One article is even from the Huffington Post, which (almost) invariably confuses moral posturing with clear thinking. Send money to Greece? Have you lost your marbles? Sidney Morning Herald Cleaning up Greece's Augean Stable Huffington Post. Note the fourth to last paragraph about potential cooperation between Russia and Greece. Man who broke the Bank of England, George Soros, 'at centre of hedge funds plot to cash in on fall of the euro' London Daily Mail. BTW, did you know more Americans read the online versions of English newspapers than the English? … [Read more...]
Greece as Political Time Bomb
February 24, 2010 2:28 PM
David P. Goldman posted this today on First Things's blog First Thought. He describes the economic situation in Greece and sketches out some of the social causes and possible outcomes. In my heart I want what I read here to not be true--but I suspect my hopes are misplaced. In Christ, +Fr Gregory On Feb. 12, I posted this item at my "Inner Workings" blog at Asia Times and on the Spengler blog at First Things: Although Greece is an EC member, its finances and political system have the character of a banana republic. EC membership, though, enabled Greece to borrow far more money than any banana republic, such that the country's debt-to-GDP ratio is about triple that of Argentina just before the latter's bankruptcy in 2000. And because Greece is an EC member, the size and adumbrations of a bankruptcy would be much, much larger than that of any Latin American country. Earlier I had assumed that we were watching a negotiation: Brussels would shout "Never!," the Greeks … [Read more...]
Archbishop of Canterbury Opens Trinity Wall Street Economics Conference
February 16, 2010 9:13 PM
BREAKING NEWS! John Couretas has an excellent analysis over at the Acton Blog with video. Back to our report... I don't want to turn this into beat up on the Anglicans day but, as long as we are discussing the presumptuousness of religious professionals, here's another. Amid the backdrop of an ongoing economic recession, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams gave the keynote address at the annual conference hosted by the Episcopal Church’s affluent Wall Street outpost. “Building An Ethical Economy: Theology and the Marketplace” was the 40th annual event hosted by Trinity Wall Street’s Trinity Institute. [...] While Williams warned against materialism's dangers, his respondent, a former Wall Street Journal editor, warned against theologians who ignore the moral need for wealth creation. According to Lee, theologians, especially on the left, tend to emphasize the distribution of wealth – how fair it is – economists tend to emphasize the generation of … [Read more...]
Roundup of Green Patriarch videos: Biden, Reid and Coca-Cola
November 5, 2009 3:06 PM
Welcome Remarks at the Nov. 4 Vice President Dinner. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZT6PiZsSA[/youtube] … [Read more...]
Going global with the Cola Bear
November 1, 2009 8:32 AM
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Demetrios paid a visit to Coca-Cola world headquarters last week to meet with Muhtar Kent, president and chief executive officer of the company. It is a striking image here: Two hierarchs from the ancient see of Constantinople meeting with the mascot of a company that is the symbol par excellence of economic and cultural globalization. One of the pleasant surprises in the Patriarch's book "Encountering the Mystery" was his assertion that "the Orthodox Church is not opposed to an economic progress that serves humanity as a whole." This is about 180 degrees from what you usually hear from Old World hierarchs, who so often condemn globalization and its chief architect, "the West." In truth, there's a bit of that in Bartholomew's views, but more balance. Unfortunately, like other Orthodox hierarchs, he continues to view economic activity as a zero sum game -- whoever gains does so by taking from someone else. There's no real understanding … [Read more...]
Green Patriarch backs UN climate change framework
September 28, 2009 10:11 AM
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I weighs in on the Bangkok Climate Change conference where delegates were greeted with “stern pep talks": Istanbul, Turkey, 9/28/2009 In view of the international negotiations on climate change commencing in Bangkok, Thailand, and only two months before the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we urge the international community to undertake courageous commitments for the prevention of the most severe consequences of global warming. The accomplishment of a good agreement within the framework of the international negotiations in Copenhagen does not solely constitute a moral imperative for the conservation of God's creation. It is also a route for economic and social sustainability. Taking action against climate change should not be understood as a financial burden, but as an important opportunity for a healthier planet, to the benefit of all humanity and particularly of those states whose economic development is … [Read more...]
Review: How the Byzantines Saved Europe
August 17, 2009 3:10 PM
The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, Robin Cormack. Oxford University Press (2008) Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin. Princeton University Press (2008) Ask the average college student to identify the 1,100 year old empire that was, at various points in its history, the political, commercial, artistic and ecclesiastical center of Europe and, indeed, was responsible for the very survival and flourishing of what we know today as Europe and you’re not likely to get the correct answer: Byzantium. The reasons for this are manifold but not least is that as Western Europe came into its own in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, Byzantium gradually succumbed piecemeal to the constant conquering pressure of Ottomans and Arabs. When Constantinople finally fell in 1453 (two years after the birth of the Genoese Christopher Columbus), Europe, now cut off from many land routes to Asian trade, was already … [Read more...]