We are preparing for some revamping of the format here at Uber-Conservative. Our underpaid and overeducated team of blogging professionals has been working hard these last few months to restructure this site into a cutting edge hub of news and commentary on theology, politics, economics, and SBC shenanigans. Add us to your blog feed reader or check back with us in the coming weeks as we upgrade to the post-graduation edition of Uber-Conservative. You have been warned!

Bishop Joe

As a notice for both of my readers (hi, mom) I will not be posting on this blog until after December 12th.  After that glorious day I will complete my MDIV here at SWBTS and join the ranks of respectable theologians.  I appreciate prayers for the completion (not to mention passing) of my final class (Hebrew Exegetical Method, and yes it is as painful as it sounds) as well as the direction that my family will take in the coming months.  I look forward to diving back into the theological and political fray with you after Graduation Day.  Until then…….

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

Here is an interesting blog post from the Acton Institute PowerBlog.  Yet another example of how the theologically minded must also be economically minded.  For a great resource on the relationship between theology and economics you should visit the website for the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty.  

- Bishop Joe

Is John Wesley’s Economic Advice Sound?

A great article from the Wall Street Journal opinion page.  It is a bit gloomy, but it should give you an idea of what to expect should the foreseen become the inevitable.  It also does a great job of reminding the reader that there is more at stake on election day than the White House.  Believe it or not you do vote for Senator’s and Congressmen too!  Enjoy.

- Bishop Joe

A Liberal Supermajority

Get ready for ‘change’ we haven’t seen since 1965, or 1933.

Well it seems the much anticipated ESV study bible will have a little competition at its release.  From our friends at Harper Collins publishers we now have the Green Bible.  Here are the features:

• Green-Letter Edition: Verses and passages that speak to God’s care for creation highlighted in green
• Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• Essays by Brian McLaren, Cal DeWitt, Barbara Brown Taylor, Pope John Paul II, Ellen Davis, N. T. Wright, Ellen Bernstein, Matthew Sleeth, James Jones, and Gordon Aeschliman
• Inspirational quotes from Christian teachings throughout the ages
• A green Bible topical index
• A personal green Bible trail study guide
• An appendix with information on further reading, how to get involved, and practical steps to take
• Recycled paper, using soy-based ink with a cotton/linen cover

The translation (surprised?) is the NRSV.  I think the fact that such a thing exsisits speaks for it self concerning how the modern church sees Scripture.  However I do have a few questions for the reader and welcome any additional comments.

• Are the “green letters” more true or applicable to a Christan then those pesky black letters?
• Is the creation the main point of Scripture or the creator?
• Is creation fallen?
• Is this a “novelty” bible?
• Should Bible’s have themes?

I found this article over at CNN.com to be helpful not only in explaining the roots of the current financial crisis, but also in offering a real solution.  The article is written by Jefferry Miron, a Libertarian economist at Harvard University (an endangered species to say the least).  The article can also be found here.  Enjoy!

- Bishop Joe

Commentary: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer

Editor’s note: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University. A Libertarian, he was one of 166 academic economists who signed a letter to congressional leaders last week opposing the government bailout plan.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) — Congress has balked at the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Under this plan, the Treasury would have bought the “troubled assets” of financial institutions in an attempt to avoid economic meltdown.

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here’s why.

The current mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

Once housing prices declined and economic conditions worsened, defaults and delinquencies soared, leaving the industry holding large amounts of severely depreciated mortgage assets.

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This “moral hazard” generates enormous distortions in an economy’s allocation of its financial resources.

Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.

Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street’s hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

The costs of the bailout, moreover, are almost certainly being understated. The administration’s claim is that many mortgage assets are merely illiquid, not truly worthless, implying taxpayers will recoup much of their $700 billion.

If these assets are worth something, however, private parties should want to buy them, and they would do so if the owners would accept fair market value. Far more likely is that current owners have brushed under the rug how little their assets are worth.

The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.

Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Rep. Ron Paul (Republican of Texas) is a bit of a nut.  There I said it.  His ideas on anything that happens outside of our borders makes me want to show him a globe just to make sure he knows its round.  But when you get him off of the evils of NAFTA and the illegality of US troops being anywhere without Congressional approval, he is a prophet of sensible, libertarian, domestic public policy.  Now with that out of the way, I think we should all read his insightful words concerning the Bailout culture in Washington, Wall Street, Main Street, and every other street in-between. His editorial for CNN can be found here or reprinted below:

Commentary: Bailouts will lead to rough economic ride

Editor’s note: Ron Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas who ran for his party’s nomination for president this year. He is a doctor who specializes in obstetrics/gynecology and says he has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was elected again to Congress in 1996. Rep. Paul serves on the House Financial Services Committee.

(CNN) – Many Americans today are asking themselves how the economy got to be in such a bad spot.

For years they thought the economy was booming, growth was up, job numbers and productivity were increasing. Yet now we find ourselves in what is shaping up to be one of the most severe economic downturns since the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, the government’s preferred solution to the crisis is the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place: government intervention.

Ever since the 1930s, the federal government has involved itself deeply in housing policy and developed numerous programs to encourage homebuilding and homeownership.

Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to obtain a monopoly position in the mortgage market, especially the mortgage-backed securities market, because of the advantages bestowed upon them by the federal government.

Laws passed by Congress such as the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make loans to previously underserved segments of their communities, thus forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks.

These governmental measures, combined with the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy, led to an unsustainable housing boom. The key measure by which the Fed caused this boom was through the manipulation of interest rates, and the open market operations that accompany this lowering.

When interest rates are lowered to below what the market rate would normally be, as the Federal Reserve has done numerous times throughout this decade, it becomes much cheaper to borrow money. Longer-term and more capital-intensive projects, projects that would be unprofitable at a high interest rate, suddenly become profitable.

Because the boom comes about from an increase in the supply of money and not from demand from consumers, the result is malinvestment, a misallocation of resources into sectors in which there is insufficient demand.

In this case, this manifested itself in overbuilding in real estate. When builders realize they have overbuilt and have too many houses to sell, too many apartments to rent, or too much commercial real estate to lease, they seek to recoup as much of their money as possible, even if it means lowering prices drastically.

This lowering of prices brings the economy back into balance, equalizing supply and demand. This economic adjustment means, however that there are some winners — in this case, those who can again find affordable housing without the need for creative mortgage products, and some losers — builders and other sectors connected to real estate that suffer setbacks.

The government doesn’t like this, however, and undertakes measures to keep prices artificially inflated. This was why the Great Depression was as long and drawn out in this country as it was.

I am afraid that policymakers today have not learned the lesson that prices must adjust to economic reality. The bailout of Fannie and Freddie, the purchase of AIG, and the latest multi-hundred billion dollar Treasury scheme all have one thing in common: They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay.

Additionally, the government’s actions encourage moral hazard of the worst sort. Now that the precedent has been set, the likelihood of financial institutions to engage in riskier investment schemes is increased, because they now know that an investment position so overextended as to threaten the stability of the financial system will result in a government bailout and purchase of worthless, illiquid assets.

Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term.

The solution to the problem is to end government meddling in the market. Government intervention leads to distortions in the market, and government reacts to each distortion by enacting new laws and regulations, which create their own distortions, and so on ad infinitum.

It is time this process is put to an end. But the government cannot just sit back idly and let the bust occur. It must actively roll back stifling laws and regulations that allowed the boom to form in the first place.

The government must divorce itself of the albatross of Fannie and Freddie, balance and drastically decrease the size of the federal budget, and reduce onerous regulations on banks and credit unions that lead to structural rigidity in the financial sector.

Until the big-government apologists realize the error of their ways, and until vocal free-market advocates act in a manner which buttresses their rhetoric, I am afraid we are headed for a rough ride.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Minimal government intervention and the freedom to fail are two necessary components of capitalism.  The same group of bureaucrats who have been managing (aka bankrupting) Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. are the same people we want to bring “oversight” (another word for control) to the US Financial Markets. We must resist the temptation of goverment promised financial security at the expence of economic freedom.  Just a few thoughts.

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

Here are three articles (with various opinions) about the current Financial Market “Apocalypse.”

Wall Street Journal

Washington Post

Time

Now that you have a massive migraine and the sudden urge to assume the fetal position let me attempt to put the crisis in simple terms.  Lets start with the ideal situation:

People need money.  Banks have money.  Money is cheap.

Banks lend money to people.  People make more money.  People pay back banks.  Banks make more money.

While not all of the corporations that are sinking are banks, the same principle applies.  They are all business that have something to do with assisting individuals to secure and grow wealth.  Now lets look at the above situation with a few additions that I believe are the cause of the current crisis:

People need money because they are excessively taxed.  Banks have money, but are forced by Congress to loan it to people who can not possibly pay it back or know that if their loans tank then there will be a US government bailout at the end of the road.  Money is not as cheap because the Fed is treating interest rates like their personal yo-yo.

Banks lend money to people whether they should have it or not.  People do not make enough money (for various reasons).  People do not pay back banks.  Banks do not make more money.  Banks go broke and the US Government bails them out.  People can not get loans for homes and new business, so wealth generation is slowed.  A Republican is in the White House so capitalism is blamed.  US Government regulation is now the “solution.”

If you ask me Option A is the better road.  The problem here is not Wall Street greed, or a lack of regulation.  The problem is a lack of risk and over taxation.  If individuals and business were not taxed to the level they are now, then this convoluted loan industry would not be as large or as necessary.  If there were more risk (i.e. no more bailouts) then companies and individuals would be more careful about how much they borrow and banks would be more careful about how much, and to who, whey lend.  In order for capitalism to work companies must be able to fail, no matter their size or “importance” to the national or global market.  Here is a couple of quick equations for you:

Necessity + Risk = Prosperity

Necessity – Financial Responsibility + Excessive Taxation + Class Envy + Regulation = Bankruptcy 

Which would you pick?  It doesn’t take an economist to figure it out.

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

My daughter turned two this past week.  The levels at which my life has changed over these past two years are mind boggling.  It has also been educational.  I didn’t know that there was so much variety in diapers.  I didn’t know that there were “levels” to baby food.  I didn’t know how tempting it would be to set your kid in front of a TV just for a few minutes of silence.  I also didn’t know there was a “potty training” sub-culture.

We have begun the preliminary stages of potty-training our daughter.  I am astonished at the amount of doo-dads, books, websites, and yes, even support groups for those potty training.  Its odd to think that potty training has become a community activity.  In this overwhelming toilet culture I have a couple of observations both dealing with potty books.

The first observation is that many potty books are surprisingly graphic.  One of my favorites (insert sarcasm here) is “Everybody Poops” by Taro Gomi.  Here is an excerpt from an Amazon review:

“A hilarious book showing many kinds of animals, their poop, and describing where and how they poop (e.g. while walking). Also reviewed are the ways a baby poops in a diaper, small child in a potty, and older children and adults on a toilet. Hysterical graphics such as rear view of child sitting on toilet with the poop in midair, which we see between the gap in his buttock cheeks. Other scenes demonstrate how the toilet is flushed and the poop is washed down the pipes.”

One word comes to mind….”Ewww.”  My wife and mother-in-law where potty book shopping the other day and came across a book titled “Once Upon a Potty – Girl.”  My wife opened up to a random page where the little girl in the book was bent over showing the relevant anatomical part, exclaiming “This is where the poop comes out!”  I am all about being accurate when we tell kids things about their bodies, but I can do it without visual aides.  I can understand the need for children to be comfortable during their potty training time, and kids books can assist with that.  However there is a point where it can get a little too graphic.  Besides if the two year old who has this book read to them is anything like my two year old then be prepared for a bold proclamation of “This is where my poop come out!” next time you go to the store.

My second observation is that potty books are surprisingly complementarian.  About 75% of the books I have seen are gender specific.  Now this should seem like an obvious neccesity given the anatomical particulars of pottying amongst the genders.  However in our increasingly gender neutral society I have come to expect even in toilet literature an attempt to minimize the difference between boys and girls.  Of course my pessimism reminds me that in only  few years there will most likely be a wave of neutered potty books….perhaps even a trans-gendered one.  Talk about “ewwww”.  Well at least for now we can rest assured that despite the genderless programing we are exposed to on a daily basis, we can always be comforted by one of the last complementarian strongholds, Potty Books.

Until next time remember Bishop Joe’s life lesson #238.  Everybody poops.

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

Food (low cal) for thought…….

-Bishop Joe

No secret behind fat kids – McDonald’s

By Eoin Blackwell

September 11, 2008 05:52pm 

THE Australian head of fast-food chain McDonald’s says there’s no mystery surrounding childhood obesity: kids are fat because they don’t exercise as much as they used to.

Chief executive Peter Bush also says McDonald’s, according to the chain’s own research, provides just one in every 72 meals an average child eats.