The Humiliation of the Emperor Valerian by the Persian King Sapor by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1521
Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Interesting stuff from Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia Univ. and Nigel Farage.
Sorry baseball fans -- but as I've often said -- "sadly, some things are more important than baseball".
Sorry baseball fans -- but as I've often said -- "sadly, some things are more important than baseball".
Jeff Sachs: The Pathological Environment on Wall Street - From the Philadelphia Federal Reserve on 17 April 2013
"I believe we have a crisis of values that is extremely deep, because the regulations and the legal structured need reform. But I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now. I'm going to put it very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I'm talking about the human interactions that I have. I've not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably.
"They have gamed the system to a remarkable extent and they have a docile President, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can't find its voice. It's terrified of these companies."
"We have a corrupt politics to the core, I'm afraid to say. And both parties are up to their necks in this. It's nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. It really doesn't have anything to do with right wing or left wing, by the way. The corruption, as far as I can see is everywhere. But what it has led to is this sense of impunity that is really stunning and you feel it at the individual level right now."
"I have waited for 5 years now to see one figure on Wall Street speak in a moral language ... and I've not seen it once. And that is shocking to me. And if they won't, I've waited for a judge...for our president...for somebody...and it hasn't happened. And, by the way, it's not going to happen any time soon, it seems."
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Fortunately, on the same day I came across this politician speaking out, albeit from across the pond in Europe. Pity that we don't have politicians with a strong enough spine to speak the uncomfortable truth about the sad state of affairs.
Nigel Farage, on the sad state of affairs going on in Europe. Coming soon to Amerika.
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Via Jesse's Cafe Americain, Professor Jeff Sachs speaking to a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, with regard to Hank Paulson, Goldman Sachs, and their ilk:
"I believe we have a crisis of values that is extremely deep, because the regulations and the legal structure need reform. But I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now. I'm going to put it very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I'm talking about the human interactions that I have. I've not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably.
These people are out to make billions of dollars and nothing should stop them from that. They have no responsibility to pay taxes, they have no responsibility to their clients, they have no responsibility to people... counterparties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control, in a quite literal sense. And they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent and they have a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can't find its voice. It's terrified of these companies.
If you look at the campaign contributions, which I happened to do yesterday for another purpose, the financial markets are the number one campaign contributors in the U.S. system now. We have a corrupt politics to the core, I'm afraid to say... both parties are up to their necks in this.
... But what it's led to is this sense of impunity that is really stunning and you feel it on the individual level right now. And it's very very unhealthy, I have waited for four years... five years now to see one figure on Wall Street speak in a moral language. And I've have not seen it once. And that is shocking to me. And if they won't, I've waited for a judge, for our president, for somebody, and it hasn't happened. And by the way it's not gonna happen any time soon, it seems."
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This is the guy who asked the question at the 12:00 minute mark of the Sachs video. Good question
... and one of his articles.
Dennis Peacocke comments on 5 major wrong decisions the USA has made
Liberalism is dead...the reality of human corruption killed it. The idea of "good" men leading mankind into a peaceful and affluent future by simply redistributing wealth and letting each person do his own thing, was doomed from the start. Outside of Christ, the sin nature of man will always compel him to construct fairy tale worlds of reality which ignore God and glorify man. However, such dreams invariably lead to cultural dead ends, and such is the place where we find ourselves today.
Wallowing in aborted babies, sexual diseases, budget deficits, and international terrorism-the results of having cast off our Christian heritage-we may finally be realizing that we are at a point where we must choose between two options. We can either continue to pile up human despair into an ever greater monument to the false god of "human freedom," or we can turn around and retrace our steps to where we made our worst choices. Of course, choosing the latter is humbling since it means admitting we are wrong, and that we cannot survive without obedience to the laws of an absolute God. We have come to the end of the road and are now faced with a choice - humble repentance or societal collapse.
Five Wrong Turns
As I see it, we made at least five major wrong turns along the way. We need to repent for these deviations and pray that the Lord's judgment on us will be merciful.
1. As a nation, we lost our belief in any absolutes.
When we discarded the scriptures for being "too intellectually and sexually confining" and instead put our faith in science and man's unending progress, we were destined for disaster. Confusion first set in when seminarians challenged the Bible's inerrancy, and preachers indicated that modern times required us to view man in a new way-a way which took into account his complexities and gently pushed aside the "old fashioned" concept of personal sin. In a relativistic society, the worst thing you can do is hold absolute convictions about anything or anybody. What has resulted is a public philosophy of humanism that trusts man in general, but is powerless to trust him in particular. Man's behavior becomes unpredictable because his values are relative. The irony of humanism is that the more it promotes the supremacy of man, the more it reveals how untrustworthy his behavior is. A society's divorce rate will always tell you how much its citizens trust each other, and how relative their values and commitments are.
2. As a nation, we lost our belief in cause and effect.
Medical specialists in the transmission of AIDS told a group of homosexual leaders in Seattle that the only cure they could offer was for homosexuals to change their sexual preferences. The indignant response was one of, "There's got to be another way!" This is a perfect example of where we are. If we don't like the consequences of something we're doing, we steadfastly refuse to stop doing it if it means cutting across our personal convenience and pleasure needs.
And what has contributed to this distorted perception? A large amount of the blame must go to the preachers who have twisted and turned the gospel of Christ into a gospel of personal convenience where God serves us and is dedicated to making man happy rather than holy and whole. And society has followed the Church's lead-for good or ill. A "bless me" gospel in the pulpit produces all manner of moral suicide both in the pews and society-at-large.
3. As a nation, we lost our belief in the need for personal discipline.
Led down the garden path by permissive theology, Doctors Freud and Spock convinced at least two generations of parents to totally spoil their children by not disciplining them for fear of bruising their little egos. Unfortunately, unresolved family problems become society's problems, as can all too clearly be seen in the virtual academic collapse of our schools, severely overcrowded jails, soaring divorce rates, personal bankruptcies, drug addiction, drunk driving deaths, burgeoning welfare roles, and the growing societal disease which believes that "society owes me," and that "most of the bad things that have happened to me are someone else's fault."
4. As a nation, we emphasized the rights of our citizens rather than their responsibilities.
If we preach just people's rights, we'll eventually have a revolution because we are promoting primarily selfishness. If we preach people's responsibilities, we'll have a revival because our message demands self-government and sacrifice. By virtue of the debris, it doesn't take much to figure out which of these two gospels has largely been preached. Liberalism buys votes by promising people their rights and then morally and economically bankrupts them in the attempt to make good the promise. At the end of the road we must preach people's responsibilities . . . or suffer societal collapse. The road goes no further.
5. As a nation, we decided to protect the deviant and deprecate the normal.
Taken to their logical conclusion, both humanism and liberalism end up worshiping deviant behavior. Since they are built on deviance (total departure from God's law), deviance is what they must produce. Initially they seem to enjoy a degree of success as man worships and explores his own potential. At the end of the road however, they turn man into a degenerate who kills his children and aged parents while hopping from bed to bed, spreading disease, and breaking promises in the process. What begins as pleasure becomes bondage, and then man finds he must justify and protect his bondage to spare him the shame of admitting he was wrong. Since the legal system itself has broken God's laws, it can't help but promote the "rights" of the lawbreaker.
The End Of The Road
And so we stand at the end of the road. Although there seems to be a trend toward a more biblical view of reality, if the philosophies and theology which convinced us to take the wrong turns are not utterly destroyed, society, as we know it, will indeed collapse and spiral downward in an ever tightening circle of its own corruption. The battle hinges upon the Church having the courage to say to a selfish and prideful society,
"Man is not to be worshiped, and now it's time to pay the dues for having done so!" Nicer words will only help push us into the ravine beyond the last remaining guardrail at the end of the road.
...the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down... Matthew 3:10
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