[peabody economics] nothing ever changes

George Peabody set up shop in the aftermath of the 1837 panic:

Because of U.S. debt troubles, Peabody became persona non grata around London (after all, he had sold the Brits much of that debt). But that did not deter him. He bought the depreciated state bonds when they were trading for pennies on the dollar. When these bonds paid interest again, in the late 1840s, Peabody reaped a fortune.

Then along came the next crash, in 1857 and:

Corsair, the Life of J.P. Morgan, tells us that the Panic of 1857 was caused by the collapse of the grain market and by the sudden collapse of Ohio Life and Trust, for a loss of five million dollars. With this collapse nine hundred other American companies failed. Significantly, one not only survived, but prospered from the crash.

In Corsair, we learn that the Bank of England lent George Peabody and Company five million pounds during the panic of 1857. Winkler, in Morgan the Magnificent, says that the Bank of England advanced Peabody one million pounds, an enormous sum at that time, and the equivalent of one hundred million dollars today, to save the firm. However, no other firm received such beneficence during this Panic.

Ron Chernow wrote that the Morgan munificence was reprised in the 1907 panic:

"In the following days, acting like a one-man Federal Reserve system, [J. Pierpont] Morgan decided which firms would fail and which survive. Through a non stop flurry of meetings, he organized rescues of banks and trust companies, averted a shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange, and engineered a financial bailout of New York City."

Morgan is always at hand through the majority controlled Federal Reserve [read July 14, 2008 here] and its close association with the FOMC in altruistically helping out in times of crises, which seem to pop up quite regularly. Morgan seems to be particularly astute in predicting crises and preparing for them - what of the gold swaps?

[bizarre experiment] not so bizarre conclusion

This blog usually tries to steer clear of just commenting on what the Telegraph or other MSM might be running at a given moment but this story requires a comment I don't think many would make.

Research at Oxford University has found believers can draw on their religion to endure suffering with greater fortitude, suggesting Christian martyrs may have been able to reduce the agony of torture or slow death.

Firstly, what is the point of the study and why the electric shocks? This immediately makes one smell a rat, as the shock approach is beloved of a particular type of people who enjoy the Joseph Mengele style of "research".

Secondly, it is attempting to reduce the physical to the metaphysical, the latter which just won't fit into the box and lie still. There is a contract that anyone who is actually Christian [as distinct from Sunday Churchgoer or Christian Right] enters into and it's spelt out clearly in Matthew and John.

It says that you can be redeemed by belief, not only because of the feeling of relief you get that you're actually going to make it to heaven but through the spirit, the third person of the trinity, actually flowing in like a lifeforce. All you need to do, it says, is believe that it is possible.

Almost no one in the MSM or the main blogosphere either dares or is interested in a kooky idea like that. Look at the adjective the Telegraph uses - bizarre. Yes, the experiment seems that way but in my eyes, it had an agenda. The paper mentions that the experimenters "hoped" for a certain result. I'm sure they did and they duly published it.

Does that make you suddenly believe in Christianity's ability to deliver on the Holy Spirit? Does it heck as like. For the majority, all it does is place the whole concept in the kook category in their minds, thereby putting another nail in the coffin of the "Cross superstition" [or so the shockophiles think].

Looking at society in general, you have to be pretty blinkered not to see the assault on Christianity from within and from outside [Winterval, banning the Nativity plays and so on] over the last decade and the obvious question is why this fixation with stomping out something they deny even exists? Why the Muslim fixation with it, for example?

The answer is that it delivers on its promise. So yes, there was a resurrection, there has to have been, as the results of it flow through to a few million worldwide on a daily basis. They're not going out preaching it but just living with the benefits day by day. It's always available if you should one day need it.

But look at the anger, the raised eyebrows and the snorts of bemused disgust such an assertion produces in people who like to deem themselves "rational", people who supposedly take all phenomena into account in their conclusions. This thing just won't die off, won't go away, will it? Non-believers trot out rationalization after rationalization explaining it away, sociological, psychological and other and those rationalizations hold up well when measured against physical phenomena.

Trouble is, you can't measure someone coming alive after three days and the power deriving from that, flowing into millions worldwide, in physical terms. It's like trying to measure Herbert's Dune and the life water or Star Wars' Force or the nature of electricity or why we actually "live" and are sentient, as distinct from being robotic. It is like trying to scientifically measure joie-de-vivre - it just won't fit into the scientific box.

It just is, as quite a few people dotted about here and there can testify to.

[feminist quiz] do you know your heroines

Woman strangling male beast to death

C'mon girls [and guys], let's see how well you know your heroines. The task is to identify which of these famous people:

Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry Kissinger [oh how I'm missin' yer]

...was behind which quote:

1. Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy. 2. I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves. 3. A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual. 4. One is not born a woman, but becomes one. 5. I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.

Answers in the correct order

Henry Kissinger [oh how I'm missin' yer], Mary Wollstonecraft, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer

Bonus questions - which one of these quotes did Simone de Beauvoir not utter?

a. The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them. b. To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job. c. That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. d. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living. e. One of the things I really like about men is that they are raised to take responsibility for their actions. They don't make excuses, and they don't have a whole lot of tolerance for people who do make excuses, who try to weasel out from their responsibility.

Answer

e. Correct - it was spoken by feminist Marylaine Block.

[quicksand] how to get in and out

First the good news - you're not going to drown in quicksand - only sink down. The bad news is that stuck you will be and if you're in, say, Morecambe Bay, the tide will get you.

The science is here and below is a practical though misnamed video of how to get stuck and then escape:





Lindisfarne is a place where the tide is also treacherous though well known and signposted. Also, there are refuges [see pic above] dotted along the way, which is fine if you're in one car but what if you're a party of twelve people or so?

I've only once experienced this sort of thing. Being down at the beach in northern England, a few of us ventured round a point to look in a well known cave, only accessible from the sea side. That was fine but on the return, some fifteen minutes later, the tide had already started to come in and was round the ankles.

The thing which frightened us a bit was that it had not come in near where the cave was but it had snuck around the sides where we couldn't see it. A few minutes later, now back within safety but still paddling, it had risen to calf height. In forty minutes we would have been swimming over our heads.

Good luck in your ventures!

[tina fey] darling of the american heartland

... the younger American heartland, anyway. She called Paris Hilton a piece of sh-- who looks like a tramp. Judge for yourself.

[small government] provisions in a mixed economy

Local government office in the new society

The Number One rule of the society, by means of constitutional provisions, is to prevent those who hold elected office from reneging on their roles, as listed below and assuming instead a “nannying” or command and control stance.

The Number Two rule of government is to protect, through the judicial arm, the constitution and associated bills at all costs, a constitution written by and voted for by a panel of representatives, meritocratically appointed from each section of society.

These two rules prevent a regulatory society where the government can criminalize those who put them there.

The Number Three rule is to ensure a mixed economy, heavily weighted towards free enterprise, jealously guarding the right and opportunity for private enterprise, with particular emphasis on companies with less than 30% share of the national market [as distinct from global] and turning the haves and have nots in society into the cans and cannots and want tos and want nots. Equal opportunity means government incentive schemes [as below] but not regulation.

The Number Four rule is that government is assigned to legitimately restrict these areas:

1. formal and de facto merging or collusion of economic entities for the purpose of controlling the market economy in their sector[s], based on market share;
2. price fixing, as far as it can be established;
3. derivatives of certain kinds by regulation but not elimination.

The Number Five rule is that government is officially directed that funds from its flat tax rate of 15% over a threshold, corporate and private, are to cover:

1. initiative and start up grants plus patents;
2. social security for the genuinely needy, inc. part pension provisions 1:1;
3. defence provisions [this being the only area where collusion is legitimate, i.e. treaties with other nations but not in defence contracts, which come under Rule 4];
4. telecommunications, power grids and waste collection/disposal.

One fundamental principle is that an enterprise which goes down goes down and is not bailed out by government under any circumstances.

All other areas, including community policing, are handled by the private sector. The bloated bureaucracy is re-employed in both enterprises set up by the contracted government in a one-off changeover and to work in ensuring the rules .