Gordon Brown at TED: Political Heresy Equal to +Schori's

There was a surprise appearance yesterday afternoon by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the TED Global 2009 Conference here in Oxford. He spoke entirely extemporaneously (i.e., without a script or teleprompter), and showed the extensive knowledge and ability to make a point with a story or a reference to history for which he is noted. (Americans by now should be starved for this style of oratory.)

However, he also revealed the mindset of a consummate politician: "Things need fixing all right, and we can do this by changing our institutions. We'll start with the United Nations and the IMF. We're all world citizens now. We can adopt a one-world currency and a empower a World Bank [not said in so many words; you have to listen between the lines]. Then we can all do what is necessary [sc. "print more money"] to get our way out of the current mess." For all of his smoothness, and seeming capability, that exudes from the talk below, ask yourself as you watch and listen: how does this man's proposed program for the world's current ills differ from that of President Obama's?

(When TED puts it up, you may watch the high-res video of his talk from this link.)

I find it remarkable that there have been two global gatherings of approximately the same size in the last two weeks --- one at Anaheim, and one here at Oxford --- at which the same message has been featured: one from the religious side, and one from the secular. The message from Presiding Bishop Schori in her opening sermon was: "We're all in this together. Ubuntu --- I in you and you in me makes we. The idea that any individual can save himself is the great Western heresy." Echo Gordon Brown, from the secular point of view.

What is the matter with this message, from my humble point of view, is that it is the common theme among all great collectivist leaders. "You can't do this on your own! For the good of all, you must subsume your identity into the greater identity of all." It is a call to leadership from the top down. "Trust us, your leaders. We know what we're doing, and if you simply let us run things, we'll get you to where we all want/need to go."

I can draw no greater a contrast with this top-down message than by showing you the video below, made by a wonderful speaker, Mark Johnson, who followed Gordon Brown and, as the last act for the day, was the perfect antidote to the former's speech. This video, part of Mark Johnson's Playing for Change program, shows how powerful a message truly can be when it comes from the bottom up. Mark explained (the video of his talk at TED is not yet available, but you can watch an introduction of his purpose and methods at the site I just linked) how he heard Roger Ridley's performance of the song that starts the video, and had the brainstorm of taking his recording studio to the street, instead of bringing the performer into the studio. Then he took the music he had recorded and shared it, one by one, with other musicians of all stripes and colors around the world, each one adding his or her (or their, in the case of groups) own heart-felt contribution to what they heard through the headphones. The resulting mix he finally obtained is simply inspiring (the video below has been watched, in its various forms, over 30,000,000 times). It shows the true way of making ubuntu --- "Stand by Me":

No One Is Minding the Store

The following video is disturbing, to say the least. On the surface, it presents a straightforward picture that the Fed is careening out of control, and that the Inspector-General assigned to its oversight has not a clue as to what is going on:

That is disturbing enough. But what makes the video really disturbing is that the Congressman cannot answer his own question. The branch of government which has the primary responsibility for overseeing the Federal Reserve is not its Inspector-General's office, but Congress itself. All I see is that one Congressman has the ability to read the news and ask questions so as to embarrass a witness, who admittedly is clueless to begin with. ("Off-balance-sheet transactions? I'm afraid I haven't read the Bloomberg story to which you are referring.")

As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke heads to Capitol Hill for two days of testimony beginning this morning, there will be no want of opportunity to question him. But without any meaningful regulatory oversight of the Fed's operations, Congress is pretty much forced to accept whatever answers he wants to give.

For example, in a foretaste of his testimony, Mr. Bernanke has published an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal. In it, he supposedly provides an answer to the question of whether the Fed will be able to apply the brakes in time to prevent run-away inflation. I say "supposedly", because if you read it closely, you will find that the methods he proposes to stop inflation all involve more flim-flam with paper money. Either he prints more money out of thin air to pay the banks interest on the reserves he earlier loaned them (yes, you read that right --- the Fed loans the banks money, which they turn around and invest at the Fed, which pays them interest), or the Treasury sells debt obligations to the public and "invests" the proceeds at the Fed, or the Fed itself sells some of its huge inventory of largely worthless securities and keeps the proceeds in its own account. All three methods involve transferring some of the "money" held by the banks and the public to the vaults of the Fed. This takes it out of circulation, true --- but what we get in place of that paper money is just a different kind of paper money: interest or worthless securities. It's just a never-ending carousel of revolving debt paid for with "money" printed out of thin air.

There are, to be sure, calls to regulate the Fed as it once used to be regulated. (The Wall Street Journal linked above has some useful links to past articles about the history of the struggle by the Fed to win "independence".) But the debate has an unreal character about it that comes from a false dichotomy: either the Fed must be allowed to make up the rules as it goes, without any interference by the politicians, or the politicians must be allowed to curb the Fed according to popular demand. The truth, of course, lies elsewhere; the "debate" is intended only to distract your attention.

Even with 274 or so co-sponsors, Congressman Ron Paul's proposed bill to require a first-ever audit of the Fed has no chance of enactment without Nancy Pelosi's say-so. (Being a "sponsor" of a bill does not mean you will vote for a bill's enactment --- it just means you are in favor of bringing it to the floor for a vote, or want to send a signal of sorts to the Fed --- or to the Administration.) So what is truly scary about the above video is that the Congressman depicted (Rep. Alan Grayson, a Freshman Democrat from Orlando, Florida) is asking all the right questions, but of the wrong person.

And as a freshman, even a Democrat freshman, he won't be given the chance to ask the right person for years. So where is the rest of Congress on this matter? Asleep at the switch, while the train derails. Or actually, not asleep, but in fact providing the worst possible example of how not to run fiscal policy. In fact, while the Fed's off-balance-sheet transactions are skyrocketing and causing tremendous concern over its grasp of monetary policy, Congress is proposing to do even worse with the Treasury's balance sheet --- and thereby demonstrating its utter lack of ability to manage fiscal policy. Take a look at this graph (from the recent testimony of the Director of the Congressional Budget Office --- it runs from 29:30 to 35:30 on the video):

The graph depicts the outstanding debt of the Treasury held by the public (including principally the Chinese) as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product --- the value of all the goods and services produced by Americans --- under two scenarios. The "Baseline Scenario" is with the CBO's current published projections given legislation already enacted. The "Alternative Scenario" is with the bills Congress currently has under consideration (universal health care, cap and trade, second stimulus, etc.). That the two could even be placed side by side is not the joke; it is that the one is labeled "baseline" while the other is labeled "alternative".

Notice that the percentage has never gone as high as 100% since in the aftermath of having to finance World War II, when the economy (in terms of GDP) was only one-sixth of what it is today. And notice, too, how short and steep the peak was in 1949, versus the unknown size of the mountain we are scaling today. The numbers are going off the charts on both the fiscal and the monetary scales, and we are assured that everything is under control.

Pray for your country --- no one is minding the store.

Food for Thought

Some random notes and thoughts to ponder while I am away from blogging for a while (see previous post):

1. It's the end of another week, and there is still no final ruling from the Fresno Superior Court on the motion for summary adjudication filed by Bishop Lamb et al. in the case pending there. If the ruling comes down while I am away, there won't be much to say that has not already been said (check the San Joaquin page in the Guide to This Site). If the court grants the motion, the defendants will have twenty days in which to file a petition in the Court of Appeal to review the ruling; and if the court denies the motion, the parties will conduct a lot of discovery to prepare for the trial scheduled for next February 1.

2. General Convention 2009 will soon be history. All of its accomplishments, great and small, will soon enough end up in another thick, fat book ("Scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?) on my shelf, to be consulted only as absolutely necessary.

3. When so many people ascribe so much importance to a mindlessly ineffectual Resolution such as B033 from GC 2006, something else has to be going on. As I explained in the post linked, both B033 itself and the HoB's affirmation of it at New Orleans in 2007 were a form of political fig leaf to allow both ECUSA and the Archbishop of Canterbury to say to the rest of the Communion: "We/[They] have agreed to play nice, and not break any more rules." (See this latest statement from Fulcrum affirming in detail this same reading of the fig leaf.)

4. But now, with its passage of D025 and C056, GC 2009 and the HoB in particular have pulled off the fig leaf, to everyone's consternation. It is still inaccurate and unhelpful to speak of a "repeal" of B033 --- as long as people continue to do that, the Presiding Bishop and Dr. Anderson will gain traction from saying it did not happen. The best way to describe the effect of D025 and C056 is to say that the "mind of the Convention" has now changed in 2009 from what it was in 2006.

5. With the collective change in mind, the commitment to restraint is now solely on a bishop-by-bishop and standing committee-by-standing committee basis. The confirmation of the election of a practicing LGBT to the episcopate in ECUSA will happen when it happens --- but it will happen; and the blessing and celebration of same-sex unions will continue at a now-quickened pace.

6. The acid test of this outcome, brought to you by Integrity and the other activists in ECUSA, will be what happens to the attendance figures by the time of GC 2012. Susan Russell+ claims the numbers will increase; Father Tim Fountain is already reporting exactly the opposite. We shall see, and the numbers will not lie (unless they change the method of counting by then).

7. The budget for the triennium 2009-12 is reduced by $23 million, but still includes $3 million earmarked for litigation against departing dioceses and bishops, and still more money earmarked for support for the remnant groups who cannot sustain themselves as Dioceses on their own. This is another form of fig leaf, designed to get the budget as a whole voted upon. Over the next 154 weeks until there is another General Convention (reduced from ten days to eight), the Executive Council can rig the numbers any way it wants to. It did this before GC 2009, and it will do it again before GC2012.

8. The thing to notice about the numbers is their trends. The budget is shrinking overall, as are the expected contributions from Dioceses from 2009 to 2012. Meanwhile, the Budget Committee was compelled to increase the item for litigation over the next triennium from $1.8 million to $3 million (plus another $1 million for Title IV "discipline", increased from $300,000), and the financial support required for the remnants to hang on while their litigation is being carried on for them will increase as well. The staff of ECUSA is losing 37 positions, but Goodwin Procter is hiring more attorneys, and the Presiding Bishop is not cutting her own personal litigation consultant --- whom she has to help her in addition to her Chancellor.

9. ECUSA is eating its seed corn while squandering money on litigation it can ill afford, and which will not be resolved for five years, or even longer. The pressure for immediate results in litigation is prompting ECUSA to take ever more extreme positions in court that are at variance with how it actually runs (or fails to run) itself. The dichotomy used to be kept under wraps at 815, but now it is in the open for all to see, and ECUSA's bishops will not be able to sustain the tension it requires for as long as the current litigation will take to resolve.

10. Another major loss in court, such as happened in Virginia, will put enormous pressure on 815 to cut its litigation expenses. People will stop giving money that goes just to pay attorneys to fight a losing battle in court.

11. Theologically speaking, ECUSA is so off in left field that the audience for its fanciful pronouncements is steadily diminishing as well, and will soon be reduced just to the choir of the already convinced. Its message of "inclusion" is seen for what it really is: a wholesale adoption of the current culture. As J. Gresham Machen observed so long ago, the Church has taken on "an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. . . Without the consciousness of sin, the whole gospel will seem to be an idle tale." Meanwhile its Presiding Bishop is doing her level best to alienate the remaining orthodox, by telling them that they are the heretics (how "inclusive" does that make them feel?).

12. Despite his disappointing track record, I yet hold some hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury will show some backbone. He has followed his own Christian teaching thus far by absorbing blows from left and right in order to keep everyone at the table, still talking. But his absolutely minimal participation in GC 2009 this year, contrary to all precedent, coupled with his unambiguous warning about the General Convention making "decisions in the coming days which will push us further apart", may be interpreted as a sign that he has given up trying to protect ECUSA from the consequences of its actions.

13. To protect his own position in the Church of England, he has to align himself now with the decision of its Synod. The motion there to recognize ACNA will be acted on next February, and the hasty joint letter from the Presiding Bishop and Dr. Anderson may be viewed as an expression of the concern they have that ACNA may indeed be recognized, and their heretofore exclusive Anglican franchise in America declared forfeit.

14. The House of Bishops may try in September one more time to put the fig leaf back on, by adopting some gobbledygook about their "interpretation" of D025 and C056. But once the fig leaf is off, there's no putting it back; its utility has run its course. By definition, a fig leaf works only once.

15. All eyes will be on Lambeth on Monday, to see the text of the promised "statement" in reaction to the events at Anaheim. It will in all likelihood be an anticlimax, because after all, there will be nothing that can be done in the short run. The next true test for Dr. Williams to pass or fail will come at the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC, scheduled for December 15-18, 2009. The Committee, which includes the Presiding Bishop, is supposed to take up the revisions made by the working group announced May 28 to section 4 of the Ridley Draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant. If the Presiding Bishop still has support enough to water down its language to meaninglessness, the death of the Anglican Communion will not be far off. But if she is the one to go away miffed from the meeting, there may be some life to ++Rowan yet.