Shifting the blame from Left to greed
Blaming greed for failed leftist policies
Donald Hank
The Pope has said, over the Christmas holiday, that the world must overcome greed to get through the current economic crisis.
With all due respect for the Pope, whose stance on social issues are to be applauded, both Protestantism and Catholicism, while blaming greed, have failed to grasp the nature of the Left and its role in crises such as the financial and economic crises gripping the world.
The CRA (Community Reinvestment Act, passed under Jimmy Carter) and the way it was enforced, including the role of ACORN, played a major role in bringing down the banks. Generally, the trend to lend money, particularly mortgages, to people with no down payment and even without proof of employment, goes against all common sense and good banking practice, which has been in place since the beginning of time and throughout the world, and has proved disastrous. And yet so many are in denial, even to the utterly absurd point of casting all the blame on conservative policies and seeing the Democrats as being more economically astute and hence capable of pulling us out of the current crisis of their own making — sort of like Clinton “reforming” the failed welfare created by his party. Anyone paying attention in the years since 1995, when Clinton ordered the banks to lend a trillion dollars to “underserved communities,” would have been able to foresee this collapse. Some actually did, including a New York Times writer in 1999.
I suppose it could be argued that the Left, in its own way, represents greed, but it is probably more appropriate to call it ideologically motivated rather than greedy. Ideological motivation, rather than common sense, has caused the greatest destruction known to man — under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
None of these men’s political actions were greed-motivated in the accepted sense of the word. In their decisions that led to the murder and starvation of millions, they were, however, blinded by leftist utopian (revolutionary) ideology — a desire for a better world, for change, and ironically, for a world with less greed.
Ideology killed 100 million innocent people in the last century (see “The Black Book of Communism by Stephane Courtois). No other factor, including greed, has ever done anywhere near that much harm.
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December 26th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I also have read “The Black Book of Communism” and concur with your brief analysis. That book is Augustinian-like, in that ex-commies fearlessly expose their own blindness and errors.
As a devout Catholic, I am dismayed whenever the American bishops issue statements that encourage more and more welfare programs. It’s as if there is an obligation to vote for more socialism! These foolish bishops totally ignore the genius Heinrich Pesch, an early 20th-century Jesuit & economist who actually puts out an economic & social system to rival Keynes, Marx and even Smith. Called “Solidarism”, it is the essence of his ideas that created Poland’s “Solidarity” and brought down the Eastern Bloc … yet this is one of the Church’s and the world’s best-kept-secrets!
Check him out, and accept my compliments.
December 26th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I would contend that it is greed, the left’s greed for power and your money, that has caused the financial crises, and that by design. You can expect more of the same in the future, as they consolidate their New World Order. All world currencies will be destroyed as they finish their corner on the world gold market, and at that time reinstitute gold as the only real money. Every bank, government and people will have to go to them to get money to lend or to buy anything. While hiding behind the leftist ideology, they execute their monopolistic plan to control the world and steal the wealth of the people. In the United States, they control both political parties, the entire educational system, and the media to give the illusion of choice to the purposefully uneducated. The reality of “Socialism” or “Communism” is nothing more than old-fashioned tyranny that has plagued the world for all of history. The freedom that propelled the United States to the wealthiest nation on earth is now in the history bins, having been replaced by the tyranny that its founders fought so hard to achieve. A caste system has been implemented through forced government schooling, taxes, regulatory and market barriers for new businesses and jobs that secures the controlling elite in their power position. The screws will soon be tightened until there is no more “middle class” to worry about. The leftist elite will then be the consumers of all the world’s resources, having destroyed the United States as we know it.
December 26th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Hello Larry, I agree with your analysis based on the expanded definition of “greed” to include the greed for power and control (of money etc) on the part of the international elite. But the Left, which is essentially this group, uses “greed” exclusively of anything in government. Government cannot have greed by their simplistic and totally misleading definition.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Don,
Your analysis of the greater context of the cost of ideology vs. common sense is excellent. Does it go far enough?
Without being able to point to any sort of study that examines causes for indicators of the health of the economy and to specific ups and downs over time, I can only wonder whether the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) can possibly be the sole or even controlling cause for the catastrophic bottoming-out of the economy.
Here is one example that causes me to be cautious about focusing on a single cause for the downturn. While sleuthing for information on an issue that is totally unrelated to the CRA and its impact, I happened to stumble upon a newspaper article from Florida, an article that discusses the mergers of two seawall and dock construction companies in Cape Coral. *
__________
* “Seawall market yields to cracks in Cape Coral”
http://www.news-press.com/article/20081227/NEWS0101/81226055/1076/NEWS0117
The article contains a graph on dock and seawall permits issued over the 2004 to 2008 interval. Reading from the graph (figures for 2005, 2006 and 2007 are estimated transcriptions that likely off the precise numbers a little), the following table results:
Year Permits
2004 2,284
2005 ~2,700
2006 ~1,600
2007 ~1,380
2008 723
Dock and seawall permits reflect the financial well-being of individuals in the locality for which they are issued. There are of course more general and many other such indicators. Nevertheless, whatever it was that caused the sharp drop in the year 2005 to 2006 interval in the number of dock and seawall permits issued in Cape Coral, it could not have been caused only by the CRA. I do not know what those other causes were or whether they were local or more universal causes, but they clearly could not have been directly related to the CRA.
The CRA may have caused mortgage defaults that totaled, say, $200 billion. That should be digestible for the US economy, let alone for a world economy that turns over about $66 trillion a year (2007 estimate – CIA World Factbook).
Perhaps the focus of attention should be shifted somewhat to a much larger, deliberate and world-wide economic policy: massive, longstanding, increasing and accumulating deficit financing – a bubble that had to burst and to which the CRA is only a very minor contributing factor.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Walter,
I think you are on track about the “massive, longstanding, increasing and accumulating deficit financing” by the governments of the world. Nevertheless, the CRA is a very big factor in that it was fed into the Credit Default Swaps gambling addiction on Wall Street that was initially fueled by the Derivative Market, both of which have left these large banks and investment firms functionally bankrupt. These together will total more than $600 TRILLION world wide. These instruments were fraudulent from the get go, and I suspect the purpose was to bring down the world financial system.
No one is surprised by the various governments reaction of “printing” more money, and was the expected and desired result of the fraud.
The only reason the market is not collapsed now, is that the flywheels of the people’s imagination is still turning and telling them money has value. It does not, and the market will collapse this year.
As the governments and central banks create more fiat money, to bail out their friends, the less that money is worth. The deck of cards is about to fall.
Mean while the international bankers have been controlling the price of gold by encouraging governments to sell to keep the price down, while they themselves are buying it. Once the paper currencies have collapsed, they will have all the gold bullion and will lend gold-backed money at monopolistic interest rates back to the governments from whom they bought the gold. Remember that the guys controlling the Treasury and Federal Reserve were all from Goldman Sachs.