Thinking of you here in Sweden. Lord Byron once went to Greece at another turbulent time, we may yet see solidarity of the same sort from Citizens of the world who realise Greeces Chains today are ours tomorrow.

´´This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And leaving nothing, yet hath all´´.
Lord Byron

So the banks create money when they make loans on fractional reserves. And banks are supposed to weigh the risks of the lending that they do. And part of that weighing is in an estimate of the viability of the enterprise that the borrower is engaged in.
It has been my belief for some time that the availability of energy as the basic input to the economic machine is what allows the money supply to expand gracefully. The money supply can be manipulated but unless the economy can accept the increase the manipulation will result in imbalances and sharp corrections. I think this is what has happened over the last decades as the price of oil has gone up.
Ever country in the world is trying to manipulate their own currency supply and to stimulate debt creation and it has gone into paper instruments and finance because the real economy is constrained by the availability of energy.
Will the natural gas availability stimulate a paradoxical inflation by an increase in real economic activity and a commensurate increase in demand for debt as the banks are overcapitalized and interest rates are on the rise?
If inflation is dead why are bonds selling off so hard? If it is just the support of central banks that has been taken away they will soon stabilize if deflation is indeed the case.
Wait and see.

Gemma, I was not criticizing you when I complimented you for complexifying your thought. On the contrary, you did not make it less “clear”, you made it more clear in the previous comment.
This discussion is very interesting to me, as you are helping me to clarify… my own positions on this subject, and this would not be possible.. or less possible.. without our discussion.
Toby and I have a long going discussion in Econosophy about the results of the.. corruption of Cartesian thought, which has now been.. reduced to a vulgar binary opposition.
Our ancestors, among whom.. Descartes, were able to think of their human world in a trinitarian system where mind/body/ AND SOUL were intricated.
You will note that our modernity has axed the third term.. soul (I think) to make a binary system from which soul is excluded.
Descartes’ famous.. dualism of mind/body is not dualism at all, to the extent that his system rests on the postulate/rock of God.
But.. Descartes’ system without the third term is particularly… alienating to my mind.
And it is particularly difficult for us to understand how we.. fit everything together, between mind/soul/body at this point in time.
Jesus seemed to have few illusions about the possibility of eliminating poverty in society.
So.. rather than looking to eliminate poverty, he looked for ways to subvert readily accepted prejudices about the.. paradise of being rich, by finding value in… poverty.
We have been busy undoing this legacy, I fear, with our.. good intentions.
I still maintain that Jesus made a mistake in excluding money from his daily life, and delegating/relegating the task to someone else.
Because money is not inherently evil, Gemma, and monetary transactions are not inherently evil.
What is.. evil ? is reducing human exchanges to assign SOLE VALUE to the monetary transaction, and the accompanying price tag. (That is what I mean by idolatry of filthy lucre. Idolatry in the biblical sense, moreover.)
For whatever reason, moreover, and even the more so, if the reason is… for the best intentions in the world…
This judgment made from within the Judeo-Christian paradigms of value.
Outside of them.. things can be, and are, seen from a different perspective…

Debra

Sorry to hear that your Dad left the stage early. It must have been very tough on you as he appears from the sketch you have drawn of him to have been painted in primary colours & as I have recently discovered, it is hard to lose someone that has been a constant presence from childhood, even if a sometimes distant one

As to a good way to go, if a person is loved I don’t think there is such a thing. It was in one way a relief when my Dad finally let go as his demons had decided to join the last supper. A combination of 3 brain tumours, medication & I think, lack of nutrition had him conjuring up many monsters such as sniggering rotting zombies who somehow managed fit in the bed he & my Mother shared. Mum had me delete some photos she took on one of these ghastly nights for proof of his behaviour – Despite doing this quickly, I now have an image of him as death’s head demon.Fortunately I had timed an earlier visit to perfection, one in which we said goodbye, held hands & laughed at those awful incidents which fall under the category of ‘ We will laugh about this one day ‘.. My Dad the once tallest thing on earth somehow shining although reduced to a small helpless physical version of himself will be on the cover page.

My dad wrote for many years all about his early life, & times in the army. He never finished this work -I suspect he did it in an attempt to make sense of his life. He had a very troubled early life due mainly to his Dad’s almost complete absence due to Hitler & consequent events within the family due to that fact. Mainly it seems due to experiences in Burma & a lost wife he loved, Grandad Albert returned as a shadow which eventually drowned in alcohol.

My own relationship with my Father was troubled, I think this was mainly down to the fact that while he was away in the army serving 2 years national service, I as the firstborn of a generation was having my every need attended to by an adoring collection of lovely females. I do not think I ever forgave him for disturbing this domestic bliss with his hob nailed boots & loud voice.

once fully returned he took it on himself to toughen me up, resulting in him, about 16 years later ending up in hospital with badly bruised ribs due to me punching him twice to stop him strangling me. ( This was one of the incidents we laughed about ). I was also at this time a member of a local gang & a football hooligan. fortunately we only harmed each other & mainly ran around like idiots on adrenaline highs, unlike the far right hard core who I later came to despise. At the age of 19 due to a near miss from a broken glass aimed at my jugular, i changed my lifestyle.

I became a ‘ New Man ‘ when I was presented with a daughter at age 23. My then wife earned more than me, which meant I was able to spend a wonderful period attending to this little miracle’s every need while I kept house & sold a few drawings & posters. I learnt to cook much later when my wife developed cancer. However I am sure these things did not emasculate me as during this period I fractured my now very twisted little finger twice more.

I am no pacifist but I hate these wars branded with the lies of ‘ democracy & freedom ‘, but I truly despise those who send these young men & women off to do their murdering for them. At least their was I think, justification for Grandad Albert’s war against Hitler & the then lunatic Japanese, but aside from the weapons of mass destruction which are owned by the so called good guys, we now also have weapons of mass financial destruction, & these two evils are aided & abetted by weapons of mass distraction.

http://gawker.com/i-am-sorry-that-it-has-come-to-this-a-soldiers-last-534538357

My Dad’s death has concentrated my mind on how much time I have left, a time in which my physical & mental capabilities will inevitably diminish. Although I am for the most part happy with my lot & do not regret losing my previous much more affluent lifestyle due to the 2008 crash, my ‘ Wish i knew then what I know now ‘ & bad timing, I now regret the time spent sleeping as there are many things I would like to do. I fear a possible World where those with something to say in whatever form are crushed under the treadmill of either war or just the tyranny of making ends meet, while a bunch of barren power & money grubbers once again lord it over us.

I suppose if life is a fight the later rounds are the hardest but because I have those fundamentals that are needed to make life worth living I am still up for it & will persevere in at least in being true to myself – There is a part of me that enjoys the struggle & I now know what really matters, at least to me. I like this place & the virtual company, I also like it’s moral foundation laid down by David & I have enjoyed your sparring with Gemma who is a Facebook pal of mine – I admire her straight talking as I also admire others who populate these pages who know a hell of a lot more about high finance than I do.

So there you go, you shouldn’t encourage me, I now have to inhabit a small death, as for the large death I hope that mankind’s intuition that there is something else proves valid, otherwise I will stick to what Woody Allen’s Dad said regarding death in the film ‘ Hannah & her sisters ‘, he said something like ‘ i will be unconscious, if not I will worry about it then ‘. I also have my own fusion of cherry picked Buddhism & the ‘ Many Worlds theory ‘ which I hang onto. I wont give any details as I am scared that someone will pick a large hole in my faith of sorts.

Fare thee well Debra & as you have obviously got it, make sure you flaunt it.

I have no problem with you seeing the powerful effect of gifts. I see it myself, have done it for no better reason than to give hope to someone.

Only – let me say this. Firstly you see me as having made my thoughts less clear. You cannot see the world as I do, or you would see what brings these scattered examples together. That does not mean that you never will, it means that right now you don’t. The powers of thinking are seductively circular – and breaking out of that is astonishingly difficult. It’s like Chuang Tzu’s asking what one hand clapping sounds like.

Now: we all think we live in the physical, material (read mineral) realm. So let us look at what we buy with money. We feel hungry – we buy a banana and ten minutes later no hunger, no banana and no money. We’re bored and can’t think of anything to do, we buy a video as comfort. We have bought something that brings us a feeling – entertainment in this case. A diversion from the world we would be bored with watching.

That is to say, everything we do with money – a physical transaction of one kind or another – brings us some kind of experience.

the lack or the fulfillment of some need. Those needs may be materially based (hunger) or may be based on things that are less material – envy, selfishness or pride. The point is that you FEEL hungry. You don’t not feel hungry, you get bored or watch the video you bought.

Jesus made no assumptions. If we think he was wrong, it is we that must discover where our thinking is wrong. He wasn’t the Logos incarnate for nothing.

As to restricting human interaction by not handling money – not handling money does not restrict human interactions one iota. That one person refuses to share what they have with a poor and hungry man because he cannot pay only shows that they value their own wealth above another person’s suffering. Where is their humanity? Their need for human interaction (money interaction) has made them inhuman! Unable to interact with one in a situation they would hate to find themselves in. That is in and of itself corruption of the first order – and all because of money!

Jesus was right to keep well clear of it.

Thank you for complexifying your thought, Gemma.
I understand why you talk about, why you believe that a gift freely given, for example, does not incur a disadvantage.
Ironically enough, perhaps you will think that this is hubris, but I see evidence of the power of the gift freely given every day, and how much it can change human relationships, in the way that Jesus also understood this.
But… and this is a big but, Gemma…
Over time, I have come to believe that much of the suffering in our world comes from our desire to live life EXCLUSIVELY on ONE plane, not imagining that life exists, our social lives, and personal lives, on multiple, simultaneous planes, or spaces. (Thus, true, while each leaf, each.. cell is unique in place and time, each also belongs to the category “cell”, and its unique character risks being effaced behind the category. Whether or not it is.. effaced depends on my (and others’) capacity to flesh out (yoopee, that is a good choice of words..) my/their categories, and not reduce them to dusty, generalized abstractions in living room discussions.
And I firmly believe, at this point in time, that Jesus HISTORICALLY made some tragic assumptions that we are still paying for.
Refusing to handle money is an example of the desire to restrict human.. intercourse, and EXCLUDE the monetary plane/place.
And Jesus’s story ended tragically, from my point of view, because… what you exclude, Gemma, comes back to haunt you with a vengeance, in ways that you don’t immediately realize.
This is knowledge/wisdom that has come to me personally through great suffering, and I have seen this phenomenon at work in others, as I worked as a shrink for a while.
What you.. reject, and refuse.. to it, you give ENORMOUS power in your life, and over you.
The Western World remains.. haunted by Jesus’s attitude towards money, and our.. economies are still thrashing around because of Jesus’s.. ambivalence ? towards… commerce/money ?
My position on this, ironically enough, Gemma.. is very.. Jewish…
Rational, to a very great extent, moreover.
On freely given gifts incurring no disadvantages..
perhaps ON THE PLANE where the freely given gifts are given, they incur no disadvantages, and this is.. a good thing, as Jesus found, demonstrated, and taught.
But… on the other planes, Gemma ??
From my perspective.. Jesus’s life and work was a freely given gift.
But… the Church fathers themselves, who were the brightest and best of Antiquity, said “the corruption of the greatest good creates the greatest evil.”
This, too, I have found, after looking hard at the world, and trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff…
Because corruption is the way of the world, Gemma, from my perspective.
There is.. NO WAY AROUND IT.
Now, the wise man or woman takes corruption into account, and turns his tongue in his mouth seven times before opening it.
From this perspective… Jesus was NOT wise..
In my opinion.
Or rather… perhaps his disciples, and Paul… were particularly foolish, because… Jesus wrote nothing down.
THAT was wise…

Nice to read you again, stevie finn.
You know you are a writer, right ? (Excuse me for repeating myself, I have a longstanding hole in my head.)
For your Dad…
Is there really a good way to go ?
My Dad left me at 57, from a heart attack, because he lived life too fast. He was a man’s man in a world being taken over by women, in my opinion.
It’s hard to tell what courage and virility are in this Disneyland world.
The young men in blue are trying to find themselves… as men, and they need to.
And… what made.. US lose so much faith about the justification of their battles ? The, uh.. NUMBERS of the dead, maybe ? (Yes, well, less technology means.. fewer dead at one whack, at any rate. The.. disadvantages of those advantages are mind boggling.)
I am reading “Les Adieux à la Reine”, by Chantal Thomas.
Prior to that much touted French Revolution, which is at the origin of the initially German word, “communism”, men NEVER presented themselves in military accoutrement at Court.
It was… a breach of etiquette, because it was necessary to keep up.. appearances. Strutting your stuff, “rouler les mécaniques” as we say in French, was considered vulgar, and ungentlemanly.
Appearances are very important.
To all appearance.. and from a certain point of view.. your skin is an appearance as it HIDES all the hardware behind it, and keeps you from being.. transparent.
What did Duncan say in “Macbeth” ? “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. He (Cawdor) was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.” (I, iv, 12)
Appearances can be deceitful, but they are indispensable.
Back to Versailles, which must have mingled the consummately beautiful with the ills of.. head lice, for example. (I have seen the embroidery, and J. Alfred Prufrock’s wife couldn’t have managed it.)
Thinking about the lovely dead young men I muse that the more we stave off the grim reaper, the more we shove him/her under the carpet, the more the tab runs up…
And then, when the grim reaper presents the bill, it is.. astronomical…
Too much hubris these days.
I too, am rambling, my lyrical friend.
And maybe… strutting my stuff a little bit ? 😉

I apologize for irritating you. However a comment is a small space – and ideas are not always easy to compress into them.

If you feel that I breezed over your comment, you are wrong. If I misinterpreted it, that is then partly my fault. What I did not do was answer all the points you raised.

As to price tags – here in the west they are tied to money in a strict manner. That is to say, the numbers on them is what you pay. However, there is a danger here: the very concept of a number is an illusion. We live in a world where every leaf is unique. Yet oak leaves look the same and so we can say that we have three of them. They remain different in a very material way. No two things can be identical – that we say they are the same is in one respect quite ridiculous. Yet oak leaves are oak leaves and not birch leaves.

There are occurrances where advantages do not incur a disadvantage. A gift freely received is one such. There is no debt and no contract – the deed is freely done.

That is the clue as to why Jesus never bought anything. Ever. At least as the Christ incarnate – the years betwen the baptism and the crucifixion. Jesus during his ministry would not have bought anything – for to do so is to engage in a contract between two people. That is to say they fix a monetary price to a value. Doing so freely – the one works without expectation, the other gives without demand – is quintessentially different. Jesus gave His life as an example to us as to how we should live. He allowed others to take that very life from him and whilst upset did not condemn them.

Therefore do not be ambivalent about believing in Christ.

Gemma, your last comment irritates me, with its assumptions about what I understand and don’t about price tags. (Yes, well, I can be somewhat touchy sometimes, mea culpa…)
My turn to say that I think that you breezed over my comment(s) too quickly in assuming that I don’t understand the distinctions that you are making.
Because… price tags are not objective…
Because.. SOMEONE sticks them down. And that someone is not.. objective. Camera lenses can be objective, maybe, but even.. SOMEONE has to take the picture.
My turn to say that I think that you have overly simplified something that is much more complicated than you think.
In saying that “we” have resorted to the price tag to attempt to translate value, and to reduce “value” to a numeric equation, and this.. in the interest of “democracy”, I am not saying at all that I agree with this way of seeing the world. I AM saying that… in a world where every advantage has its disadvantage, making work for money the measure of all… value has had some powerful disadvantages that we are very ignorant of with our… good intentions.
And Jesus ?
Jesus made a point of (almost..) never handling money.
He probably left that… distasteful ? work to Judas…
We know how that story ended, now, don’t we ?? (Talk about a binary ending… hard to do better.)
I am very ambivalent about my Christian heritage right now.
Like most of the members of our civilization too.
I am.. no exception on this point.