Gods of the Copybook Headings

Gods of the Copybook Headings: "A copybook was an exercise book used to practice one's handwriting in. The pages were blank except for horizontal rulings and a printed specimen of perfect handwriting at the top. You were supposed to copy this specimen all down the page. The specimens were often proverbs or other quotations from the bible, or brief admonitory sayings—the ones in the poem illustrate the kind of thing. These were the copybook headings."

With this as background, it is hard to disagree with the general opinion that "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a clinging to old-fashioned common sense by a man deeply in need of something to cling to. Certainly there is cause for us to feel the same way in these troubled times.
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The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling-1919

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

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RealClearPolitics - Articles - Deception at Core of Obama Plans

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Deception at Core of Obama Plans Krauthamer

t the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system

Never waste a good crisis, Clinton says on climate | Reuters

Never waste a good crisis, Clinton says on climate | Reuters: "Hillary Clinton told an audience on Friday 'never waste a good crisis,' as she highlighted the opportunity of rebuilding economies in a greener, less energy intensive model."

Michael Boskin Says Barack Obama Is Moving Us Toward a European-Style Social Welfare State and Long-Run Economic Stagnation - WSJ.com

Michael Boskin Says Barack Obama Is Moving Us Toward a European-Style Social Welfare State and Long-Run Economic Stagnation - WSJ.com

Twelve Year Lows ? | The Big Picture

Twelve Year Lows ? | The Big Picture: "Twelve Year Lows Are Extremely Rare"

SEE THE GRAPH

321energy :: Tumbling in the East :: Scott B. MacDonald

321energy :: Tumbling in the East :: Scott B. MacDonald

Tumbling in the East

by Scott B. MacDonald
KWR International
February 27th, 2009

The broad swath of land from the Baltic to the Black Sea and into the Russian heartland constitutes what is often called Emerging Europe. Over the last few weeks, this area caught the attention of the financial press due to rising concerns that the earlier build-up of external debt is beyond the region’s means of repayment -- a factor that could have a wider ripple effect into Western European banks and through them into those economies and the world at large.

Since the end of the Soviet Union in 1992 and the movement of most Eastern European countries into the European Union, a considerable amount of capital was pumped into the region. That process accelerated at the beginning of this decade as there was a race to converge between countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania with their counterparts in the rest of Europe. Money flowed into these economies from both public and private sources. However, the private sector, led by Austrian, Italian, Greek and Swedish banks, led the way, investing capital in infrastructure, human capital, and housing. By 2008, Austrian banks had lent an estimated 70% of their country’s GDP in countries to the East, including Hungary, Ukraine and Russia. The problem is that the large spurt of growth, the race to economic convergence and the overall improvement in living standards came on borrowed money, reflected by sizeable current account imbalances throughout the region. Now with global export markets faltering and capital markets choking, Emerging Europe sits on an estimated $1.7 trillion in debt, including some $400 billion coming due this year.

The reduction in capital flows is something shared by most Emerging Markets, but it is the most pronounced in Eastern Europe. According to the Washington-based Institute of International Finance (IIF), private flows fell from a massive $392 billion in 2007 to $254.2 billion in 2008 and are projected to plunge to $30 billion this year. This is a massive shortfall for a region that has become addicted to cheap money and presents a number of dangers.

First and foremost, the drying up of cheap credit will be reflected by a more pronounced economic downturn in 2009. Last year, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus, and Latvia went to the IMF for help (along with Iceland and Pakistan). This year, Ukraine, still struggling with the collapse of international steel prices, could end up going back to the IMF for a second time. Other potential candidates include Turkey, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria. Russia still has over $300 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but that buffer is falling and the country’s banks are increasingly turning to the state for assistance. Indeed, Russia is forecast to make net repayments of about $49 billion to commercial banks. As long as commodities are down – which many expect through 2009 and into 2010 – Russia will be challenged due its heavy dependence on natural gas and oil exports. The bottom line is that "Emerging Europe" has become "submerging Europe".

A second danger is to Europe’s banks. While U.S. banks have traditionally been major players in Latin America and Asia, Eastern Europe has been the domain of German, French, Italian, and other Western European banks. While German and French banks have been a little more prudent this round, that is not the case of their counterparts in Austria, Sweden (lending to the Baltics), Italy, Greece, and the Netherlands. A series of bank loan and bond defaults throughout Eastern Europe could have a strong negative impact on many struggling Western European banks, raising difficult questions for government authorities in Vienna, Stockholm, and Athens. And the reaction thus far from Western European capitals has been to stop the flow of credit, making matters worse, penalizinf good borrowers alongside bad.

The third danger is the impact of a major financial/economic crisis within the European Union. Can the EU withstand an even deeper economic crisis than the current one, complete with collapsing banking systems and sovereign defaults? This is a very significant question – would the Germans, French and Dutch be willing to bail out their fellow EU neighbors in Latvia, Hungary and Bulgaria? What kind of support can be given to Austria if its banks start to default?

The European Central Bank has limited powers and the decision for a massive, coordinated bailout would require something that has not yet occurred – a rapid, coherent decision-making process emerging from the EU’s headquarters in Brussels. This is not likely. As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard noted in The Telegraph on February 15, 2009, "Berlin is not going to rescue Ireland, Spain, Greece, and Portugal as the collapse of their credit bubbles leads to rising defaults, or rescue Italy by accepting plans for EU ‘union bonds’ should the debt markets take fright at the rocketing trajectory of Italy’s public debt (hitting 112% of GDP next year), just revised up from 101% - big change), or rescue Austria from its Habsburg adventurism." While many developed countries can survive large public sector debt burdens (like Japan, Italy and Belgium), the current environment makes the rapid absorption of a large amount of debt, which would have to be financed by bonds or loans, potentially more difficult than usual.

The global economy is in a precarious state. The most recent IMF economic forecast, updated at the end of January 2009, projects that world growth will fall to 0.5% this year, its lowest rate since World War II. According to the Fund: "Despite wide-ranging policy actions, financial strains remain acute, pulling down the real economy. A sustained economic recovery will not be possible until the financial sector’s functionality is restored and credit markets are unclogged." The IMF is already forecasting the Euro area’s real GDP will contract by 2% in 2009, with 0.2% growth in 2010. Our concern is that the ripples from a series of corporate and possibly sovereign defaults in the East roll into Western banks. This may initiate another round of upheaval that could tip over already strained credit systems – beyond what national governments can handle and what the EU is willing to deal with. This could set in motion more significant power shifts, with the Euro being a possible victim, parts of Eastern Europe falling into socio-economic turmoil -- with perhaps a slide in governments toward more authoritarian forms of rule -- and weakening the appeal of Western institutions and capitalism. If nothing else this is an old-fashioned crisis in capitalism and its impac