Bailout 16: Thoughts on Describing the Problem

As mentioned earlier, I am working on the problem of analyzing the current economic situation in light of biblical and theological concepts related to Jubilee, the Sabbatical year, the denunciation of usury, etc. Below are a few short paragraphs in which I have tried to describe the problems of the economy in order to begin this sort of analysis. Obviously, this is a work in progress.

1. Hard economic times place people and institutions in jeopardy. In 2009, there is plenty of pain to go around. People are losing their homes. Banks are closing. Businesses are failing. Workers are losing jobs. Families are uprooted.

2. Some call the economic woes a credit crisis. Some focus on the housing price bubble. Others emphasize the irresponsibility of financial institutions eager to sell “creative” investment products. Still others highlight the complexity of financial instruments divided, bundled, and resold again and again so that no one is sure who owns what. Many recognize that consumption had outpaced income, and too much of the economy depended on overextended debt. Others criticized the deregulation of financial institutions which allowed them to take inordinate risks with other people’s money.

3. A major part of the problem had to do with a collapse of home prices. Loans had been written with the assumption that housing values would rise steadily and without interruption. Some people borrowed more than they could afford, but others who could afford their mortgages found that they were making payments on a mortgage for an amount that was up to twice the new value of their home. They could not afford to keep paying double for a house that had originally been priced in an inflated market. In a weak economy, workers losing jobs also could no longer meet their mortgage payments.

4. All these mortgage problems led to a crisis of confidence in the mortgage-based securities and the financial institutions investing in them. As the seriousness of the mortgage problems became apparent, the more people became concerned about many other forms of debt, including credit card debt which has grown exponentially. A crash in the stock market followed up the crash in home prices, and many people who had thought they were in good financial shape now saw their pensions, their homes, and their investments lose value dramatically. People losing health insurance coverage were building mountains of debt for medical care.

5. When the economic situation became too severe to avoid, former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Bernanke recommended a massive bailout of major financial institutions. With only a bare sketch of a plan, the engines of government shifted into high gear to authorize transferring hundreds of billions of dollars directly to banks and other financial institutions to prop up their endangered portfolios of assets.

6. Their idea was to stabilized the financial system by providing cash to banks and other financial institutions who owned securities based on delinquent loans. They said that this would set things in order so that banks would be willing to lend money to grease the wheels of commerce. However, the banks and financial institutions took the money and held it. It did not slow down the pace of foreclosures of mortgages. It did not pump up the economy. Homeowners kept losing their homes with no relief. Credit card companies pressured small borrowers with tightened terms and higher interest rates.

7. What kind of a solution leaves giant banks standing while the average worker’s life gets harder and harder? That is not a solution. It smells like collusion. Whose money bailed out the banks? Who is an economy supposed to benefit? Who says billions can bail out executive jobs but nothing can bail out labor jobs? Who says tax dollars can pay off banks’ bad debts, but the average taxpaying citizens are on their own? Debt relief for millionaires and homelessness for working people—that’s not the kind of economy we believe in.

Good Friday Meditation

I was listening to the prayers and readings today at the Good Friday service, and I was reminded of the words of Jon Sobrino and others who speak of the poor being crucified every day. Jesus, a poor man who became a threat to the ruling powers, was executed on a Friday. Crucifixion is a method of execution. To crucify is to put someone on a cross in order to kill them. It was done to punish criminals and exterminate enemies of the regime. Maybe we would be clearer on what happened that day if we changed to the word execution.

The "Jews," by which the gospel writers mean the rulers and elders of the Jews, were aligned against him with the Romans who were always eager to keep conquered peoples in their place. (It is a misreading to take this text as an attack on all Jews. Jesus' defenders and his accusers were all Jews, and he himself was a Jew.) According to John 19, they had a back-and-forth exchange with Pilate about what to call Jesus. Pilate said he was their king. They answered, "We have no King but the Emperor." Both Pilate and the Jewish power elite--the Sanhedrin, the Chief Priests, the leaders of the Pharisees, the lackeys of the Idumean king--disavowed Jesus as King.

Yet the gospel goes on to say that Pilate had a sign made to post on the cross, which said "The King of the Jews." The Jewish leaders were angry about it, but Pilate would not change it. The sign prophesied what neither of them believed. Jesus was crowned King of the Jews, a covenant people. This covenant people, signified by the vine, was not welcoming all nations to be grafted into the vine of Israel. So if Jesus was not the king of the Roman and Jewish powers, then whose king was he?

Jesus was lifted up on that day as king of those who are poor and suffer. Those whose wealth and power he challenged had rejected him. He was lifted up as the one who resists the torture and oppression of the powers in the name of the ones who suffer. He was the second Adam who overcame the failings of humanity. He demonstrated God's love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us.

The atoning work of Jesus is sometimes portrayed as a metaphysical, otherworldly accomplishment. Jesus, it is said, came into the world to die. But a critical turn has been made in theological reflection in the last part of the twentieth century. A renewed conviction has emerged that Jesus came into the world to live. Above all, Jesus came into the world to save. Jesus' life was an atoning life. His death interrupted that life without defeating it. Even facing and enduring death, Jesus' life of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly persevered.

Rather than an inevitability, Jesus' death was a contingent event in history. God's incarnation into the historical life of humanity did not somehow exist above or outside of history. Within real historical events, a real human being was caught up in the agendas of real people and real powers. The ruling parties of Jerusalem tortured and executed Jesus in a willful act of violence to terrorize his followers and to silence his voice. Jesus suffered execution in a willing act of submission and obedience to the law of love. He refused to join a violent system and perpetuate the chain of violent acts. He refused to renounce the Jubilee revolution he had proclaimed. Thus, he received the verdict of his hell-bent persecutors.

From the foundation of the world, God has willed that humanity's story be the extension of loving community in mutual submission one to another. Jesus, as the incarnation of the eternal Word, from the foundation of the world has willed this incarnation of loving servanthood, pouring himself out that creation may fulfill its destiny. This atoning work, his embodiment of the Reign of God in justice and love no less than his willing submission to execution and his victory over sin, death, and the grave on Easter, reaches to all of God's creatures, and especially to those who continue to be ground under the feet of oppressive power. For this reason, we call the remembrance of this terrible day Good. May the grace of Jesus' sacrifice bear you through to the celebration of his victory.

Bailout 15: The Myth of the American Free Market

Dean Baker hit a homerun today when commenting on the constant claims that the U. S. free market is endangered by government intervention. He points out that the market is not free. It is structured in a way that money is transferred regularly from some to others.

American Style Capitalism: Tax Joe the Plumber to Give Handouts to Robert Rubin

The media are busy perpetuating a myth that the United States has been a beacon of "free market" capitalism. This is a lie. The United States never had free market capitalism and certainly the system in place over the last three decades hardly qualifies.

The U.S. put in place policies designed to transfer income from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. This is most evident now with the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent bailing out the banks. For the last three decades, the banks and their top executives, made vast fortunes using a free government insurance policy called "too big to fail," under which bond holders and other creditors could lend money to the banks knowing that the government would honor their debts if they ever got into trouble.

It is an outright lie to call this a "free market." This is a huge government handout. This insurance policy is enormously valuable and the banks did not have to pay a penny for it. The banks are ardent opponents of free market capitalism. None of them have advocated that they be allowed to collapse.

So, the issue over different types of capitalism that is coming up at the G-20 summit is whether the government exists primarily to redistribute money to the wealthy or to serve some other social end.

Bailout 14: Thinking About Jubilee

Last Monday I was in an interesting meeting at Wake Forest Divinity School. The Wake Forest folks and some of their ecclesial friends from Winston-Salem CHANGE showed up in force. I was there as a faculty member of Shaw Divinity and as a leader in Durham CAN. No one from the other invited divinity school was able to attend.

There were two purposes for the meeting. The one I was most aware of was an effort to bring together divinity faculty to discuss ways for community organizing to be taught to their students. The second purpose, which turned out to dominate the meeting, was the idea that North Carolina United Power (NCUP) should consider a campaign relating to the economic situation.

Gerald Taylor, who called the meeting, is the regional organizer for IAF, the oldest of the national institutions which promote Alinsky-rooted community organizing. Gerald discussed the current economic situation and what he sees as the wrong-headed direction of the governmental responses. In that context, he brought up the biblical concept of Jubilee.

The most significant thing said at that meeting was that biblical Jubilee is not merely about solving the economic problems of the wealthy. Forgiving debts of the poor and setting the oppressed free are its central concepts. Thus, a bailout which attempts to benefit everyone by clearing out the debts of the banks and financial instututions contradicts the wisdom of the Jubilee tradition.

Taylor argued that the way to help the economy, including the banks and other financial institutions, would be to help the average person who is deep in debt. Provide debt relief to everyday people, and they will pay off credit cards, pay and restructure mortgages, pay for higher education, and purchase goods. For those persons who are not in debt, the same financial stimulus would provide economic opportunities that would strengthen economic activity, bolster retirement funds, and stabilize families and businesses.

Taylor also went on to discuss the ways that credit card companies and other lenders are sticking it to common people at the same time that they are able to borrow at the lowest rates in history. This is what the Bible condemns as usury, and the state of usury laws in the U. S. is such that the credit companies can locate in one or two of the fifty states which give them the greatest freedom to charge whatever they want in interest. The situation calls for a national policy.

What kind of bailout would a jubilee call for? It is about fifty years since the Civil Rights Movement. It is about fifty years since the Nixon government began to institutionalize the backlash against progressive reforms. It may be time to proclaim a Jubilee.

Berating Worshippers

A student asked me yesterday about something she had heard from a pulpit. The preacher was saying that people who did not answer back to the preacher must not know how to answer because they don't know God's Word when they hear it.

He had many other things to say about the conversation of preaching and worship. He was critical of the trend toward worship as a show, with an audience who comes to be entertained. He said that the call and response of preaching demonstrates that preaching is not the task of only one person. About these things he was right.

But otherwise, he took up a refrain that I have heard many times from clergy and laity both. If a person is not making noise, he or she is not worshipping appropriately. It seems to me to be a kind of spiritual bullying. It uses the pedagogical manipulation of shame to tell people that they are not showing their love to God. It comes in many forms. Some of the common phrasings include

• Don't sit down on God!
• Aren't you thankful? Don't you want to praise God?
  
• You don't like this kind of preaching!
• Can't you even clap your hands to show you love God?
• Doesn't anyone even have a hallelujah to offer to God?
• Don't let a rock cry out in your place!
  

Having spent much of my life in churches where people would not dare make noise, move, or speak to express their praise, I am sympathetic with the need to encourage people to become actively engaged and share the task of worship with the worship leaders. But it is a fallacy to say that unless you at this moment are worshipping in the same manner that the worship leader is worshipping, you are not worshipping, or you are being ungrateful to God.

There are many postures of worship, and many worshipful responses. The Scriptures also say "Be still," and "Let all the earth keep silence before him." There are times when a proper response to God is to shut up and contemplate our relation to God.

On the other hand, worship is not a show. People who remain too timid to participate vocally and responsively in worship need to evaluate their role when they come to church. Worship is not merely something to come and observe. It is not primarily a filling station for getting a recharge. It is definitely not for being impressed by the music or the oratory. It is not a place to get worked up and happy. Those four things may happen, and can be good results. But worship's purpose is union with God. It is a performance, not by a preacher or choir, but by a congregation. As Kierkegaard said, God is the one who is watching, and the congregation is the cast on the stage. We all have roles. We are not an audience or observers. We are the performers.

But don't try to bully people into doing what you are doing.

Water and Wilderness

Mark 1:9-15, NRSV

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”


WATER AND WILDERNESS

I have been hearing people saying that we are in a time like no other time that they can remember. A year ago, no one wanted to say the word “recession.” Some were afraid that the mere mention of the word would somehow cause the recession to happen. Others would not say it because they did not believe it; they were confident that the economy would soon return to steady growth.

Still, the signs of trouble continued to appear, until in a shocking turn of events, we began to hear about large banks and corporations on the verge of collapse. A snowball effect followed, as lenders foreclosed on houses, businesses cut back, people lost jobs, consumption dropped, and credit tightened. Today the economy continues its decline, and people all over this congregation have been effected.

What people were timid to call a recession a few months ago has now begun to look like a depression. Yet former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said on the radio yesterday that he does not know what to call this economic situation. It is clearly like a recession, but not like other recent ones which resulted from rising inflation and high interest rates introduced to slow it down. By contrast, current interest rates have been cut to the lowest level recorded. It also shows signs of a more serious economic downturn, what has been called a depression, and unemployment is rising. But even as it has gone up significantly, it is less than one-third the percentage of the workforce that was reached during the Great Depression. This time is not quite like any time people can remember. Reich said that maybe our situation needs a new name. He joked that we could start calling it liverwurst, basically using a nonsense word, for lack of a better term. It wasn’t much of a joke, and it’s not a situation that is easy to laugh about.
Whether or not there has been a precedent for the times and conditions we face in these days, whether or not we have an accurate name for what we are going through, we will continue to face uncertainty. We will need to do some careful budgeting and belt-tightening. Some may decide it is time for polishing up the résumé and considering what is around our house that we can do without.

When the income and assets are running on the thin side, when a steady job no longer seems guaranteed, when the neighbors are packing up because they can’t keep up with their house payments, when a brother or sister needs a place to stay while laid off, then we might want to say that the place we are is kind of like a wilderness. Wilderness is an unknown place. It may be desolate, or it may be thick with vegetation, but it is a wild place. We are not used to the wilderness, and we do not know what to expect. We may not be alone, but we are not sure who our company might be. Whatever is there is watching us, even if we can’t see it. We may not know what to do next or where to turn next in the wilderness.

In a wilderness we may find ourselves to be in a situation not unlike the one Jesus was in according to the text we read from Mark’s gospel. Jesus at one time probably had a pretty steady carpentry business in Nazareth. He was the oldest son in the family, so he probably had to provide for the rest of the household, especially if Joseph was no longer living, as most readers of the Gospels believe. But by the time of the events in this passage from Mark read today, Jesus had been doing less carpentry and more traveling to talk with his cousin, John, and some dabbling at teaching and preaching. He was starting to get a reputation.

When he met John at the Jordan River, he was indicating to all who cared to pay attention that he was setting out in a new direction. The carpenter from Nazareth was becoming the itinerant prophet and teacher. It was a decision fraught with risks. Maybe he had worked out arrangements for taking care of his mother and siblings, but that must have remained a concern. He also knew how well John had borne the task of prophetic preaching, and he probably wondered how well he would take to his new work. But God the Father rewarded his faithfulness on that day with words of assurance and encouragement, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” The Holy Spirit gave a sign of a descending dove. No doubt at that moment when the loving relationships among the three persons of the Triune God were so vividly displayed, no doubt Jesus’ heart was filled with hope, peace, and joy about his determination to fulfill his Messianic calling.

What a blessing it is in those moments when we stand in the favor of our loved ones or our friends. What a blessed time when God’s favor is poured out toward us. Luke tells us that as Jesus matured toward his task in life, he grew in favor with other people and with God. This day of his baptism was a day of being surrounded by the favor of God and of the people gathered by the river. We need these moments to keep us going when the times get hard. We need them to drive us forward toward our high calling. God has work for each of us to do, and God is ready to love us all the way through that work, to supply our needs, to assure us when we are discouraged. Thank you, Lord, for all your blessings.

However, by Mark’s account of this story, and similarly in the other Gospels, Jesus did not have long to bask in his glorious moment. It says that immediately the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness. Jesus went from this moment of intense affirmation to long loneliness, a time of testing, a season of strengthening his resolve for the challenges ahead. He went out into the wilderness for forty days.

The gospel writer has packed this story with typology and allusions. Jesus went down into the waters of baptism, and he passed through them just as the children of Israel had passed through the sea under the care and the power of God. He came out of the waters to go into the wilderness, just as Israel had gone into the wilderness on their journey out of Egypt. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness, corresponding to the forty years a generation of Israel spent wandering and waiting to enter the land of promise. This time of preparation, this trial and opportunity, would make Our Lord ready for the days and months ahead. And just as Israel had endured a season of preparation and trial, Jesus now would reenact their struggle, recapitulate their pilgrimage toward the service of God. Jesus had much to face, and he would need all the strength a human being standing in the grace of God can muster.m

But the story of Israel’s road to liberation is not all the we find coming alive in Jesus’ story. Mark says he went into the water, then spent forty days among the wild beasts. Like the faithful Noah and his family, Jesus faced a daunting task. Forty days of rain and more time of waiting among the wild beasts was no vacation cruise on the ark. It was not Carnival or Princess or Royal Caribbean. Jesus’ trek into the wilderness was no easy time for him, either.
Cooped up in an ark for forty days and more, Noah certainly had time to take a long and deep look at himself. Jesus also faced his personal turmoils during these days in the wilderness. Other gospels describe some temptations that he faced: self-serving use of power, manipulation of crowds, and selling out for worldly gain. Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are, but, glory to God, he endured without sin.

Times when we find ourselves in the wilderness can bring both trials and opportunities. I have heard people talking about the current economic climate providing an opportunity for the correction of dangerous trends and habits in the economy. The overuse of credit, purchasing of houses too expensive for a family’s income, inattention to savings and pension investments, no patience to wait to buy something until one can afford it—all of these patterns of behavior were growing like cancers. In the shock of entering the wilderness of an economic crisis, some people are realizing they are getting a wake-up call. They are getting a chance to evaluate their consumption and their provision. Time in the wilderness can help us reset our priorities. We may pull off the blinders or designer shades that have been impeding our vision and get a clearer vision of living sensibly in the light of God’s calling to love and serve.

Just because we think about our lives in the wilderness times does not mean that we will automatically arrive at a better place. Sometimes, faced with the reality of our mistakes and sins, we still find no resolve to leave them behind. We fix our eyes on worldly pleasures and status rather than on the author and finisher of our faith. For the momentary thrill, we forget about the joy that is set before us. Rather than endure hardship, we try to salvage our image and keep up our bluff. When we find ourselves in the wilderness, we had better get our hearts set on the Lord so that we can come out at the other end of our sojourn on the path God has set for us, not on the path to destruction we have lusted after.

All over the world, Christians are entering the season of Lent. Lent’s historic roots come from a time of preparation before Easter, a time of catechesis, of learning, of spiritual reflection, of discipline, and of penitence. In some times and places, it was the tradition to save up all the baptisms for the year to be celebrated at Easter. So Lent is associated with baptism, with wilderness, with soul-searching, with repentance, and with preparation for glory.

Every now and then it is important for a church to stop simply going through the motions of churchy business and churchy programs and churchy bickering and maneuvering to do some repenting, some reflection, and some preparation for what the Spirit is getting ready to do in their lives. We need to thank God for the opportunity to sort out our mixed up motives and desires so that the Spirit can get us aligned and renewed on the path that follows Jesus. What is the Holy Spirit doing in and for us in this wilderness time? It would be a tragic mistake to miss the opportunity to find out.

The gospel story tells us that after his forty days in the wilderness, and after the angels ministered to him, Jesus set out to work. Everything did not go right or easy. John had been arrested. Jesus knew that this was also a warning to him, so he left Judea to get out of Herod’s reach for a while in Galilee. But he did not hide out.

He announced that changes will be coming. He said that the folks who think they are in charge are not going to be in charge around here. He said the true King, the true Caesar, was not sitting in a palace in Rome or Jerusalem. He said this ought to be good news to the poor, the oppressed, the ones who have been locked away and forgotten. But that meant it probably was not such good news to people who were making their living and career out of keeping people poor, oppressed, and locked away. Jesus said they needed to repent. He spoke hard words and shook up the status quo. He was living dangerously, and he knew that there would be a price to pay for living the truth.

It’s important that we see this boldness of Jesus’ ministry in conjunction with his baptism. It is no secret in a Baptist church that baptism is a symbol of death, burial, and resurrection. To be baptized is to die to our old life, our sinful ways, our self-centered pride. It is to enter into the death of Jesus. We are baptized into his death.

An excellent theologian has recently written about the covenantal identity which we assume when we enter into baptism. Our brother Jay Carter says that entering into Christ is first an exit. We exit our old ways, our worldly identities shaped by race, class, gender, language, and nationality. Exiting those, we enter into the covenantal identity of those who share in the true Adam, the fulfillment of Israel, the new humanity, Jesus Christ.

Thus to be baptized into Christ’s death, our sojourn in the wilderness must show forth as we walk out of an old life and walk into newness of life. It is the covenantal life we entered in Jesus. What is that life? Mark has shown us.

It is pressing on into the work when enemies are trying to derail us. It is continuing without succumbing to fear when we see how power can destroy people, even those we know and love. It is telling the world that things are going to change around here. It is bowing to no Caesar but Jesus Christ, Our Lord. It is speaking good news to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized, even when that is bad news to the powers that be. It is accepting the danger of loving one’s neighbor in a dogfight world.

What will you make of this wilderness? Whether we focus on the economic wilderness of our time or the Lenten wilderness of repentance, God’s Spirit is offering us an opportunity to draw near to God that God may draw near to us.

Perhaps you have never exited that worldly life of trying to be your own master or to be the master of others. Now may be the time that you need to step forward in faith that the one who calls you is faithful. Respond to the call of Jesus to follow him, to enter into his death and resurrected life. Come receive Christ today.

Perhaps you have been wandering and muddling in the wilderness. Or perhaps you have been busy keeping on keeping on, barely taking time to eat or breathe, and forget about sleep. But in this season of Lent, Jesus is calling out to follow him into the wilderness. Face the trials and opportunities that God’s Spirit is offering to you. If you need to come today to offer yourself in repentance and renewal, there is no better time than now to share that commitment with God’s people who are gathered here.

Someone may be here who is not now part of a local congregation. Maybe your church home is in some distant town, and you need to be sharing your life with God’s people in the place where you are living. Maybe you have found yourself stuck in a wilderness with no clear end, and you need the nourishment and strength that can only come when we bind ourselves to one another in Christian love. You need to be in a community where you can live that new life that Jesus showed us when he left the wilderness and took up his task. If the Spirit is urging you to unite with this congregation, there is no better day than today.

Bailout 13: Breaking Up the Oligarchy

An excellent analysis of the current state of the banking industry was mentioned on truthout. It comes through several layers. The interview I read was from Bill Moyers, and he was talking to an analyst whose piece he had read, MIT's Simon Johnson. Johnson participates in a blog called The Baseline Scenario. It is a pretty interesting site, and readable.

The conversation starts around Johnson's experience while working for the International Monetary Fund. He points out similarities in the current US economy to the oligarchic systems which can be found in places like Russia, Indonesia, Thailand, or Korea.

In the US, folks tend to be lulled into believing that vigorous democracy is alive and well, even though such enormous amounts of money sway elections, and the people appointed to regulate industries are mostly industry insiders. Over a decade ago, John Howard Yoder, writing about the church in relation to the modern nation-state, proposed that the US was better described as a plutocracy than a democracy. Now, with a few executives of huge corporations seemingly able to do whatever they want with huge amounts of taxpayer money, maybe Johnson is right to see an oligarchy in place. It is an excellent interview for reading or watching.

Reversing the Police State and Torture

The Patriot Act and the numerous laws and policies that have followed in its wake represent a dangerous turn in U. S. government and society. I have long criticized these laws and worked for their repeal. The Cheney-Bush policies about torture, secrecy, wiretapping, etc., have made the U. S. an ever greater symbol of repression.

I read with interest a post by Michael Westmoreland-White concerning Obama's appointments to the Justice Department. MW-W is encouraged that these high-level lawyers will turn the tide on civil liberties. I hope and pray that he is right. Thanks, Michael, for your helpful analysis.

Bailout 12: Whose Justice? Which Regulations?

The usual debates about economic policy end up gravitating toward "free market" solutions versus "government intervention." The assumption is that one side encourages regulation and the other deregulation. Dean Baker has pointed out repeatedly how this way of presenting the argument misleads, obscuring the ways that interests of different groups are served by policies. In an article from The Boston Review, he gives a more extensive argument with numerous helpful examples.

Baker claims that markets are always regulated, and most "free market" conservatives actually favor a certain kind of government regulation that protects the interests of the wealthy. He uses numerous examples, such as the cost of drugs, computer operating systems, and music protected by patent and copyright laws. These laws require extensive government involvement in industry and personal life, or regulation. He points out that arguments favoring changes in bankruptcy laws have focused on the irresponsible decisions of borrowers and created government intervention on behalf of creditors without imposing the same kind of penalties on the irresponsible decisions of the creditors who were not forced to loan money. While many industrial and service workers are unprotected from international competition, the government intervenes extensively to protect doctors, lawyers, and many other powerful professions from international competition, even though many of those regulations have nothing to do with protecting public health or order.

In relation to the recent bailout, he says that the so-called deregulation of the finance industry over recent decades failed to deregulate at a key point: it preserved the "to-big-to-fail" doctrine. Thus, as financial institutions, executives, investors, and other players took greater and greater risks on the assumption that the housing bubble would never crash, they knew that they would ultimately not be allowed to fail. After all of the carnage, those who reaped enormous profits during the boom (not just the paper profits, but the ones cashed in) get to keep their "earnings," while others (homeowners, pensioners, the uninsured, the unemployed, the taxpayers) will have to pay for the costs of their profligacy. This is a government intervention, not a free market. A purely free market solution of letting the banks fail, the insurance companies fail, and other giant corporations fail would probably have been worse. But the point is that the decision to bail out reveals that it was never a free market. It was always regulated.

Christmas Letter

We used to be very faithful senders of the "informative Christmas letter," but over the years I have found myself pressed with lots of things as December rolls around. We missed quite a few years, becoming occasional senders of greetings.

But this year Everly got us organized, and we put one together. Our mailing lists are not fully up to date, so some of the letters are coming back stamped "no such addressee." I'm sorry if we did not get letters to all the right addresses.

Here is a copy for those who are interested.

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Merry Christmas 2008

Seasons Greetings from the Durham Broadways! We hope this letter finds you well this holiday season. We missed sending a letter last year, as sometimes happens, so we will try to make up for it in this one. ☺

David is still working part time at Waldenbooks near the Broadway home in Durham. He has now moved to a house just two blocks away from the rest of the family, which he shares with two friends, some budgies, and a guinea pig. He is attending North Carolina Central University in Durham, majoring in history. He’s driving the Saturn wagon that Grandpa Herbie and Granny Ree used to own, and one of his favorite hangouts is an estate sale store called Everything but Granny’s Panties. He’s discovered vinyl LP records there, so he got a turntable to listen to them.

Naomi graduated from high school in June 2007. Spring Break of her senior year was spent with 38 other AP Biology students in Mexico and Belize. The next fall she entered St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. Majoring in Psychology, she has now spent three semesters there and is still enjoying it very much. Still dancing, she is active in the campus Ballet Folklórico and the dance ministry at First Baptist Church in Austin. This past summer she was elected to be the Young Adult representative on the Board of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and attended the first meeting in Vancouver in October 2008. She will be joining the college ministry of First Baptist on a mission trip to Chile in May 2009.

Lydia is in the 11th grade at Riverside High School. She is in an engineering program called Project Lead the Way, which has given her the chance to take courses in computer assisted drafting, digital electronics, and other specialized study. She is the secretary of the student group for engineering called Technical Students Association. She also works a couple of afternoons a week at One World Market, a fair trade craft store, where she helps with unpacking shipments, setting up displays, running the cash register, and whatever else they ask her to do. She continues to learn new skills in playing the guitar and meets her teacher once a week. At church, she is an officer in the Youth Missionaries and helps Dad in the nursery fairly often. She’s driving her car pool to school this year.

Everly is the Section Chief for Mathematics K-12 for the NC Department of Public Instruction. In case you did not hear, in August 07 she was able to go as a VIP guest of NASA to see the launch of the space shuttle, a day to remember. She put in many hours over the past year revising and completing her research at UNC. In November, she successfully defended her dissertation, completing her doctoral degree. The research is on the possibilities for improving achievement by improving the math curriculum in high schools, with a particular focus on the achievement of African American students. In October, she caught up with Mike and turned 50, and to celebrate, she and her sister Ruthie went to see the new Donny and Marie Osmond stage show in Las Vegas. They got front row seats and an opportunity for autographs and photos with Donny and Marie.

Mike continues to teach at Shaw University Divinity School and to serve at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church. This past year he has helped to revive the Faculty Senate and served as a committee chair, researching and working for equity on issues of faculty compensation. He has also been learning to organize his work around the new emphasis on assessment of student learning outcomes, a whole new set of jargon with more complicated ways of writing syllabi, assignments, and planning documents. Ugh! This past summer, Mike was invited to be a keynote speaker for the Ekklesia Project Gathering in Chicago, IL, speaking on ecclesiology, hermeneutics, and race. He also gave his Presidential Address on the concept of “whiteness” in relation to black theologies at the annual meeting of a regional group of Baptist professors. At church, he teaches middle schoolers in Sunday School, helps coordinate the nursery, and works with the community organizing (everyone knows what that is this year) group Durham CAN.

The whole family again attended the Baptist Peace Fellowship Summer Conference. The 2007 meeting was in Berea, KY, and this year in Montreal, Quebec. The girls joined Mike for the trip to Chicago this summer, and they wore themselves out visiting museums. Some of Everly’s intense writing opportunities during the past year took place at a friend’s beach house near Wilmington, and the girls tagged along to spend a few days on the beach vacationing. The 1994 Dodge van is in its final days. We replaced it with a smaller wagon for traveling, a 2008 Scion xB. The van, at 249,000-plus miles, has served us well, but it’s not really roadworthy any more. It will soon find its final rest at a local junk yard, once we stop using it as a storage container.

In their Jubilee year, Mike and Everly remember the vision of God’s Shalom for all people of the earth, and we pray that we and you may live as witness and sign of that Shalom as we give of ourselves as we have received from God’s abundance.

The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth.

For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes,

But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums.

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever—
Redemption rips through the surface of time

In the cry of a tiny babe.

-- Bruce Cockburn, “Cry of a Tiny Babe”

Bailout 11: Market Morality Won't Just Vanish

The assumption of much public policy making is that getting the money in the right place or setting up the right program will solve problems. Of course, these things can and do make a difference. However, as Cornel West argued long ago, changing the conditions of extreme poverty will not go away just by setting up programs. Nor will they go away by telling the people caught up in poverty to change their behavior. Culture and social structures are interlinked. That is why he wrote about "market morality." When social thinking becomes colonized and dominated by doctrinaire market theories, then other forms of moral vision and community begin to be eclipsed by individual self-interest. That is why West called for a "politics of conversion:" the change has to be deep and it has to be systemic.

Henry A. Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux have picked up this argument in relation to the current bailout of the economy. They recognize that new views of the economy are gaining a hearing, but they also point out that the general population has been schooled in free market thinking and its market morality. A change that renews the commitment to the common good, a belief in government's role to do good for citizens, and moral limits on individual freedom will require a process of education.

Politics is not simply about the production and protection of economic formations; it is also about the production of individuals, desires, identifications, values and modes of understanding for inhabiting the ideological and institutional forms that make up a social order. At the very least, any attempt to both understand the current crisis and what it would mean to produce a new kind of subject willing to invest in and struggle for a democratic society needs to raise another set of questions in addition to those currently posed.

Moral formation of another sort is required. Are there any communities of alternative formation that can point the direction toward a more humane vision of economic life? Churches too often have allowed the economics of the world to negate the economic vision of the Bible. We need churches to stand for an economic life in which "there are no needy among you" (Deuteronomy 15:4; Acts 4:34).

Clean Energy Jobs

Van Jones has risen to leadership in the dual struggle for a cleaner environment and an end to poverty. The founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Jones engaged in the struggle to improve the lives of young blacks in the Bay Area. Over time, he gained a new recognition of the relationship of race, poverty, and the environment, leading him to found another organization called Green for All. An excellent article, "Greening the Ghetto," tells about his ideas, his life, and the influence he is now having on public policy.

Bailout 10: Make Banks Accountable

Today's news reports that the Governor of Illinois has threatened to suspend state business with Bank of America. B of A is the bank which cut off credit to a window and door factory that has announced it will close, leading workers to sit in at the factory to demand the company pay them for accrued time.

Now the Governor of Illinois may in part be trying to distract attention from his other problems, such as being arrested on corruption charges today. However, it is about time leaders make this kind of decision to stand up to the banks which have become beneficiaries of one of the greatest wealth redistributions ever known. Public servants need to serve the public interest. Tax dollars are for the public interest. When tax dollars are provided to a private corporation in order to further the public interest in stabilizing the economy, then those private corporations must be held accountable.

That is why I wrote to my Representative, David Price, today to ask for increased oversight over banks and financial institutions who received "bailout" funds from the Department of the Treasury. The accountability was left too vague, and executives are retaining their expense accounts and euphemistically renamed "bonuses" while autoworkers are being demonized as overpaid for getting middle-class salaries, health care benefits, and retirement. I asked him to demand repayment from banks that refuse to make these funds available to support industry and jobs in the economy. If dramatic change can be demanded of GM, and I am all for that, then it can be demanded of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldmon Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and others.

Get rid of the $10 million Wells Fargo (see Bailout 9 post) severance package for one Wachovia executive and you can pay annual salary and benefits for over 100 of the better paid GM autoworkers who have mortgages to pay and families to support. Okay, let the Wachovia guy have the same amount as an autoworker. Bank of America's bailout money would be much better used if provided directly to struggling industrial producers.

Praying Before Eating, Praying Before Consuming

Our mealtime prayers precede a kind of consuming. But that word consuming has a more complex meaning related to a form of economic activity central to our culture and society. Rachel Anderson wrote an intriguing reflection on the practice of praying before consuming, tying it to this seasonal feast of shopping.

We pray in gratitude at mealtime. Are we also grateful in our other consumer activity?

We pray in humility because we are not able on our own to assure the supply of food. Are we humble in our other consumer activity?

We pray in compassion for those who made it possible for us to eat and for those who may not share our abundance. Are we compassionate toward the makers, the workers, the less prosperous, in our buying?

We pray in hope for many more good meals shared with our loved ones. Are our acts of consumption acts of hope for shared prosperity?

The idea grabs hold of me as I think back on the past few weeks of shopping for a car and shopping for gifts. Here is a portion of Anderson's essay from God's Politics.

A gratitude economy involves, I think, a more spiritually conscious consumerism. It is no better to wallow in guilt about our need to buy things than to flaunt our ability to buy while considering ourselves specially blessed. It will not advance global justice to focus simply on what not to buy; rather we also have the responsibility to buy the right things –- for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters worldwide.

As we go about our shopping or no-shopping in the next days, why not say a prayer dedicating the buying and giving and receiving and yes -– our stuff — to God?

May the food we eat feed those who farmed it. May the things we buy support those who fashioned and shipped and sold them. For everything we enjoy from your good earth, God, thank you.

And if the purchase doesn’t sit right with the prayer –- well, maybe that’s a sign to put it back on the shelf.

This is a good place to link a video I saw recently from a group called the advent conspiracy. Take a look at it. It is not a new idea, but a good presentation of ideas long promoted by people like Alternatives for Simple Living and BPFNA.

Buy Nothing Day Report

We had a good Buy Nothing Day in the cold gray weather. We had coffee, ate leftovers (including pie), ran into friends, slept late, did some organizing, walked around in downtown Asheville and made a visit to the grocery store, where we did buy something (we're not legalists).

A few friends in Philadelphia got together to announce the good news of being together and caring for one another. Here is a video they posted. Enjoy it.

Bailout 9: Will Obama's Advisers Learn from Their Own Mistakes?

The New York Times printed a good editorial expressing the reservations I share with many people about the President-Elect's chosen economic advisers. Larry Summers helped to craft the deregulation of derivatives. Timothy Geithner played a role in scheming the strange and problematic bailouts of financial institutions in the past couple of months. Neither one of them gave early warning of the housing bubble that has caused our current crisis. Will they do better next time? We must make sure our representatives know we are concerned, and let Mr. Obama know that he needs to be listening to more than the same people who were architects of a building in ruins.

Obama's critics jumped all over a phrase he used in a conversation with a plumber's assistant in Ohio. He remarked that everyone in financial difficulty, from top to bottom, would benefit together if we "spread the wealth around." Dean Baker points out that Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and the Bailout planners are busy with their own plans to "spread the wealth around." Who is using government to transfer wealth from some citizens to others? Wells Fargo, a beneficiary of the bailout (announced that ten top executives of Wachovia) the bank they were able to buy because of the bailout, would be eligible to receive an average of $10 million each for severance. That money is coming from somewhere. I thought the banks were out of funds. Oh, yeah--taxpayers have to pay it. Talk to your representatives.

Bailout 8: Who Needs a Pay Cut?

In discussions of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler during recent days, many people have sought to name the problem that has brought these automakers into such serious difficulties. Of course, the precipitating events have to do with the decline of wealth among U. S. car buyers because of the drop in home values after the housing bubble deflated. The general economic crisis that includes layoffs and fear of layoffs also led to an unprecedented drop in auto sales.

These immediate and serious causes are part of the picture, but there are other reasons. Many people believe that the next credit crisis will come in consumer debt. People have been living as if they can buy more and more things they can't afford, and lending institutions have allowed it. This is again related to the housing price bubble. If consumer debt got too large, the paper wealth of the ever increasing real estate market was the counterbalance. People could refinance consumer debt with home equity loans. So as credit card debt gets tight, people can't or won't buy a car.

Other people address the environmental and energy-efficiency issues in relation to the Big Three automakers. These companies resisted alternative energy sources, even killing previous progress on electric vehicles. They resisted fuel efficiency standards and majored on building larger gas-guzzler vehicles. Unlike some other automakers, they did not keep up the pace of developing new and better technology for automobiles. They failed to adopt a business model by which they could make strong profits from selling smaller, more efficient cars. When the volatility of gasoline prices struck, driving transportation costs higher and higher, they found themselves stuck with large numbers of vehicles that people were less and less interested in owning.

Among many other reasons given, some people have blamed the automakers' problems on unionized workers. Certainly the benefit plans and retirement plans for these workers are expensive. But most of the attacks on the union workers' wages hid or ignored important facts.

For instance, the highest paid auto workers in the U. S. last year worked for Toyota building Camrys, not for GM. The worker pay differential between companies selling cars in the U. S. is changing. That does not, however, mean that all non-union auto factories in the U. S. are paying comparable wages. It does mean that it is possible to pay high wages, comparable to or greater than the union wages paid to GM workers, and make great profits.

Second, it targets union workers and not other potential candidates for pay cuts in the industry. Who else is getting good pay in the auto industry? Why not cut their pay? As Congressional questioners wondered, why not cut corporate jets for the executives?

Dean Baker makes this point well when he addresses the case of Robert Rubin, an economist who is having a great deal of opportunity to speak about how to solve the current economic crisis. Rubin worked in the Clinton administration, and his allies are being named as Obama advisers. But in January of this year, he said that the economy's struggles would not lead to any serious problems, and certainly no economic meltdown.

Baker points out that Rubin was interim CEO of Citigroup, and that he remains an executive and a director of the corporation that the government bailed out again over the weekend. He was part of the leadership who oversaw the bad loans and the risks of an inflated housing market. Even farther back, he was a central figure in U. S. economic institutions during the dot.com bubble that led to the last recession. Baker asks why with all the hoopla about GM autoworker wages, no one is asking whether Robert Rubin will be taking a pay cut. Who needs a pay cut when corporations are struggling? Why not the executives who helped lead the corporation into their crises?

Close the SOA/WHINSEC

On Saturday evening, Lydia (my 16-yr-old daughter) and I made the long trip to Georgia to participate in a solemn prayer vigil and protest. We met my other daughter, Naomi, who came from Texas, and a friend named Frances from Louisiana.


We gathered outside the gates of Ft. Benning with thousands of other people. You can view a news report from a local station in Columbus, GA.


Our purpose was to convince the Pentagon, Congress, and the President that the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation must be closed. This training school, known in Latin America as the "School of Assassins," has funded "anti-insurgency" courses for officers and soldiers of the militaries of Latin American countries for over sixty years.

Banished from Panama as "the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America," the school was relocated to Ft. Benning, in Columbus, GA. There it continued its work on behalf of multinational corporations and U. S. interests, training the Latin American militaries to repress movements for greater democratization and economic restructuring. After shocking news of murder and repression in Central American countries in the 1980s, especially El Salvador and Guatemala, many U. S. citizens awakened to the role of the School of the Americas in exporting violence and torture to neighboring countries. Heinous crimes against church leaders, educators, labor organizers, and entire villages of peasants were being ordered, led, and committed by graduates trained at the SOA. In El Salvador, among the thousands of victims were Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered while conducting mass; four Maryknoll Mission church women; and a household of priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, including Father Ignacio Ellacuria, a well-known theologian.


Church people and other protests became increasingly organized to close this training school.


One key point in the campaign was the discovery of a training manual which included instructions for employing torture as a way to prevent insurgency. As the movement brought pressure on Congress to close the SOA, eventually the possibility of its being shut down became realistic. In a bureaucratic and legislative sleight of hand, the Pentagon and Congress finally cut off funding for the SOA, closing it down in the final days of the Clinton presidency. However, it was immediately replaced by WHINSEC (a much harder abbreviation to parody), using the same buildings, the same faculty, the same courses, and empowered for the same purposes. Even thought the military "closed the SOA," the effort to end its exporting of torture and violence had to continue.

After the Abu Ghraib photos became public and discussion of the use of torture by U. S. government or military officials came into public debate, the momentum again began to build to close the SOA. At the vigil and protest that year, I displayed a sign asking, "Do you believe us now?" Yes, it is possible that the U. S. government may promote torture as a tool of policy.

In 2006, the effort to end funding for SOA/WHINSEC fell short by a mere six votes. Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich announced his plans to shut down the SOA, and thirty-five of the Congressional Representatives who voted to continue funding for the SOA in 2006 were defeated in the recent election. The President-Elect has announced plans to close the Guantanamo detention facility, but he has not taken any public stand about closing the SOA.

I encourage you to sign the petition to the next President to close this school by executive order. I also urge you to write to your Congressional Representative, asking her or him to vote against any further funding for the SOA/WHINSEC.

This year the sign I held during the vigil said, "LET 2008 BE OUR LAST TIME." If you look at the news report video I mentioned above, about two-thirds of the way through you can see my hand lift this sign up in the middle of the screen.


I hope you will help make that happen.

Buy Nothing Day

There's nothing like an economic crisis to get us thinking about our spending. Reports on retail sales indicate many people are cutting back on spending. Wal-Mart and Costco are still making good profits, so it seems that the people who are shopping are inclined to hunt for bargains. The advertisements are getting thicker and rowdier in my newspaper and my mailbox. SALE! SALE! SALE! A Target commercial on TV has little children acting in a school Christmas pageant about going shopping.


As we approach the end of this Christian year and the beginning of the next with Advent, we find ourselves living in conflicting times. The standard calendar, the Christian calendar, the school calendar, and the shopping calendar are out of sync. Advent tells us to pause and reflect, awaiting what God will do. School tells us to burrow in and study, finish projects, and pull all-nighters. Shopping tells us that Christmas is the high festival of consumption, and we must offer sacrifices at the malls and department stores for a month in advance, especially on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving Day.

In an effort to recover some sanity about this time of year, a variety of groups have renamed Black Friday as "Buy Nothing Day." Rather than get caught up in a feeding frenzy of shopping, they say to use this day for family time, doing things together, playing games, telling stories, serving others. An entry in the God's Politics Blog suggests using the day to make things rather than buy things. Give some thought to making a different use of the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Bailout 7: Cheering on the Road to Destruction

When we think about the economic situation we find ourselves in, it is amazing that so few people had noticed that it was coming. Certainly there were people concerned about sub-prime mortgages, and now and then someone would suggest there was a "housing bubble." People debated whether the stock market was on a long downward trend or just a temporary decline. Many predicted a rosy future as economic skittishness passed on by and people got back to spending more money than they have.

A viral video showed up this week with clips of business news programs in which various analysts discussed the direction of the economy in 2006 and 2007. The theme of these clips was a certain analyst named Peter Schiff who was predicting a severe recession because of the inflated prices of homes and stocks. He said a long and serious recession was about to come. He said to stay away from financial stocks because these companies were not making any money. He said that people would see their assets dissolving as "paper wealth" went back up into thin air. They would respond by stopping their spending and borrowing and starting to save money to make up for the lost paper wealth they thought they had in their overpriced homes. He said it would not be merely a subprime mortgage problem, but most of the housing market would crash, people would default in record numbers, unemployment would soar, and credit would dry up.

All the while, these clips show business reporters recommending people buy stock in Merrill Lynch ("an astonishingly well-run company"), Washington Mutual, Goldman Sachs, and even Bear Stearns. They continually laughed at Peter Schiff's claims that these companies were terrible investments which would soon crash because they have no real earnings.

Well, we don't know if he got everything right about what was coming, but one thing is clear. There were people who could see this crising coming, and there were people wearing rosy tinted glasses who insisted that every day things would gett better and better. Much like the dot.com bubble and crash, they were operating in what seems now to be a kind of hysteria, mutually reinforcing one another's willful ignorance. They were not reporters, but promoters of borrowing and spending, without concern for saving money. It was very poor wishful thinking, and perhaps even for some, a kind of dissembling.