. When such a bubble is inflating, government revenues (in the form of taxes on capital gains, bonuses, corporate profits and property sales) tend to be strong. As governments are now discovering, such revenues collapse very quickly when the bubble bursts.

But it is easy to get carried away during a boom; the strength of financial markets tends to be seen as a signal that the economy is soundly based. Those who work in the financial system are assumed to be the best and the brightest. Even the government seems to be in their thrall.

In a recent article, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, points out the parallels between emerging markets, where governments are dominated by the economic elite, and America, where officials glide easily between Wall Street and the Treasury. What is good for Goldman Sachs might turn out to be good for America, but it might be best if the government could make an independent judgment. If we accept Minsky’s idea that financial markets are not always right, then we might be willing occasionally to act against Wall Street’s interests, however loudly bankers would complain.

Here's an even more succinct statement of Minsky's thought. Brian Chin at the Seattle PI blog explains the concept of a "Minsky moment: "

At its core, the Minsky view was straightforward: When times are good, investors take on risk; the longer times stay good, the more risk they take on, until they've taken on too much. Eventually, they reach a point where the cash generated by their assets no longer is sufficient to pay off the mountains of debt they took on to acquire them. Losses on such speculative assets prompt lenders to call in their loans. "This is likely to lead to a collapse of asset values," Mr. Minsky wrote.

When investors are forced to sell even their less-speculative positions to make good on their loans, markets spiral lower and create a severe demand for cash [that can force central bankers to lend a hand]. At that point, the Minsky moment has arrived.

The Psalmist admonishes us, "Don't put your trust in horses." Minsky might be seen as adding this postscript: "And don't put your trust in the market, either." Neither Moloch nor Baal are God.

PhilCon

Tomorrow is PhilCon! That's what our kids call the philosophy conferences we go to...gently mocking them, after "WindyCon", "Capricon", "LepreCon" and "TusCon", among others.
.

We are going to attend "My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible." Here is the program.

Being at these things is the closest thing I know to being at Athens with Plato and Aristotle or Nicea with Eusebius and Athanasius (in terms of the intellectual discussion). I won't understand everything but I'm eager to listen, ask my friends questions, and learn all I can!

Some people have the Superbowl, some people have the Academy Awards...and some people have PhilCons!

Medical Bankruptcies: Don't get sick

Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills.

Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.

[Himmelstein, D, E., et al, “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study, American Journal of Medicine, May 2009.]

I know there are statistics, and then there are #(*#% statistics. I'd be interested in hearing from someone if these might be unreliable, and if so, what might be more accurate information.

SBC Pastor Prays for Obama's Death

Just what we need: more prayers for God to kill people. Father forgive him for he knows not what he says and does.



via Liz Mosbo VerHage
from the Associated Baptist Press

Drake, former SBC officer, says he's praying for Obama to die
By Bob Allen
Wednesday, June 03, 2009

A former SBC vice president told Fox News Radio's Alan Colmes he is praying 'imprecatory prayer' on President Obama.

NEW YORK (ABP) -- A former Southern Baptist Convention officer who on June 2 called the death of abortion provider George Tiller an answer to prayer said later in the day he is also praying "imprecatory prayer" against President Obama.

Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and former running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes, said June 2 on Fox News Radio he didn't understand why people were upset with his comments quoted by Associated Baptist Press from a webcast of his daily radio talk show.

"Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don't like that, they need to talk to God," Drake told syndicated talk-show host Alan Colmes. "God said it, I didn't. I was just agreeing with God."

Asked if there are others for whom Drake is praying "imprecatory prayer," Drake hesitated before answering that there are several. "The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama," he said.

Later in the interview, Colmes returned to Drake's answer to make sure he heard him right.

"Are you praying for his death?" Colmes asked.

"Yes," Drake replied.

"So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States?"

"Yes."

Colmes asked Drake if he was concerned that by saying that he might be placed on a Secret Service or FBI watch list, and if he believed it appropriate to talk or pray that way.

"I think it's appropriate to pray the Word of God," Drake said. "I'm not saying anything. What I am doing is repeating what God is saying, and if that puts me on somebody's list, then I'll just have to be on their list."

"You would like for the president of the United States to die?" Colmes asked once more.

"If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that's correct."

Most of the half-hour interview on "The Alan Colmes Show" is premium programming available by paid subscription, but a five-minute clip appeared as a "top video" on the Fox News Radio website.

Drake said he didn't pray for Tiller to be murdered -- only that God would take his life by some method -- but that he "absolutely" believed that God wanted the doctor dead.

"I believe the whole Bible, Alan," he explained. "I don't just preach part of it. I don't just preach the soft, fuzzy, warm stuff where we're supposed to be nice to everybody. I preach the whole Bible."

Part of the Bible, Drake claimed, is imprecatory prayer -- words of judgment in the Psalms prayed back to God -- a practice he said the church has lost

Drake fielded calls from a few listeners, including one identifying himself as a lifelong Southern Baptist who said he was saddened to hear a minister would pray for someone to die.

"This whole concept that we're always to pray little, nice, soft, fluffy, prayers -- that we're not to pray imprecatory prayer -- has been something that just, in all honesty, that Southern Baptists have lost, and we need to regain imprecatory prayer," Drake said. "It is in the Bible, and we are proud to say as Southern Baptists that we believe the Book. You've got to believe the whole Book, brother, or you don't believe any of it."

Asked if he thinks there might be other people praying imprecatory prayers for him that might be successful, Drake said, "Well, that's certainly possible, but that's in God's hands, not in mine."

Asked if he claimed to know God's will, Drake replied: "In some cases I do. Not in all cases. I know this, that if I do die right now, I'll go to heaven when I die because I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That's why I'll go to heaven and not to hell. And the reason George Tiller went to hell when he died was not because he killed babies, as terrible as that was. If he went to hell, and I think he did -- that's God's judgment and not mine -- but if he did go to hell it's because he did not accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior."

Drake said he did not believe Tiller's accused killer is a pro-life Christian.

"I'm of the opinion -- and now everybody's going to say 'There goes Wiley down the conspiracy-theory road,' I'm of the opinion that somebody in the Obama camp had this guy killed."

"Who benefits the most from this man killing a doctor?" Drake asked. "We certainly don't. Pro-life people certainly don't. It hurts us. It damages us, but Obama will indeed advance it. This will be one of those crises to take advantage of, and he's already done that."

Drake said he had no evidence and admitted his opinion for now is "pure speculation."

"Everybody said [Lee Harvey] Oswald was a lone gunman, et cetera, et cetera, too," he said. "But I think we're going to find there was somebody else involved."

Drake said Tiller's murder would be a setback for pro-life Christians seeking to end abortion by legal and proper means. He said he also expects to see answers to other imprecatory prayers in the days ahead.

"God says very clearly in his Word that we are to continue to pray and he will answer our prayers," Drake said.

Sing Oldham, vice president for convention relations with the SBC Executive Committee, was unavailable for comment until late on May 4.

He said that while Drake served one year as second vice president of the SBC, he is not now nor has ever been a spokesman for the convention.

"Mr. Drake does not represent Southern Baptist actions, resolutions, or positions in his interpretation and application of 'imprecatory prayers,'" Oldham said. "Any comments made by Wiley Drake on this subject represent his personal views, not those of the Convention."

Oldham said most Baptists view the imprecatory prayers found in the Psalms as private, heartfelt conversations between oppressed people and God, and reflect confidence that God will eventually vindicate the innocent. He said they generally close with a conscious decision not to bear malice and leave final judgment up to God.

"I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of Southern Baptists reject any call to pray imprecatory prayers of death over any individual," he said.

It's nice Pastor Drake believes he is "locked in" to heaven, but he gives me yet another reason why I find it better news for Christ's righteousness to be imparted, rather than imputed to us.

Pioneers and Trail Blazers

Via Brad:

Glocalnet has a valuable discussion entitled "Pioneers: Building Blocks for the Future." Here's my two cents:

Not always-- but sometimes-- people are pioneers because constant movement and activity keeps them from facing deeper issues.(The Medievals recognized this as evidence of a spiritual condition called "acedia"). It is important for pioneers to understand their motiviations. Are they blazing trails because they are on a quest for something yet to be revealed, or are they running away from something? Are they being drawn by something up ahead or are they being chased by something from behind?

I live in the Northwest, where loggers come from pioneer stock. Sometimes when land is cleared it is prone to erosion and landslides, and valuable natural habitats are lost. Pioneers have to be careful where they swing their axes,so the spotted owls, salmon and steelhead aren't driven to extinction. They need to be sure there are some settlers who are following them to cultivate the land, so that it won't wash away.

The best trail blazers are conscious of their own souls, their environment, and those who might follow in their footsteps.

Monergism on Eastern Orthodoxy

Sometimes all you can do is laugh, otherwise things are too painful.

Following a long list of purported errors, here's what the good folks at Monergism have determined (pun intended!) about our brothers and sisters who are Eastern Orthodox :

"We can only conclude that Eastern Orthodoxy is an inconsistent, unbiblical substitute for a Christ-centered Biblical Christianity."

The ultimate irony is this judgment:

"EOC unapologeticly hold that they are the one true church of Christ on earth, which alone has guarded right belief and true worship in absolute identity and unbroken succession with the apostolic church. In other words, Evangelicals have lapsed from the true faith into error, if not outright heresy, according to Orthodox believers. The salvation of non-Orthodox is, therefore, in question."

How offensive it must be for the Monergists to be treated the way they treat others!

Modernism is characterized by its demand for certainty and its belief that the present is always preferable to the past. It is also preoccupied with discursive reason, laws and formulae. From what I can tell, the Reformed Christianity espoused at this site is doing its best to live up to its modernist DNA. If only the Monergists could explain to me why modernism is the sole way to be Christ-centered, Biblical Christians!

Είπε ο γάιδαρος τον πετεινό κεφάλα
("The donkey called the rooster a fathead.")