Would Jesus Do Davos?

I have always viewed the annual Davos gathering as a somewhat sickening self-congratulatory love-fest on the part of the world's rich and famous. There is much talk about throwing a few crumbs to the neediest along with assurances that the capitalist juggernaut will deliver prosperity for all by and by.

Viewed through the eyes of faith, however, there is something deeply evil about this spectacle. After all, these are in part the same folks who the great unwashed (who would never be welcomed there) have bailed out to the tune of trillions. However much we could not afford decent food, housing, education or medical care for the masses, when the same was required for the world's elites, we ponied up the cash without a whimper. And now, having survived with our largesse, they have traveled by private jet in order to bless us with their wisdom.

The unavoidable conclusion, however, is that they have very little wisdom to bless us with. If their moral bankruptcy was not evident before the events of the last two years it certainly is now.

So enjoy this Swiss scenery, excellent food and wine and palatial accomodations But please spare us the advice.

Inflation? Not!

So here is the mighty inflation juggernaut in Canada:

Economic growth in Canada resumed in the third quarter of 2009 and is expected to have picked up further in the fourth quarter. Total CPI inflation turned positive in the fourth quarter and the core rate of inflation has been slightly higher than expected in recent months. Nevertheless, considerable excess supply remains, and the Bank judges that the economy was operating about 3 ¼ per cent below its production capacity in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Canada's economic recovery is expected to evolve largely as anticipated in the October MPR, with the economy returning to full capacity and inflation to the 2 per cent target in the third quarter of 2011. The Bank projects that the economy will grow by 2.9 per cent in 2010 and 3.5 per cent in 2011, after contracting by 2.5 per cent in 2009.

The factors shaping the recovery are largely unchanged - policy support, increased confidence, improving financial conditions, global growth, and higher terms of trade. At the same time, the persistent strength of the Canadian dollar and the low absolute level of U.S. demand continue to act as significant drags on economic activity in Canada. On balance, these factors have shifted the composition of aggregate demand towards growth in domestic demand and away from net exports. The private sector should become the sole driver of domestic demand growth in 2011.

Conditional on the outlook for inflation, the target overnight rate can be expected to remain at its current level until the end of the second quarter of 2010 in order to achieve the inflation target. Consistent with this conditional commitment, the Bank will continue to conduct term Purchase and Resale Agreements based on existing terms and conditions.

In other words, absent government spending at all levels, we have deflation and negative growth. And this will be the case for at least another year. This would suggest to me that equity markets will be a wild ride to nowhere for at least that period of time, with the possibility (likelihood?) of a substantial correction. Until there is a correction I think my money stays in safe, boring public sector bonds.

Our Work Matters, Even When it Doesn't "Work"

Andrew Sullivan, quoted this morning from Thomas Merton's Letter to a Young Activist. It is worth reading in full:

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell you the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

…The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them, but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your even thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come, not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through youwithout your knowing it.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth; and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration, and confusion.

The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand . . .

Inflation? Not Yet

With all of the hand-wringing about inflation worries in the face of rising public debt, it seems that Nouriel Roubini, the one person who has called this crisis right, is still concerned about deflation. From his site on January 22,

. . . a rally in stocks may end in the second half of the year amid a muted recovery in the world’s largest economies and as deflationary pressures limit gains in corporate earnings.

While much of the talk is about rising interest rates and governments facing higher carrying costs, the action appears to be toward safe positions in public sector debt.

Follow the money!

To Protect and Serve -- Not Cheat

Far too often, we look the other way with police misconduct. If they cut corners, bend the truth and mistreat the odd suspect, we don't want to know. So this story from the Washington Post is quite heartening. Yes it is the U.S.. But are things really that different here?

Gene Weingarten describes his experience in one very minor case this way:

As a juror, I was skeptical. As a citizen, I was angry. For one thing, I was mad about the whole case -- the bewildering amount of police time and taxpayer money spent on prosecuting one guy for selling $10 worth of narcotics. But as a juror, I felt it was not my business to object to that. I would have been willing to convict a defendant despite those misgivings.

The police testimony was another matter. As witnesses, the officers had been supremely self-assured, even cocky; clearly, they'd been through this hundreds of times. As they passed the jury before and after testimony, they greeted us winningly. One of them winked at us, almost imperceptibly. Their testimony was clear, concise, professional and, in my view, dishonest.

I believe they feel themselves to be warriors fighting the good fight against bad people who have the system stacked in their favor. I believe they knew they had the right guy and were willing to cheat a little to assure a conviction.

I believe they had the right guy, too. But the willingness to cheat, I think, is a poisonous corruption of a system designed to protect the innocent at the risk of occasionally letting the guilty walk free. It's a good system, fundamental to freedom. I think a police officer willing to cheat is more dangerous than a two-bit drug peddler.

In his charge to the jury, the judge made it clear that if we found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt -- which I had -- it was our duty to convict. I was prepared to defy these instructions and acquit, in the interest of a greater good. There is actually a term for this: "jury nullification." I was going to nullify. But I was pretty sure that in my absence, the remaining 12 would convict.

The first sign that I was wrong came just minutes after I was dismissed. The other alternate told me that she, too, felt that the defendant was guilty but that the police had lied; in her mind, the lying created reasonable doubt. She, too, would have acquitted.

Back home, I waited for word of a verdict. It didn't come. At the end of the day, after four hours of deliberations over a $10 drug bust, the deadlocked jury was sent home for the night. They came back the next day and tried again. More hours passed. In the end, they pronounced themselves hopelessly hung. A mistrial was declared.

I later spoke with one of the jurors, who told me they had been split, 10 for acquittal and two for a guilty verdict. Many of them had simply mistrusted the eyes. They didn't believe he could have possibly seen the ginger ale bottle or the v-neck or the key, and they felt his apparent willingness to lie had tainted the prosecution's whole case.

The prosecution seemed to get the message. On Friday, they said they would not refile the charges. The defendant is now free.

I'm proud of our jury system. I can't say the same about our police.

Lives are destroyed by this kind of casual brutality. We not only have a right but a duty to prevent this where we can. It is a source of real hope when citizens are willing to push back in order to make the justice system truly just.

Flat Out Amazing Bluegrass

Enjoy!

Hooray for the CBC

Ya gotta love the people's network. On their flagship 6:00 p.m. news tonight, they announced that the Senate election in Massachusetts this week had caused the Democrats to lose their Senate majority.

Currently, the Democrats have a 59-41 majority. What they lost was their 60 seat, filibuster proof "supermajority" that they had enjoyed over the past year. They still control both Senate and House, which should allow a competent administration to implement much of its agenda.

So Who Does Make Policy?

Doug Sanders has an interesting opinion piece in today's Globe & Mail on the evolution of Canadian foreign policy that is well worth the read. There was one aside, however, that caught my eye and that I think is worth direct comment. As Sanders tells it

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had just been elected into an Afghan war whose approach had been engineered by then chief of the defence staff Rick Hillier. By deploying a large force to the most dangerous corner of Afghanistan, he believed he could create an image – and possibly also a reality – of military strength and competence.

Mr. Harper, recognizing that Canada itself faced a declining image in the world, appears to have decided to extend this technique into the broader realms of foreign policy.

This would suggest that one of Canada's leading columnists and the paper that he works for believe that, and are untroubled by the belief, that General Hillier largely shaped a policy of unprecedented military intervention. We are not some tinpot Latin American dictatorship. Our generals, however well meaning, do not make policy. Our elected representatives do. While we honour the service of our armed forces, we do not put them in charge.

This is not a minor point. Control of the policy process by elected representatives and civilian control of the military are foundation stones of democracy. Mr. Sanders should know better.

Pity the Poor Banks

From the tone of articles in yesterday's and today's Report on Business you would think the Bolshevik vanguard had occupied Wall Street and that revolution was at hand.

The fact is that a key element in the Obama administration's hesitant and belated efforts to reign in the banks was Paul Volcker, Fed Chairman under that noted lefty, Ronald Reagan.

The ineptitude and self-defeating behavior of the banks in the period leading up to the debacle of the past couple of years imposed huge costs on society as a whole. Governments exist in large part to protect citizens from such spillover effects.

Whether through regulation, direct control or the breaking up of institutions "too large to fail", our governments have a duty to prevent and where this fails to alleviate the catastrophic effects of the behavior of the few on the many, whether it is from airplanes flying into buildings or bankers engaging in dubious activities with implicit public backing.

We have spent trillions to rescue these clowns from their own lunacy. At the very least we owe it to ourselves to put measures in place that prevent a repeat, at least in the short term.

Ride the Rocket

Our TTC employees are hard at work, eager to serve you . . .

Taken a couple of weeks ago, now gone viral. Its everywhere, but I couldn't resist.

Words to Live By

John W. Gardner was Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. This quote of him is from Sojomail's Verse and Voice

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

When Not to Call Your Litigation Guy

Some fun from BoingBoing

Dorothy Day on Faith and Politics

Seventy five years ago, Dorothy Day, a former communist, suffragette and political agitator and peace activist teamed up with Peter Maurin to found The Catholic Worker. While they didn't change the world, they and those who worked with them showed the world how to live out the gospel in an authentic way. Here is an interview of Dorothy Day from the 1970s, toward the end of her life, talking about the origins of the Catholic Worker.

A Post-Despair Politics?

I came across the following reader comment on Andrew Sullivan's site earlier today:

This is yet another email from an Obama supporter who has lost all hope. I will no longer vote in national elections, because it is clear to me now that my vote for president or senator are worthless. A handful of morons in (insert a state here) invalidate my choice because the Senate is ruled by 5-6 Senators that refuse to face tough choices that need to be made to avoid a financial catastrophe in 10 years. There will be NO health care bill passed and the raging idiots will blame the Democrats and vote the Republicans in a landslide in November 2010. Forget about the REALLY tough problems like the debt, Social Security, moving away from our dependence on foreign energy supplies, etc. If Congress can't get it's collective shit together to pass a bill that attempts to fix a problem EVERYONE agrees on, then all hope is lost.

Obama can't change this. The country has exactly the government it deserves: fat, stupid and lazy. Built to respond to the 24-hour news cycle and a singular goal of protecting seats in the next election. Obama is a one termer. I hate writing that, but it's true. Republicans will put up some populist puff piece in 2012 and he's going to win.

I'm done.

I feel this about the political process most of the time. In Canada, a Defense Minister and former Chief of Defense Staff stand accused of war crimes by what appears to be a credible source. The response of the Prime Minister is first to denigrate the source and then prorogue Parliament to prevent further inquiry. The opposition, which has the power to bring down this government at will does nothing. That opposition is led by a world-renowned human rights scholar.

Who would want to be a part of this?

The more important question for me is, if this arena no longer permits authentic political action, then where might such action occur? I don't have a ready answer for this, but I think it is an important question to raise.

I will vote in the next election, which we desperately need sooner rather than later, but I am not sure how much of my energy I want to put to something pretty much guaranteed do make little difference. Yet I think as we withdraw from the formal political process we owe it to ourselves to re-engage somewhere else. If we don't, the bastards really do win.

More Ideology from our Central Bank

From today's Globe&Mail, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is joining the chorus of voices warning that robust economic growth, which is still just around the corner, will be choked off by high interest rates brought about by heavily indebted governments and a rebounding private sector.

Meanwhile, the markets are tanking, and if my investments are any indication, nervous money is heading back to public debt. To my suspicious mind, there is more than a hint of ideology here. The private sector, and particularly the financial sector are worried about greater government presence in the economy. Given their performance over the past couple of years, this is surely understandable. But as Paul Krugman, among many others have been continually reminding us, there is presently no danger of crowding out, nor will there be until there really is a robust recovery underway -- something that seems to remain a remote recovery. Indeed, as the Globe article noted:

At a press conference after releasing his report, Mr. Carney said the pickup in growth will help reduce unemployment and that he sees “gradual improvement” in the labour market now that the “deterioration has stopped.” Canada's economy lost about 400,000 jobs over the course of the recession, he said.

Still, growth will retreat to 2.2 per cent by the fourth quarter of 2011, lower than the bank's October forecast of 2.5 per cent for that three-month period. Mr. Carney said at his press conference that the “new normal” for economic expansion after 2011 won't be “much north of 2 per cent,” as the population ages and because of subpar worker productivity.

The central bank projected that the savings rate among U.S. households will rise to more than 6 per cent over the next two years from a low of 1.2 per cent in early 2008, before the financial crisis traumatized U.S. consumers.

See a risk of inflation or crowding out here? Neither do I. An overheated economy is a fantasy at this point.

Hard Times at Goldman Sachs

From Bloomberg today comes news that Goldman Sachs has set aside $16.2 billion for compensation. This represents more than profits for the year and more than a third of revenues. As the report notes:

The amount, 35.8 percent of revenue, is enough to pay each of the 32,500 employees $498,246. That compares with an average pay of $316,928 a year earlier and is down from the record $661,490 in 2007.

Goldman Sachs, which set a Wall Street pay record in 2007, has been pilloried for its pay practices after getting taxpayer aid during the financial crisis. In response, the company subtracted $519 million in the fourth quarter from the compensation fund set aside during the year and instead made donations to a firm philanthropy.

“It’s still a really big number,” Jon Fisher, who helps manage $18.25 billion as a portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Minneapolis, said before the earnings today. “That has a shock factor and gets people’s ire up and really irritates politicians.”

No shit!

We are constantly told that we need to pay these amounts to retain talent. What talent? These masters of the universe almost destroyed the world economy, swindled governments out of enough money to solve every social ill on the planet and now want to be rewarded for their stellar performance?

Years ago, televangelist Jimmy Swaggert climbed a flagpole and announced he would die up there unless doners ponied up half a million dollars. I felt that this was the ultimate "win-win" situation -- lose Swaggert and save a whole bunch of money.

I think we have the same opportunity now. If they can find greener pastures elsewhere, we are all better off. And we can save money. Lots of it. It gets no better than that.

Kate McGarrigle

Kate McGarrigle passed away yesterday, far too young at age 63. The mother of Rufus and Martha Wainright, she was with her sister Anna part of a folk phenomena that captured the captured the spirit of a very different Quebec in the 1960s and 70s. Here is one of their better known songs, Heart Like a Wheel:

Judi Chamberlain -- Consumer Survivor

Long-time consumer survivor activist Judi Chamberlain passed away on Sunday. Her book, On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System, shaped and defined a movement.

In the early 1990's the Rae government in Ontario tried to put these ideas into play. Though these efforts were largely captured by more entrepreneurial professionals and damaged by a government that lacked the moral courage to follow through on helping some of our most vulnerable citizens, they made a difference.

More important, the book and the movement that it spawned gave those who had been mauled by the psychiatric industry the tools to fight back and to help themselves. Though much remains to be done, her presence made a real difference in the lives of many, many people.

The Moral Arc of the Universe Bends Toward Justice

While waiting for my paper of Desmond Tutu's God Has a Dream, I have been reading the Google version online. I thinks this is as profound an antidote to despair as I have seen.

This is a moral universe, which means that despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word. God is a God who cares about right and wrong. God cares about justice and injustice. God is in charge. That is what upheld the morale of our people, to know that in the end good will prevail. It was these higher laws that convinced me that our peaceful struggle would topple the immoral laws of apartheid.

As Tutu knows, our side is the winning side. Pragmatic acquiescence to injustice, for whatever reason, is always ultimately a losing strategy. The bad never serves the greater good.