Can Anybody Makes Sense of Today’s Economics?

I had some shirttail relations that ran a bank in the town I grew up. Banking seemed rather straightforward in those days. The banks had some money. Farmers and others business folk would come to them for loans. Everybody knew each other and how able and dependable they were for the most part. The banks would make the loans to the businesses. The businesses would make money and return money to the banks which could be used for other loans. I had a banking account their as a kid, and used it to buy my first sheep. No loan involved but I learned early to buy when I could afford it, and not to buy when I couldn’t and that it was a very good to save money for the future. It all seemed to work.

Now I don’t think that bank exists anymore. I think it was bought out or combined with a bigger bank. Oh, they still make loans to businesses and individuals, but then they sell these loans to other bigger banks. Nobody knows anybody very well or how reliable they are or whether they are good risks or not. They can even make really bad loans and then take out insurance so when those loans default they still make money. Nobody seems to save very much and most everybody spends more than they make; this includes individuals, businesses and governments.

I rather hanker for those days when my uncle’s brother ran than bank and everybody knew each other and pretty much knew what each other was doing. I don’t remember anybody screaming at each other and telling lies about each other. Well, maybe they did, but the scale was different and you were held accountable if you had a fit.

I love living in this age where I can research easily and communicate with folk all over the world. I just wish there was more accountability going on and folk were more ethical. I trusted the ethics and the values of the bankers and the business folk in that town, at least most of them and I could ignore the others. But now the value system seems to have changed and ethics no longer are about doing and being good. [I recommend at article published Aug 13, 2011 in the New York times by Steve Lohr, First, Make Money. Also, Do Good.]

I like one of the businessmen here in town who one wintery Sunday when the snow was so deep nobody get out and about or to church. So, he announced to his family, “Let’s just do something good today since we can’t get to church.” And he did, he got out his snowblower and went around town blowing out folk’s driveways, one of them was ours.

Make a little money, Jesus didn’t ask us to be poor but to share our wealth; do good with it. If more folk did that, I don’t think we’d be in the mess we are in today.

As for you folk in the top economic 1% of the country with half the wealth of the country; remember well what Jesus said about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter God’s kingdom. And for the folk who continue to support them, me thinks that applies to you as well.

[Note. Folk who have heard my sermons over the years know that my hometown stories are not necessarily factual but usually accurate if you get me drift.]