Newton's second law states that the acceleration of a body is equal to the force acting upon it divided by the body's mass.

When you have your taxes taken from your paycheck to pay Social Security Taxes, you may have believed that those funds were placed in a Trust Fund so that such money would be available when you retire.

Wrong.

For the past thirty to forty years, Congress has been raiding the Social Security Trust Account and has all but depleted such Account.

Theoretically, the Federal Government could pay off Trillions of Dollars in Debt it has acquired tomorrow.

However, if the Government was to do this, you also may need a wheelbarrow of money to buy a stick of gum.

Bankruptcy Code does not provide a Chapter that would enable the Federal Government from filing Bankruptcy.

When attempting to Translate business acumen into the world of government finance,The United States simple English is  we cannot pursue a similar strategy. 

One reason why it would be especially hard to “make a deal” on U.S. government debt is that it is not held by just a few people or companies. U.S. government debt, in the form of Treasury bonds, is held by U.S. banks, U.S. citizen-savers, foreign governments, and pension funds. The United States could just announce that it would pay less (say, 80 cents on the dollar) many holders would have no choice but to take it. Yes, that means that if you put some money in Treasury bonds and the government just announced it would only pay you back half, then you’d probably have to settle for that. If you want to call that, “making a deal,” go ahead.

Having a weak will is like having a little donkey in your backyard. It can't hurt you very much: about the worst it can do is chomp on your tulips. 

But it cant help you that much either, and you could end up with a life of regrets for not doing things you thought you should do. 

Having a strong will, on the other hand, is like having a dozen Clydesdale's in your backyard. 

Those horses are massive and extremely strong, and if they are  Properly Trained, Disciplined, and Harnessed, then with them you can literally move mountains. 

Thus the distinction between harnessed and unharnessed will is important. But to what is the will to be harnessed? 

Your will Cannot be Harnessed Simply to Yourself. It has to be Harnessed to A Power Higher Than Yourself. 


Purchasing the distressed debt of ailing governments has long been a money maker for deep-pocketed investors. They buy bonds cheap, and wait for the country’s finances to turn around; then, they push for full repayments through varied courts to the tune of millions, or more, in profits.

Throughout the centuries prayerful people have found direction for their lives through the practice of the Examen (also known as the "Examination of Consciousness").

The Examen provides a way of noticing where God shows up in our day. 
It is a practice that attends to what we might otherwise miss in the press of duties and business. 

The questions of the Examen open our attention to how God's internal movement is present in our external comings and goings. 

They lead us to Listen Deeply to the Data of Our Lives. 

These questions help up pay Attention to our Mental State, Our Body Responses and Our Emotional Baggage. 

The Examine helps us Recognize the things that bring us death and Life. 

Once these things are known, they become part of our ongoing interaction with God in Prayer. 

The Examen can open us to both the difficult and beautiful in our live, relationships, and profession. 

The Examen is also a useful way of reflecting alone or with others on what God is saying to us through a Meeting, a Class, a Meal, a Service Project, a Relationship or Conflict.  

The Examen is a wonderful tool for Discerning the places you fee Most Alive, Most Grateful, Most Present to the Fruit of the Spirit as well as the Times and Places Where You Do Not. 

Those with melancholic tendencies may find that while the day's low points stand our clearly, they need the Examen to help them recognize the Life-giving moments the Spirit Brings During The Day. 

Those naturally inclined to 'Optimism' need to Examen to help them Name the Difficult Things in Life. 
The Examen Invites 'Attention' to both low and high points, Recognizing Both of These as an Invitation to Prayer. 

Perspective and Direction for the Future happen through Listening Where and How God shows up in your day then interacting with God in Prayer. 


Awareness of the Spirits Enlivening and Enlightening Presence puts you in Touch with the kind of person God created you to be.  

When you Begin to Recognize who God created you to be, You Have The Raw Material for 'Discerning' God's Unique Call and Design for Your Life. 

"For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the Knowledge of His Will through All Spiritual Wisdom and Understanding. (Colossians 1:9)

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in "Knowledge" and "Depth of insight", so that you may be able to 'Discern' What is Best and May Be Pure and Blameless until the day of Christ, filled with The Fruit of Righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God." (Philippians 1:9-10)

"The Examen makes us aware of moments that at first We Might Easily Pass us By as Insignificant, Moments that Ultimately Can Give Direction For Our Lives." - Dennis Linn

"Grace only Exists where someone is paying the price, Not Where Error is Overlooked. " - Udo Middleman.

Justice Seeks to Help Others through Correction and Redressing Wrongs. It Treats Others Fairly and Shows No Favoritism. 

Shares: The Road Less Traveled and Spiritual Disciplines Handbook. 

Self-care honors God through nurturing and protecting the body, mind and spirit with their limits and desires.

In the end, all things point to God.....

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, once said: "I don't give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would die for the simplicity on the other side."

To journey to the other side of complexity, we are challenged to make a radical shift in thought.

We are invited to move way beyond any simplistic understanding in order to consider what strict scientists might call the God Theory.


Walking this other side is to embark on a path into the invisible realm.

We cannot discover the radical truths of God through a rigid stance of static certainty.
A cautious but commanding sense of "Knowing with Humility" is required.

Like life, the other side of complexity is not always linear, nor static.
It is, much like life, ultimately a process.

This process involves mystery at its core, but it also encompasses a journey of change, healing, and of the acquisition of Wisdom.

On this journey onto the other side we may experience a sense of epiphany - those flashes of insight where many things that seemed quit complex begin to make more sense when viewed from a Spiritual Perspective.

To do so, we can no longer simplistically interpret life through the Limited Lens of Materialism.


Like all transitions in life, the transitions we make toward understanding the other side of complexity are likely to be difficult, even chaotic.

But there are enough hints about human spiritual behavior to constitute a science of sorts, and a wealth of happenings that cannot be explained without resorting to "The God Theory."
In fact, many things in science that we think of as great truths are mainly theories in the minds of most scientists.

The "Big Bang" theory of the origin of the universe, for instance, is just that: a theory.
So all things point to God only to some people. And given the fact that God cannot be measured, many simply do not believe in her existence.

Materialists and those who are highly Secular require proof in the form of visible evidence.
Basically, materialists live by the central belief that reality is only that which the five senses can detect. In other words, their motto is likely to be "What you see is what you get."

Secularism is a more complex phenomenon.

Perhaps it can be most simply defined by comparing it with its opposite.

This is what the theologian Michael Novak did so clearly when he distinguished what he called the sacred consciousness and the secular consciousness.

The individual with a secular consciousness essentially thinks that he is the center of the universe.

Consequently, intelligent though they may be, people with a secular consciousness are prone to feel a bit lost within this hugeness and, despite their "Centrality," to often experience a sense of meaningless and insignificance.

The person with Sacred Consciousness, on the other hand, does not think of themselves as the center of the universe.

For him or her the center resides elsewhere, specifically in God - in the Sacred.

Yet despite this lack of centrality, he or she is actually less likely to feel themselves insignificant  or meaningless than the secularist is, because they see themselves existing in relationship with that Sacred Other, and it is from this relationship that he or she derives their meaning and significance.

Psychospirtual baggage is often unconstructive and unnecessary.

The problem is Unwritten (Politico) Social Contracts never worked and historically trended to become downright diabolic.

The word "diabolic" comes from the Greek diaballein, which means to throw apart or to separate, to compartmentalize.

It is the opposite of "symbolic," which comes from the word symballein, meaning to throw together, to unify.

Simple English: Unwritten social contracts do indeed tear us apart.

Thanks to the secularization of education, we can't even teach values in our public schools and its result speaks for self.

In reality, we currently teach our children Materialism by not teaching Spirituality and by implication, we are sending a message that values are simply not important.

Those who object to values being taught fail to see that we have already interjected a basic nihilistic value into school curriculum's.

Nihilism suggests that there's no unseen order to things, that anything goes and there is no particular meaning in life's experiences.


To Teach Values is to suggest That Things Do Matter.
Share: The Road Less Traveled and Beyond.

"Genuine spiritual disciplines are disciplines that intrude into our lives at points where we are in bondage to something that Garbles, Debases, and Distorts the Word God Speaks us Forth to Be."
M. Robert Mulholland.

God inhabits our bodies, delighting in every inch of us. Every eccentricity and peculiarity is received. Every longing and self-destructive habit is known.

God knows us through and through and still wants to make his home inside of us.

The fact that the Holy Spirit wants to abide in us is one way we know how infinitely precious and beloved we are.

We are God's own prized possessions. Prized possessions are something you take care of .

Yet for some of us taking care of our bodies seems sub-biblical.

Somewhere or other we learned the acronym for JOY that went like this: Jesus First, Others second,, Yourself last. There is Truth in this adage, but it can also morph into a twisted theology about human worthlessness. Human beings are never worthless. God gave his dearest and only Son to love human beings - beings he treasures and adores.

One of the greatest gifts we have next to Jesus is our own selves. We are gifts of God. His Spirit lives in and let it form us into a place of Prayer.

God's love within us gives birth to more love: Love of God, of others and ourselves.

Love is not a quantity we use up. It is a quality of God that grows within us, enlarging our Hearts and our capacity to give and receive.

Self love is not about Self-centeredness.

Its about caring for the body the Holy Spirit Inhabits. Self care can be a spiritual act of worship.

In Romans 12:1-2 Paul says that the spiritual act of worship happens in our bodies.


Spirituality doesn't happen somewhere in your head, outside the concreteness of your own body life.

The spiritual life shows up in bodies that love God and our Neighbor as Ourselves.

Parker Palmer writes in Let Your Life Speak, "Self -care is never a Selfish Act - it is simply Good Stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others."

When we pay attention to our bodies, they tell us Truth about ourselves.

By listening to them we can detect Lethargy, Escape Strategies, Energy levels, Dependence of caffeine, Addiction to food, Compulsion to work, Signs of Burnout and So On.

These messages are meant to be taken Seriously.

Self-care need not be a selfish act.

Exercise, rest and nourishing food aren't meant to be Luxuries but the Staples of Good Self-care.

Regular checkups, eating healthy food, spending time with friends: these habits Honor the way God made us.

Respecting our bodies (including their limitations) is a way God communicates his Council and Will to us. Our Tiredness reveals that we are not infinite beings. We need boundaries. We need rest.

We need to say No as well as Yes. We need to know that what we can do sometimes, we Cannot do all the time.

There is nothing wrong with excellence and doing ones best. But when the quest for excellence drives the body beyond it limits we have left the realm of appropriate self-care where trying to prove something to someone - even if its self.

The Trinity doesn't call us to overload our bodies and ignore physical symptoms of Disease and Distress. Rather we are called to Recognize Body Information that can help us make Good Choices about how we spend our time, grow relationships, and Nurture our Souls.

As we practice self-care we intentionally receive ourselves as God's own beloved.
Receiving this Love into our bodies Births the Ability to Give Love and forgiveness to ourselves and others.
Share: Spiritual Disciplines Handbook.

The best measure of degree in consciousness can be found by the consistency of that general approach to thinking.

The point of thinking well, is to become more conscious, which, in turn, is a prerequisite for solving problems well.

While important distinctions are to be made between Evil and Insanity, Illness and sin to name something correctly gives John Q. Public a certain amount of power over it.

Given state of current affairs, it's impossible to overlook the reality of Evil if you are thinking with integrity.

We have wide spread denial in this country, many downplay Evil or Hesitate to see it for what it's Truth is.


Think of the Ill Effects caused by those who are 'Addicted' to a high opinion of themselves, or far worse.

It has been said that the truly Evil resided outside of jail. When it comes to avarice history has shown such would be generally accurate.

Sinning is most broadly defined as "Missing the Mark", we routinely fail to do the very best of which we are 'Capable', and with each failure we commit a crime of sorts - against ourselves or others.

The reality is that we do betray ourselves and others routinely. The worst of us do it blatantly, even compulsively. Whether it is done consciously or unconsciously is of no matter; the betrayal occurs.
If you do not realize it, then you are not perfectly honest with yourself, which is itself sin.

It is not their sins per se that characterize them; rather it is the 'Subtlety' and "Persistence"  and CONSISTENCY OF THEIR SINS.

Carl Jung ascribed the root of human evil to "The Refusal to Meet the Shadow."

By "The Shadow," Jung meant the Part of our Mind containing those things that we would rather not Own Up To, that we are Continually trying to hide from ourselves and others and sweep under the rug of our consciousness.

Most of us when pushed up against the wall be evidence of our own Sins, Failures, or Imperfections, will acknowledge our shadow.

But by his use of the word 'Refusal," Jung was implying something far more active.


Those who have 'Crossed' over the Line that separates Sin from Evil are characterized most by their 'Absolute' Refusal to tolerated any sense of their own sinfulness.

This is because their central defect is not that they have no conscious but they refuse to bear it's pain.
In other words, it is not so much the sin itself but the refusal to acknowledge it that makes it Evil.

In fact, the evil are often highly intelligent people, who may be quite conscious in most respects but have a very specific unwillingness to acknowledge their shadow.
The briefest definition of evil known it that it is "Militant Ignorance."

But Evil is not generally ignorance; more specifically, it is militant ignorance of the shadow.
Those who are Evil refuse to bear the pain of guilt or allow the shadow into consciousness and "Meet"it. Instead, they will set about - often at great effort - militantly trying to destroy the evidence of their sin or anyone who speaks it or represents it. And in this act of destruction, their Evil is committed.

It has been written although often viewed as a "Downer" - is in many ways a blessing.
Having a genuine awareness of one's shortcomings is what is called a sense of personal sin.
It is not pleasant to be aware of oneself as a naturally lazy, ignorant, self-centered being that rather routinely betrays its Creator, its fellow creatures, and even its own best interests.

Yet this unpleasant sense of personal failure and inadequacy is, paradoxically, the greatest blessing of human being can possess.
Unpleasant as it may be, the gift of Appropriate Guilt is Precisely what Keeps our Sins From Getting Out of Hand. It is our most effective safeguard against our own proclivity for evil.

Where all unrighteous simplicity started at the top does it have to continually trickle down below?

An old Shaker Song goes " 'Tis a gift to be simple. 'Tis a gift to be free.

We may agree with the sentiment, but there has never been a more complicated, cluttered, bureaucratic society than the one we live in today.

In fact, the "good life" is often defined by how full,busy and complicated our lives are.

Modern life is not simple. It is always about adding one more thing.
But the more we add, the more can go wrong.


Adding the latest, the biggest and the best to our lives wreaks havoc in our souls as well as our environment.

Keeping it simple has fallen on hard times.
And though we like the idea, we also like our choices.

Jesus teaches us that freedom is not found in having and doing but in keeping God and his Will first in our heart. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up for your selves treasures in heaven..... For where your treasure is , there your heart will be also" (Mathew 6:19-21)

Jesus wants us to know that we don't need all the things or experiences we think we do.
What we really need is to keep first things first - Jesus and his kingdom.
Life becomes much more simple when one thing matters most.

Throughout church history followers of Jesus have intentionally vowed to live simply.

Following the example of the lord, they have given up comfort and possessions and the clutter of life to leave larger spaces for loving God and Neighbor.

Simplicity creates margins and spaces and openness in our lives. It honors the resources of our small planet.

It offers the leisure of tasting the present moment.
Simplicity asks us to let go of the tangle of Wants so we can receive the simple gifts of life that cannot be taken away.

Sleeping, eating walking, giving and receiving love the benefits we take for granted, are amazing gifts.


Simplicity invites us into these daily pleasures that can open us to God, who is present in them all.

Aging has always been about simplifying and letting go.

Sooner or later we realize that we can't manage all the stuff and activity anymore.
We have to let go.

The practice of letting go and embracing simplicity is one way we prepare ourselves for what is to come.

One day we will have to let go of everything - even our own breath.


It will be a day of utter simplicity - a day when the importance of Stuff Fades.

Learning to live simply prepares us for our last breath while cultivating in us the freedom to truly live here and now.

Ask God to help you speak the simple truth.
Practice speaking simply - no double meanings or half-truths that put you in the best light. Let this practice help you become aware of when you rationalize, deny, blame, and Spin.

Uncomplicate your life by choosing a few areas in which you wish to practice "Letting Go". Clean out the garbage, basement, closet or attic.
Go on a simple vacation. eat more simply.

Intentionally limit your choices. Do you need six different kinds of breakfast cereal, hundreds of TV channels or four tennis rackets? What is it like to limit your choices? Does it feel free, or do you want an envy surface? Talk to God about this.

If someone admires something of yours, give it away. Find out just how attached you are to your things. What is that like for you?

If you can get where you need to go by walking rather than driving, try walking.

Make a catalog of all the gadgets you have in your home, from the dishwasher to the lawnmower. Which gadgets have made you freer? Which could you share? Which could you get rid of and not really miss?

Where have you complicated your life with God? Consider what actually brings you into the presence of Christ. Spend time there.

Practice giving no excuses, no apologies, no spontaneous yeses. When you are tempted to say yes, stop yourself and say, "Let me think about this for a moment. I'll call you back in ten minutes." Even ten minutes can afford you the time to consider whether you really want to say yes. When you are tempted to apologize for something like a messy house, Don't. An apology can give the impression that your house is not always neat and clean. Perhaps people need to see that you do live with a certain amount of clutter and that it's OK. When you want to make an excuse for something like being late or eating in the run, let the excuse Go. Accept yourself and the reality of your life. No excuses, no apologies, and no spontaneous yeses can actually be a step in Discerning what you truly need to apologize for.

Desire: to uncomplicate and untangle my life so I can focus on what really matters.

Definition: Simplicity cultivates the great art of letting go. Simplicity aims at loosening Inordinate attachments to owning and having. Simplicity brings Freedom and with it Generosity.

"Actually, I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. Iv'e learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. "
(Philippians 4:11-12 The Message)

Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes, ' and your 'No, ' 'No. ' "
(Mathew 5:37)


Practices include:
*Assessing the things and activities that Keep Life Convoluted, Complicated, and confusing; working to simplify these things.
* Setting Priorities that flow from a Loving God above all else.
* Downsizing Possession.
*Cutting back on shopping and discretionary spending.
*Eating simple foods.
*Enjoying simple pleasures that require no expense.
*Removing Distractions and Preoccupations with Things.

God - Given Fruit. 

* Living an uncluttered life* 

* Becoming clearer, more distilled as a person*

* Creating more space in your life for loving and serving God*

* Using simple, Honest speech without Dissembling and Double meanings*

*Experiencing Freedom from Envy and Entitlement* 

* Being able to Let Go* 

*Staking Your Identity In God's Love, Not Accumulations and Possessions. 

Share: Spiritual Disciplines Handbook - Practices That Transform Us. 

A narcissistic government neither knows how to tell the Truth nor make america great again.

Descartes is most famous for his statement "Cognito, ergo sum"- I think, therefore I am.

Carl Jung ascribed the Root of Human Evil to "The Refusal to Meet the Shadow."

In fact, the evil are often highly intelligent people, who may be quite conscious in most respects but have a very specific unwillingness to acknowledge their Shadow.


The gift of appropriate guilt is precisely what keeps national sins from getting out of hand.
It is and shall remain nations most effective Safeguard against those who have a proclivity for Evil.

So, there is yet another reason to seek greater consciousness.

It is the foundation of mental and spiritual growth. And it is though this growth that we become ever more competent.

Simple English: "When your Stuck" there's no need for therapy where you clearly grow well without it. But when we're not growing,when we're stuck and spinning our wheels, we're obviously in a condition of inefficiency.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking, and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.
Anytime there is a failure in thinking, there is corresponding deficit in a persons level of consciousness. Thus all human behavior - the good, the bad, and the indifferent - is determined by the extent, or lack thereof, of the quality of thinking and consciousness involved.

In the beginning God told Adam and Eve that they were free to eat of every tree in The Garden of Eden but one (Genesis 2:16-17).

One Tree belonged to God Alone.
If they ate of this forbidden tree, they would die. That was reality!

Eventually Adam and Eve decided the couldn't Live with God deciding the nature of what was Good and Bad.

They wanted to choose what was good and bad for themselves.

THEY WANTED TO DETERMINE THEIR OWN REALITY.

SO ADAM AND EVE BECAME THE FIRST TRUTH "SPINNERS."
IT BEGAN BY LYING TO THEMSELVES ABOUT THE TRUE NATURE OF THE TREE AND GOD'S COMMAND CONCERNING IT. IN EFFECT, THE SPIN WAS, "GOD IS HOLDING OUT ON US." THAT SPIN LET TO OTHERS SPINS, AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT THEY WERE HIDING FROM AND LYING TO GOD AND ONE ANOTHER.

BUT GOD REFUSES TO LET LIES HAVE THE LAST WORD.

God looked for Adam and Eve in an attempt to reconcile their broken relationship, reclaim truth and restore reality (Genesis 3:9,15).

The rest of the Bible is the story of how God mends the tear in the fabric of creation who began with a lie about reality.

Like Adam and Eve before us, we are truth spinners who want to define our own realities.
*We Pad Expense Accounts with Rationalizations and Denials.
*We Back Our of Commitments with Blame and Deceit.
*Advertisers, Corporations, Government agencies, Educational Institutions Spin the Truth.
Everything from ruining the environment to Insider Trading Gets The Spin.


It's not hard to understand why Americas people don't know Who or What to Believe.
BUT LIES THAT SUBSTITUTE FOR REALITY DON'T LAST FOREVER.

TRUTH ALONE HAS STAYING POWER. JESUS SAYS TELLING THE TRUTH BEGINS WITH SMALL THINGS. DON'T SAY 'YES' WHEN YOU INTEND TO BACK OUT OF IT: "SIMPLY LET YOUR "YES" BE "YES" AND YOUR "NO' BE "NO"; ANYTHING BEYOND THIS COMES FROM THE EVIL ONE" (MATHEW 5:37).

BEGIN TO RECLAIM THE TRUTH ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR WORDS BY HONORING THE CREATOR AND REALITY AS HE DEFINES IT.

"HOLINESS IS NOT A CONDITION INTO WHICH WE DRIFT. 

TRUTH TELLING INVOLVES SPEAKING IN A WAY THAT DOES NOT

EXAGGERATE,DENY,RATIONALIZE OR MANAGE THE TRUTH. 

Birth Right narcissistic elitists:do you think God will allow a Pete R' Pete focused on bogus Gold reboot increases 1% ers net worth exceeds nontaxable profits?

Causes of the Crash 1919-1929

Besides lack of government involvement and over-speculation in stocks and real estate, other possible causes of the Great Depression that have drawn attention include a widespread get-rich-quick mentality, overproduction and low prices for farm produce, a belief that national economies naturally decline in predictable patterns, and a large gap in wealth between the rich and common citizens. Each of these possible causes will be explored below. One fact stands out. The "big crash" was a clear warning sign of deep national economic troubles. These problems continued to worsen through 1932, and their effects stubbornly remained for another ten years.

Whose Fault Was It?

Historians and economists have devoted much attention to the consequences of the Great Depression and its worldwide impact during the 1930's. 

For many years, however, little energy was devoted to finding the causes of the calamity that so seriously affected the lives of tens of millions of people. The most likely causes identified remain hotly debated into the twenty-first century. They include economic regulation by government, the occurrence of business cycles, the distribution of wealth, public attitudes about money, the unregulated stock market, a slumping agricultural economy, and the struggling international economy. The following factors have each been identified as possible causes.

Chronology:

1776:

British economist philosopher Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations which greatly influenced economists and politicians through the twentieth century.

1792:

The New York Stock Exchange is founded by a group of 24 men under a tree in New York City.

1914–1918:

Widespread war leaves European economies in disarray, while the United States emerges as an industrial leader.

November 1920:

Warren G. Harding is elected president, leading to 12 consecutive years of Republican control of the White House and strongly pro-business government policies.

October 24, 1929:

The first day of panic strikes Wall Street when 12.8 million shares of stock are sold, many at significantly lower prices than their value only a few days earlier. This day became known as Black Thursday.

October 29, 1929:

Wall Street has its only 16 million-share day, with 16,410,000 shares sold. The day became known as Black Tuesday.

March 5, 1933:

The New York Stock Exchange closes until March 14 for a national bank holiday.

June 6, 1934:

Congress passes the Securities Exchange Act to correct the problems leading to the October 1929 stock market crash.

Little Government Oversight of Business

Up through the nineteenth century a prevalent belief was that conducting business represented a basic form of property right that should be protected from any form of government regulation. Related to this belief, many rationalized that unrestricted economic systems would behave like a living organic system in nature. It would regulate itself to maintain a healthy condition. One form of self-regulation was propelled by the self-interest of business owners. British economist Adam Smith had earlier argued that the "invisible hand" of the marketplace would serve as a check and balance system in a nation's industrial economy. Smith contended that humans are driven both by personal passions to compete and succeed and a desire to self-regulate their actions, driven by the human ability to reason and sympathize. Because humans have this capacity to self-regulate, Smith concluded that economic markets should be free of government restraint. In Smith's economic model, the free market would be self-correcting and lead to a steady growth in national economics. Government involvement would only serve to inhibit this growth. Such was the birth of laissez faire government policy (business largely free of government regulation). This perspective was quite revolutionary in contrast to the centrally controlled economies of the feudal period in Europe in which craft guilds were the dominant organization for producing goods.

Smith's theories had been born during a time when small local craft industries dominated. By the late 1920s, about two-thirds of American industry was controlled by large, publicly owned corporations, many of them "holding companies." Holding companies hold the ownership of other corporations and may provide some general direction and management. Mergers of smaller companies formed other large corporations. By 1929 these companies controlled vast empires. Two hundred of the largest corporations owned half of U.S. businesses. The influence of small individual owners who closely watched the course of their companies' operations had diminished significantly. As the Great Depression began unfolding, some question arose whether Smith's "invisible hand" still played an effective role in balancing a modern industrial economy. Considerable control of industry was in the hands of only a few. While the administrations of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover believed the rules of Adam Smith still applied, industrialists were no longer playing by those rules. Some alleged that such pervasive widespread corporate control proved detrimental to the continued health of the economy as a whole. They lacked vision to look ahead.

For example, Samuel Insull of Chicago created a complex pyramid of public utility holding companies. Insull ended up controlling an eighth of the electrical power in the United States. His collection of companies was worth almost $3 billion. Insull's empire finally went bankrupt in 1932. He could no longer afford to pay interest on stocks and bonds back to investors because of declining income during the Great Depression. With large numbers of holding companies and corporate mergers dotting the U.S. industrial landscape of the 1920s, economist Adam Smith's model of business owners maintaining a competitive balance in markets no longer seemed to be the case. Owners had become increasingly detached from the social situation influenced by their companies.

Business Cycles

Somewhat related to the Adam Smith belief that a business economy will tend to satisfactorily regulate itself was the belief that business will tend to go through "natural" cycles of decline and expansion. Any governmental intervention in these cycles would tend to disrupt the system's natural operations and enhance any problems. The United States had previously experienced a number of economic panics, slumps, and depressions. These came in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1914. Many people, including President Hoover, believed that the events of October 1929, which dramatically worsened by 1931, were merely part of a regular cycle of downturns that had historically beset the nation's free market economy.

Grace only exits where someone is paying the price, not where it is overlooked. 

Justice seeks to help others though correcting correcting and redressing  wrongs, it treats others fairly and shows no favoritism'S!

Within many a corporate Rap Sheet in which includes our own elects resides no honor in to walk humbly With God that grieved injustice and oppression. 

As all America can See is when we choose to elect unwisely we sacrifice our time, energy, justice in which accommodates society(s) not under God.