Posted by
Corthell on Monday, January 04, 2010 5:41:22 PM
''They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.
– St. Augustine, City of God, Chapter 9''
In the chapter of his magnum opus, titled "Of the Reasons for Administering Correction to Bad and Good Together," St. Augustine explains that those who have neither sinned themselves nor opposed the evil deeds of the wicked merit the consequences that invariably arise from those evil deeds on the basis of their refusal to interfere with the rampant sin surrounding them. St. Augustine was referring to Christian morality and the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 A.D., but the principle applies equally well to economics and the ongoing financial devastation of the United States.
Thus it is that Main Street is forced to pay for the reckless fraud of Wall Street. More than 10 percent of the labor force has been thrown out of work because the bankers finally managed to reach the outer limits of debt-demand after 62 years of the near-unmitigated expansion of debt. Total credit market debt has risen from $1.28 per dollar of national income to $3.73 during that time. Even after two quarters of debt contraction, the households, corporations and governments of the nation are $52.6 trillion in the red. And contrary to the predictions of economists, politicians and bureaucrats, absolutely nothing has been done to solve the problem. Ben Bernanke did not prevent the Great Depression 2.0; he merely postponed the reckoning. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=120840