I will not apologise!

"I was wrong. I am sorry."
These are six words that are very hard to say.
I struggle to say them. Individuals struggle to say them. Institutions struggle to say them. Countries struggle to say them.
Yet newspapers are full of articles about people asking for apologies and others refusing to give them.

Recently at the Oxford Union there was a debate about whether Britain does owe reparations for colonial rule.
The video below is a powerful speech by Shashi Tharoor in support of an apology.



It is interesting to contrast this reluctance to apologise to the amazing actions of Zacchaeus, inspired by Jesus, who offered four-fold reparations.

Don't give your life to your employer

I think the movie The Company Men is worth watching. It is a moving portrayal of how several men respond to getting retrenched from a company they have given their lives to. One struggles with his self image and must deal with being massively in debt, because of an extravagant lifestyle. Another is betrayed by the CEO, who used to be his best friend. It also highlights corporate greed, which is driven by short term financial considerations and considers people as just "resources" to be exploited.

Overall it is depressing and there is little redemption and hope. Yet, this is realistic. Give your life to your employer and you will probably get hurt.

I am unimpressed by public debt scare mongering

"If we don't drastically cut public spending we will all end up like Greece or Detroit".
Conservatives in Australia are often claiming this.

Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph, one of Rupert Murdoch's mouthpieces, ran a front page story, about a recent "report" from the accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers, claiming Australia is heading for a one trillion $ debt.

John Quiggin has an excellent blog post, critiquing this.
The first criticism is that this "report" is not even available to the public. If you are going to make such grandiose claims, and if a newspaper is going to report them, you need to make the document available so others can see the basis for the claim.

But, my main concerns are twofold.
First, Australia has one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios in the world. It is not even close to Germany or the USA, let alone Greece.

Second, I find highlighting these debt concerns by conservatives is inconsistent, insincere and hollow. Suppose there is an an impending crisis. Then we need to solve it. That means we need to cut all spending, including defence, middle class "welfare", tax breaks to business, dubious anti-refugee schemes [almost $1 million per person], politicians pensions, ....
and we need to increase revenue [i.e. increase taxes and cut tax avoidance].
Yet, I don't see that passion or concrete proposals in that regard.

If you look at the last Federal Government budget, there were proposals to significantly cut spending on education and health care, but proposals to significantly increase spending on other areas such as defence, medical research, paid parental leave, infrastructure projects favourable to large multinational corporations ....

Highlighting debt is just scare-mongering to achieve a different political and ideological agenda.

Biblical justice, reconciliation, and Majority world debt

My wife and I watched this excellent and challenging video. N.T. Wright first reviews the themes of justice in the Psalms and Jesus teaching on the Kingdom of God. Then he considers the case of Philemon and slavery. Finally, he makes a particularly insightful and poignant analysis of the problem of financial debt of the Majority world.

The ugly face of globalisation

The New Rulers of the World, a documentary by John Pilger, is worth watching. It considers the impact of globalisation on Indonesia, beginning in the 1960s. The complex mix of corrupt dictators, sweat shops, CIA, multinational corporations, the World Bank, and oppressive debt has created a quagmire of violence, inequality, and injustice.

The historical origins of global poverty

Why does poverty exist? Why are some nations rich and others poor? What are the historical origins of debt and inequality? Does wealth "trickle down"? Does foreign aid help poor countries?

My wife and I watched this excellent documentary. Although it is called "The end of poverty" I think a more appropriate title would be "This historical origins of global poverty" and does not really discuss how to solve the problems. It is also not to be confused with Jeffrey Sachs book of the same title, which focuses more on practical solutions.
It is quite disturbing.

Slaves to debt II

Last night my son and I watched The International. I had actually watched it five years ago and blogged about it. I enjoyed it again. Here is my favourite scene.

Learning from life

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

        Muhammad Ali

So what "life wisdom" have I learnt from experience and observation?
What do I wish I knew and understood when I was twenty?

Life proceeds in stages. Adapt your expectations and activities accordingly.

Making a living is hard.

Financial debt can be a noose around your neck.

New initiatives need to be sustainable in the long term.

The good is the enemy of the excellent.

Learn to say no!

Should banks be bailed out by the general public?

No. To me one of the great disappointments of the past few years is watching political leaders (of all persuasions) being beholden to Wall Street.

There is a good NY Times column The Path Not Taken by Paul Krugman. It puts the recent decisions of European political leaders in a broader context, suggesting it amounts to:

the abject failure of an economic doctrine — a doctrine that has inflicted huge damage both in Europe and in the United States. 

The doctrine in question amounts to the assertion that, in the aftermath of a financial crisis, banks must be bailed out but the general public must pay the price. So a crisis brought on by deregulation becomes a reason to move even further to the right; a time of mass unemployment, instead of spurring public efforts to create jobs, becomes an era of austerity, in which government spending and social programs are slashed...

Krugman, then points out that there is an alternative.

... Iceland was supposed to be the ultimate economic disaster story: its runaway bankers saddled the country with huge debts and seemed to leave the nation in a hopeless position.

But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.
So how’s it going? Iceland hasn’t avoided major economic damage or a significant drop in living standards. But it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society. “Things could have been a lot worse” may not be the most stirring of slogans, but when everyone expected utter disaster, it amounts to a policy triumph.

Christians should have something to say about this. We should be concerned with both individual responsibility and accountability [bankers and investors] and protecting the poor and needy.

Man or beast?

Why is the economy a mess? Is it all Wall Street's fault? Are successful investment bankers good candidates for leadership positions in government and education?

My son recently read Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis  and so I have been dipping in to it. The book describes the author's experience as a bond trader with Salomon Brothers in London the 1980's. It also discusses some of the broader issues associated with the role and influence of Wall Street. This was all written before the Global Financial Crisis.

I have given up reading the book because I just cannot engage with the tedium of some of the characters acting like complete animals. Indeed one of the chapters begins with a brilliant quote from Samuel Johnson, "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

But here are few random thoughts that the book prompts:

• we have a great ability to self delusion
• man can have an insatiable greed for money
• some people make a lot of money purely by luck [by being at the right place at the right time]. Hence, we should be wary about investing in such people or thinking they have any great economic insight.
• perhaps rather than being surprised that the world is mess we should be surprised that it is not a bigger mess!
• good governments constrain evil. we need strict regulation of financial institutions.

Compromising the future

Like many I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard yesterday that politicians in the USA seem to have reached an agreement that will prevent the government defaulting on their loans. A previous post Ideological idolatry considered some of the roots of the political impasse. However, my relief may be short lived. An opinion piece The President Surrenders by Paul Krugman paints a bleak picture of what the agreement means for economic and political stability.

Ideological idolatry

 The New York Times has a good Op-Ed piece by David Brooks, The Mother of All No-Brainers, concerning current debates about taxation, government spending, and debt in the USA. Here are a few extracts:

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms.... 

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. ...

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. ....

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. ....

But to members of this movement, tax levels are everything. Members of this tendency have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation. They are willing to cut education and research to preserve tax expenditures. Manufacturing employment is cratering even as output rises, but members of this movement somehow believe such problems can be addressed so long as they continue to worship their idol.

Read the full article to find out who the members of the movement are.

A model for us all

Parkinson's second law is that "Expenditure rises to match income".
This is a trueism of modern affluent Western society.
Or is it? Maybe it should be "Expenditure rises to match income plus how much the bank will lend you!"
But, Jesus said "You cannot serve both God and money" and so Christians must be different.

I was challenged by a post written by John Piper about the example of John Wesley. Throughout his life Wesley kept his annual expenditure at the same level (roughly 30 pounds) as when he was younger, in spite of the fact that his income sometimes was as high as 40+ times that!

An American Christmas icon

Last night my family followed an American Christmas tradition and watched the iconic movie It's a Wonderful Life. It is a "feel good" movie about the value of one life and how we can be a much greater blessing to people than we realise. It also highlights the personal cost to one man of standing for justice in a community.

It is interesting to see how banks, debt, and mortgages figured heavily in American life in the first half of the twentieth century, as they do this Christmas.

There is an interesting post about the movie on the Desiring God website. [My wife brought it to my attention]. As long as you don't use the movie to define your theology, your concept of heaven, or your notion of what Christmas is all about, then it is good harmless fun. But is such a separation really possible?

Greed bequethes the slavery of debt

At my hotel in Bristol I am getting the Times newspaper each morning, a rare treat to read both a good newspaper and a paper copy. A report got my attention that due to the 39 billion GBP cost  of bailing out its banks, Ireland's budget deficit will climb to 32 per cent of GDP, more than ten times the limit mandated by the European Union on its member nations.

Work as slavery and oppression

Working in God's creation was meant to be a joy for humanity but due to sin it became a burden and struggle. In Exodus 1 we see how it becomes an instrument of oppression as the Egyptians try to control the growing population of Israelite "guest workers".

¹¹Therefore [the Egyptians] set taskmasters over [the Israelites] to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. ¹²But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. ¹³So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves ¹⁴and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Traditional slavery [buying and selling people] still exists throughout the world today.

But, slavery also exists in affluent western countries, as people are enslaved to careers, ambition, and financial debt.

The image is from here.

Are Australians deluded?

Not about God, but about house prices. We have one of the highest levels of home ownership in the world and one of the largest fraction of personal investment (and debt) is in personal homes.

Now we have a new distinction. According to the Economist a good measure of whether house prices are over-valued is the ratio of house price to rental income compared to its historical average. Currently, Australia has the highest value in the world! (56%) For all you budding home buyers about to embark on financial slavery consider this warning from the Age.

Laughing all the way to the bank

Today our annual church conference was on the theme Money, Money, Money [hence the previous posts on money]. In one of his talks Peter Kaldor showed this video from the British TV series Bremner, Bird, and Fortune.

It is quite the satire on investment banking and the financial crisis.

I laughed, but on the other hand I feared it was a bit too close to the truth.

The third most important decision in life

I will leave you to figure out what I think the two most important ones are.

The third one (at least for Christians in the Western world) is what house to buy. This will have a BIG impact on your life.

If you live a long way from the church you belong to, the reality is you won't be very involved, particularly in the lives of other people.

If you take out a large mortgage (just like the banks want you to and the cultural norm is) you will become enslaved to debt. This will have a big effect on what job you and your spouse must keep. In turn that will impact on family time, travel, stress, church involvement, ....

I found the cartoon here.

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil

The Week had an extract from a Rolling Stone article, Wall Street's Bailout Hustle.

It is truly shocking.