A Fork Cross in the Road: Afterword, Or...

Brother, Can You Spare $700B?

Even as I contemplate this earlier post of mine, the comments, and a potential follow-up piece, and even as I start throwing stuff in a bag for my Wednesday departure for Ethiopia, I came across a couple of wildly unrelated but yet sadly connected thoughts on my blog wanderings this morning.

First, this post contained a quote from Julian, the last Roman Emperor:

“Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of these Christians as their charity to strangers, the impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor but for ours as well.”

Then, over here I found some information on what $700B will currently get you:

• Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
• Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
• Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
• Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).

The post goes on to point out that on the other hand, it’s:

• only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
• a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)

It seems to me that in today's globalized society, those who claim to follow Jesus have the ability to seriously piss off the Julian's of this world. It also appears, unfortunately, that we are giving these emperors little to no cause for alarm. Nobody with power is losing any sleep over what the Christians of today are up to.

Look, I'm not naive. I've spent enough of my life in the financial realm to know that the bailout is the "right thing to do." But since when has the right thing to do been the right thing to do? In a Kingdom where the first shall be last and where you need to lose your life to gain it, I'm starting to think that the right thing to do is precisely the wrong thing to do.

Thoughts?

Comments

[robert]

I understand your larger point but I think it's a bit of a meaningless comparison. Comparing the cost of the rescue/bailout to the cost of other, more noble undertakings is moot because nothing would ever get done if the entire global financial system collapses. I believe there is an unacceptably high risk that could happen without the package. Everything is becomes secondary if the system collapses. Voting against the package was so shortsighted as to be ridiculous. Like voting against oxygen.
A woman who appeared on the Letterman show this week who represents Feed The Children or some other organization made an amazing comparison. I just caught the last couple of minutes of her segment so I didn't catch her name. She said that last year, Wall Street paid out for $36 billion in bonuses and that her organization could keep every child on the planet from starving to death for less than $3 billion a year. I find that staggering and it speaks to our priorities as a society. It doesn't reflect well on us.

[Glen Peterson]

Robert: Josetta Sheeran is the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme. Her appearance on Letterman is available on the Late Show website.

[Mike]

Thanks for the heads-up Glen. I tried to record it after Robert alerted us (having a friend living in a world 3 hours ahead can be handy) but I ended up recording the wrong station.

[Dan]

Mike, et al. I follow along (from Calgary) on a fairly regular basis, and find myself agreeing with so much of what I read, including this fairly radical post. However, I was stopped in my tracks by this sentence from Robert: "Everything [else] becomes secondary if the system collapses."

Perhaps a stronger indictment against western society (and christianity) was never written.

To paraphrase a piece of your other entry today: "God, grant me the wisdom and courage to extricate myself from the rule of this second master."

[sonja]

I've been barely able to speak when I try to talk about this stupid $700B bailout.

It's not the "right thing" to do ... not on any level.

Here's the question that no one has dared to ask or think about answering: What's the worst that could happen if we didn't go with the bailout?

Yep, economic systems could collapse and other systems could fall behind it. And, um, we're human, we'd dig ourselves out.

But doing the thing you always do just gets you where you always go.

[robert]

Sonja,
Because the world of finance is so intermingled, with derivatives on everyone's books, one faillure would lead to another in a cascade amd you'd find most banks & insurance companies would fail in the next 6 months. Credit would evaporate as lending practices became impossibly tight. Companies that rely on various forms of credit would go out of business (bye bye obvious candidates GM, Ford, Chrysler, major airlines as well as less obvious candidates like GE & Rogers/AT&T/Bell). Massive layoffs would follow and unemployment would go through the roof so the housing market goes to hell like nothing you can imagine (not that anyone would be qualifying for a mortgage anymore anyway).
Listen, I'm no apologist for the pinheads who got us in this mess. Anyone who hates the government and thinks it's the root of all evil should have a good look at what nobody minding the store for 8 years looks like but you can't let the stupidity of the current administration lull you into believing it would all just work itself out.
It wouldn't.

[Fubarskine]

Can we measure God's wealth by the methods of this world?

How valuable are our measures then? How wealthy are we?

If the "system" means that the gap widens further and further between the rich and poor, if the "system" looks after the richest first while millions starve, if the "system" is based, in effect, on "greed, more, now", then isn't the "system" already broken?

Obvious comments perhaps, but it doesn't hurt to re-state the bigger uncomfortable picture when faced with a barrage of close focussing on parts of the picture in the media.

[robert]

this is one of those times the atheist's view sticks out like a sore thumb.