Posts Tagged ‘economy’

Asset prices and prices are falling rapidly as the impact of globalization credit permeates the global economy. Newspaper columnists are beginning to warn against the dangers of deflation.

What happens during deflation?

It’s important to understand that what happens during deflation is not a result of deflation itself. Rather, deflation itself and what happens during deflation are results of the same cause: a change in mass social mood.

Beyond the price effects of deflation, what happens during deflation can fill entire books. In his two-book set, Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction, Robert Prechter dedicated several sections to what happens during deflation. The topic of what happens during deflation also inspired Prechter’s best-seller Conquer the Crash.

The same mass psychology that initiates the change from inflation to deflation and depression also regulates what humans do, feel and produce during deflation. Here’s a short list of what happens during deflation:

• Investment strategy moves toward less-risky investments, like cash. Fashions move from risqué toward conservative.
• People seek the safety of groups and organizations; religion becomes more popular.
• People have less sex and therefore fewer babies.
• Formerly adored leaders and icons see their popularity reversed.
• Bull market sports see their popularity decline in favor of bear market sports.
• Company buyouts and mergers slow and sometimes stop altogether.
• Social conflicts like riots and wars break out.
• Incumbent political leaders in democratic countries are thrown out and replaced by their challengers.
• Political leaders in non-democratic countries are targets of coup attempts; entire government structures are overthrown.
• Legislators vote for stricter regulations.
• Shocking swindles like the Enron and Bernie Madoff scandals are uncovered.

Postponed expenditure

A concern is that consumers postpone spending when prices fall.

Deflation has other insidious traits. It causes buyers to remember. They expect lower prices. Once this psychology takes a handful, it may gradually put on a self-feeding spiral that is difficult to stop (Ambrose Evans Pritchard, Daily Telegraph).

It encourages people to postpone spending until prices drop. This in turn forces down the price – as retailers cut prices in a vain attempt to attract buyers. As retailers cut prices, the same manufacturers, who have less money to invest in new technologies, equipment and especially the staff.

Salaries begin in the fall, which is psychologically very damaging for consumers, even those who retain their jobs. As they fret less about money in their pockets and their employment prospects, they have more to defer expenses, from the deflationary spiral once again (Harry Wallop, Daily Telegraph)

These statements are nonsense. Falling prices do not stop consumer spending. Computer prices have declined over the last twenty years, but spending on computers has never ceased. While prices of most electronic devices have fallen dramatically over the past decade, sales have increased significantly. The reason is that when prices fall, more people can afford to buy, the sales increase.

The advantage of lower prices is that consumers can buy things when it suits them. During inflation, people rush into buying before you can afford it, because they are afraid that prices will rise. They often have debts, trying to beat rising prices. Inflation forces people to make purchases at the wrong time.

Falling prices eliminate this problem. People are not subjected to unnecessary pressure to buy. They can save for something they need to know that price increases will not grow beyond their reach. People are free to purchase large items, the time is right for them. Falling prices increase freedom.

The benefits of lower prices is that people have access to better quality (so the theory goes). While waiting a little longer, they can get a later model, the same price. This makes them better off.

Borrowers are Punished

Another concern of the columnists is that deflation punishes borrowers.

A prolonged period of deflation may have a pernicious impact on the economy. The other main reason for deflation can cause as many problems, it is used to make debt more expensive. Here’s why. If you borrow £ 1,000 at the beginning of the year to pay for a new sofa, the cost of the loan does not change throughout the year. It remains to be £ 1,000. But the couch is falling in price. Thus, at the end of the year – if you are still repaying the loan – you are finished take £ 1000 to pay for a sofa now worth £ 900 and £ 800. Think of it as negative on a large scale, spread across the consumer credit. Of course, in theory, there are winners: savers (Harry Wallop, Daily Telegraph).

The scourge of deflation is that it increases the burden of debt. Revenues fall: the debts remain the same. In this way, is … suffocation. The great credit bubble of the past 20 years has pushed debt levels in Britain, the United States and other Western societies, to unprecedented levels … Our sensitivity to debt deflation is greater (Ambrose Evans Pritchard, Daily Telegraph).
This is twisted thinking. The curse of the debt has been replaced by the curse of deflation. Evil is good. The lie is the truth. Reviewers hate deflation, because it rewards those who save and punishes those who borrow. The falling price of redistribution of wealth – the wrong direction. Enjoy savings, which is good for those who have saved. The income is transferred from those of the debt to those. Revenues are transferred from the borrower and the speculators who were responsible. In the strange world of debt and leverage that is considered bad.

Discover The Biggest Threat To Your Money Right Now

If inflation is a quiet thief, then deflation is an armed burglar. You wouldn’t invite either into your home, yet chances are that one of the two is stealing your money right now.

Elliott Wave International, the world’s largest market forecasting firm, has just released a free report that reveals which of these threats you should prepare for right now.

The free 8-page report is adapted from Bob Prechter’s New York Times best-seller, Conquer the Crash, which was published far before the latest headlines warned of inflationary and deflationary dangers.

With October 2008 consumer prices plunging at a record rate not seen in more than 6 decades, now is hardly the time to ignore Prechter’s prescient message of how to survive and prosper in the today’s market environment.

Protect yourself and your loved ones.

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The problem is quite simple: anarchy and chaos prevails in Washington DC because the federal government has seized powers to which it is not entitled to and is passing masses of laws that are 100% unconstitutional and when you get men setting themselves up as greater than it, you get anarchy and eventually tyranny.

Now, this might seem paranoid, but the real meaning of paranoia has been twisted and changed through the years. It is actually a man or person who has the ability to link events that seamingly are not connected. This is the true meaning of paranoia. Indeed, the word is being used by enemies such as so called progressives to smear truth seekers. When you connect the dots, you arrive at the truth.

The American people are somewhat like the Irish. The story is the Irishman got shipwrecked and after many days finds himself on an island and people show up waving spears. He asks “Is there a government here?” he answers “well I am against it.” Liberty is based on individual freedom; we are individuals and are not the masse as referred to by Marx and the socialist writers. Indeed, the Americans objected to a tax on tea imposed upon them by King George.

The US colonists said they were never going to pay it and today they are being driven on their knees by a tyranical government imposing all sorts of taxes. Worse than that, they are trampling on the US constitution which is the second greatest document in the world next to the bible. If the Americans could rebel against King George, then it is time that the peopel rebel against the federal government trampling on the constition every day of the week.

Kign George of the Venetian party sent Adam Smith, a servant of the East India company, to establish Free trade. By the means of this, Adam Smith, the popular economist of Karl Marx, was able to bring the small manufacturers to their knees. Indeed, free trade is piracy and there is no such thing. It began with the east india company who played a massive role in the US of America. The problem is that you are not taught this in your schools and Universities.

How did they get so powerful and how did they manipulate the US? They made their massive amounts of money by selling opium and first grew poppies in Kensington, London, and sent them to India to start a massive plantation. They sent the opium to China and by their military force imposed a policy that turned the Chinese into addicts and enforced this policy known to the Royal Family. They made a massive huge fortune.

If we took 1970 as the year for profits on the big 3 autos, and in one year, the opium trade with China was three times the profits of combined profits of the big 3 in 1970. These profits were shared among the East India Copany and were sworn to secrecy. The descendants of this company today run the USA. They also interferred with the development of the US by arming Indians and ran mission stations in China and got the missionaries — who were not really missionaries — to push opium on the Chinese.

Now with the Vietnam War that passed, they (the descendants of the East India company) made the US the opium addicts with cheap imports from China and losing manufacturing to them (including Asia); the livelihood of the North American economy. Now, the US is suffering its second Greatest Depression that will make the first one look like a cakewalk with all the credit cards and debt instruments that didn’t exist back then.

In the 1700s, Congress was advised by President Washington that it was necessary to impose tariffs to protect industries of their colonies. This was the firsts trade barrier. Let us dispose once for all with words such as “isolationist” and “being against global trade.” The US did not grow great on these things. It grew great on the hard labor of the people who lived in those days and the wise protection barriers imposed by George Washington erected to protect the US from the Britishs’ damned so called free trade.

It allows other countries like China to dump their products on the US market to the detriment of thee US.
It is strictly a one-way street as evidenced by the rules, barriers, and mercantilist policies enacted by the Chinese to protect their own industries from “harmful” US imports. Indeed, our old presidents saw value of trade barriers and realized that if the US were to progress, it would not be a dumping ground for the world.

China is not engaged in the kind of overt protectionism of “Buy American” program recently, but it has enough barriers to free trade and investment in order to leave open to such accusations on the road. Beijing has removed all the stops in recent weeks (April, 2009), to pilloring the United States to the local content of its obligation to fiscal stimulation with the comments in the media call for protectionist “poison” and a parade of officials from the engagement of China pledging to free and open trade.

What Does The Bible Say About China?

Jesus used the expression “the east and west” to represent all pagans. Isaiah used the term “in the north and west, and the land of Sinim” in the same direction. “These from the land of Sinim” should naturally be a large group of people among the Gentiles. Only China, not the small town of Aswan, so could fit the verse.

“And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 8: 11).

The most exciting phrases of the prophecy concerning “Sinim” certainly continue to be met. Reading earlier verses in this 49th chapter of Isaiah, we find these words:

“That You [Jesus Christ] may say to the prisoners, ‘Go forth,’ To those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves. . . .’ For He who has mercy on them will lead them, Even by the springs of water He will guide them. . . . Surely these shall come from afar; Look! Those from the north and the west, And these from the land of Sinim.” (Isaiah 49: 9, 10, 12).

Isaiah’s announcement of a final gathering of the faithful of God, among those “in darkness” must indicate a multitude of people, even in China. Most people living in China since the days of Isaiah, were “in darkness” concerning the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. Yet here is a prophecy and a promise to bring “prisoners of darkness” in the country in light Sinim of salvation, freedom and mercy.

What is happening today?

“The yuan is an issue, and then the export tax rebates,” said Sherman Chan, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com in Sydney. “People think that the yuan has been artificially kept at a very low rate in order to sustain China’s export competitiveness,” she said.

Beijing has kept the yuan in a tight range of around 6.84 per dollar over the last seven months, having let it rise 19 percent since revaluation in 2005. Before that, it was pegged to the US dollar since 1994. In the space of 10 years, China has moved from being a non-manufacturing automotive parts nation in a world giant in the automotive industry. How did this transformation happen?

The first thing that China has been respected because of the size of the Chinese market, they would be able to dictate the direction the market will take the improvement of Chinese automobile industry. After this determination, the decision of China was to decide if you want to sell cars in China, these vehicles must be built in China. Manufacturers would not build cars abroad and import them into their market. No free trade, not fair trade. If you want to sell cars in China, we must build them in China, but this should in partnership with a Chinese company to form a new company, we can not control 49 percent.

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A Possible Solution To This Problem?

Import Certificates are an idea for governmental economic intervention to fix a country’s trade deficit. The idea was first proposed by Warren Buffett. In the United States, the idea was first introduced legislatively in the Balanced Trade Restoration Act of 2006. The proposed legislation was sponsored by Senators Byron Dorgan (ND) and Russell Feingold (WI), two Democrats in the United States senate. Since then there has been no action on the bill.

Buffett’s plan proposes creating a market for import certificates that would represent the right to import a certain dollar amount of goods into the United States from other countries. These certificates would be issued to US exporters in an amount equal to the dollar amount of the goods they export, and can be sold to importers, who must purchase them in order to legally import goods. The price of an import certificate is set by free-market forces, and therefore ultimately is dependent on the balance between imported and exported goods through supply and demand.

Proceeds from the sale of import certificates would encourage exporters (who would gain that extra money in addition to the proceeds of their exports) and discourage importers (who would need to pay the additional cost to acquire import certificates as well as the cost to acquire the goods they are importing)

This system would essentially create a broad-based tariff on imports to the United States. Unlike traditional tariffs, however, this would not favour any particular industry or punish any particular country. Market forces would also keep the tariff at exactly the amount required to achieve trade balance, eventually eliminating it when it is no longer necessary.

The media and business community has been feverishly hyping and trumpeting the economic crisis that started in September as if they were blindsided by it like a drunk crashing into a crowd full of people on a friday night drive. What God commands Christians regarding alcohol is to avoid drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). The Bible condemns drunkenness and its effects (Proverbs 23:29-35). While the common person may be fooled by the economists and mainstream media gurus, the knowledgeable person knows that this economic crisis has been a long time in the making.

The reliance on credit, loans, mortgages, and imaginary money was not always so prevalent as it is in today’s society. Back in the day, people actually used to save, nations used to produce and consume at a somewhat level rate, and countries were composed of somewhat homogeneous populations accounting for a relatively stable society and economic system. As it now stands, however, many people are in debt, so there are a few ways for people to try to get out of the hole:

1) Get a consolidation loan

A consolidation loan can do a lot of sense. Getting a loan to repay all your debts and many have only one payment to make. The new loan usually has a smaller payment and lower interest rates.

2) Get a second job

Use the money from this job to pay your debts. List your debts, noting that the interest rate. Pay the debts with the highest rates and the work of your first run of the list.

3) Put your credit cards on hold

One of the best steps to get out of debt is to immediately stop using credit cards. At the very least destroy all your cards keeping only one card for emergencies.

Have your credit analyzed and conclusions derived from the data to obtain an accurate credit history and future potential of getting out of debt by securing lower interest rates.

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4) Set up a repayment plan

Reduce your expenses and / or use free cash to pay your debts, pay debts with the highest rates and the work of your first run of the list.

5) Use your existing assets

If you have assets with some significant equity, such as a house or a car, you May be able to use them to take control of your debt. For example, you can get a loan on your home sufficient to pay your debts. You could save a considerable amount of money on interest if you pay high interest debt credit card in exchange for lower cost debt.

If you have a car, sell, pay debts and buy a cheaper car. You do not want a “cheaper” car that will cost you a fortune in repair costs.

6) Sell your existing assets to lower debt load.

Yes, lowering your debt load will help you considerably in paying off existing loans. In lowering your debt load, you may also be able to bargain with creditors to lower your monthly interest payments to stem the bleeding.

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Newcomers to the forex trading system may be asking themselves many difficult questions when it comes to considering putting their hard earned money onto the international FOReign EXchange trading system, or FOREX.  The purported ethical dilemma that some may see in this trading system is the fact that you are placing your money into a risky arena of hoping one currency will out perform another in a given amount of time.  Sometimes that currency could be representative of a small, poor country’s economic stature, or the might of a very strong economy.

The Christian perspective on the FOREX trading world is asking yourself how using your money to speculate against other currencies by selling and buying them would have an effect on the peoples of these countries; either directly or indirectly.   If it had an effect, would it be negative (making a country poorer) or positive (helping poor people get out of poverty).

In addition, and not only related to poor countries, is the fact that the entire world monetary system was hijacked and placed upon the feet of Satan by the end of the Bretton Woods Gold Standard in 1971 by President Nixon which used to guarantee a certain amount of gold for every certain amount of currency. This was the death knell of honest, non-speculative currency trading to which all Christians would have been proud of to trade in. Unfortunately, the social architects are working overtime to destabilize monetary markets in order to control the population.

Death of money is a term coined by Joel Kurtzman, a former editor of Harvard Business Review in 1993 to refer to the change in the economic nature of money in the United States following Richard Nixon’s removal of US Dollar from the Gold Standard (as in the Bretton Woods system), informally referred to as the Nixon Shock.

The concept of death of money also refers to the fundamental change in the nature of business transactions based on a complex, electronically managed system of valuations used for stocks, bonds, insurance policies and other financial contracts that go beyond the simple, historic notion of money representing physical reserves. A simple view of this concept is that if everyone decides to cash out their bank account on a single day, there is no longer enough paper money to represent it. In 2002, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development addressed this, along with many other financial issues, in their report on the Future of Money (Wikipedia, 2009).

“Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.” ~ Proverbs 11: 28
“Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.” ~Ecclesiastes 5:10
“A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.” ~Ecclesiastes 10:19

That being said, if one wanted to truly stay away from causing harm to poorer countries, it would be wise to stay away from them all together and just maintain a position between the major economies.  Indeed, if you were of the likes of George Soros betting your billions and billions of dollars against a country like Zimbabwe, it would probably cause that country a lot of damage, put a lot of money into your own pocket, but at whose cost?  George Soros is mentioned because he was infamously credited with single-handedly crashing the Thai economy  by speculating on a very large segment of Thai futures markets.
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Christians Stay Away from FOREX High Yield Programs

Investment programs such as high yield HYIP are mostly affiliates who defraud investors through the promise of return on investment as high as 80 percent per day. These scams have proliferated in the Western world since the legendary exploits of Charles Ponzi. Usually, the blatant unrealistic promises of income are reinforced by demands for exclusivity, limiting entries and a kind of secret formula that will allow unlimited profits for investors.

In the forex HYIP program, the fraudster often requires knowledge of a sort of secret formula that allows it to record high profits on a consistent basis. Since the alleged knowledge is almost certainly non-existent, its nature can be anything from an automated trading method, a kind of arbitrage strategy and exclusive, or less frequently, some combination of indicators techniques that allows the artist to outperform with professional investors and large corporations with great skill. What they say they are not relevant: Because in most cases they do nothing and just refund your money, depending on your seniority in the structure.

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The day the masses were fearing would never appear seem to have just been hit by the reality of the giant tiger on the other side of the world beginning to awaken. Since 1994 China has pegged its currency to the US dollar in attempts to siphon manufacturing and industrial bases from the United States, where in 2005 it switched to a tightly banded currency regime, but for all intents and purposes, still a currency peg.

Now that China has bought all the US treasuries it can buy without feeling more nervous of not seeing any return on default, they have essentially cancelled their willingness to continue funding the rising United States national debt through the purchase of treasury bonds. The planned deal, according to mainstream economists, was that the economic alignment would be fixed so that China would be the producer of goods for the US, and the US would purchase these goods with investments sold to the Chinese in the form of treasury bills.

This may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but as soon as the US started piling up more debt, and as soon as the mortgage lending and economic crisis took hold, it became less and less palatable for our pending Asian overlords to continue purchasing increasingly worthless US dollars.

Now is your time to purchase Gold and Silver coins at extremely discounted rates to hold value of your precious and hard-earned money.

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China has ‘canceled US credit card’: lawmaker

WASHINGTON (AFP) — China, wary of the troubled US economy, has already “canceled America’s credit card” by cutting down purchases of debt, a US congressman said Thursday.

China has the world’s largest foreign reserves, believed to be mostly in dollars, along with around 800 billion dollars in US Treasury bonds, more than any other country.

But Treasury Department data shows that investors in China have sharply curtailed their purchases of bonds in January and February.

Representative Mark Kirk, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of a group of lawmakers promoting relations with Beijing, said China had “very legitimate” concerns about its investments.

“It would appear, quietly and with deference and politeness, that China has canceled America’s credit card,” Kirk told the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American group.

“I’m not sure too many people on Capitol Hill realize that this is now happening,” he said.

The Republican lawmaker said that China was justified in concerns about returns from finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were bailed out by the US government due to the financial crisis.

Kirk said he was the first member of Congress to tour the Bureau of Public Debt, which trades bonds, and was alarmed at how much debt was being bought by the US Federal Reserve due to absence of foreign investors.

“There will come a time where the lack of Chinese participation may have a significant impact,” Kirk said.

“We should track that, because up until last month they were the number one provider of currency to the United States and now they’re gone.”

With China’s economy also hit by the global economic crisis, Premier Wen Jiabao has openly voiced concern about the status of his country’s investments in the United States.

China has also floated replacing the dollar as the key international currency with a basket of units bringing in the euro, sterling and yen.

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North America set to experience the greatest decline in economic activity since the days of the Great Depression. Because of declining manufacturing output, banking collapse, astronomical public debt, and an imbalanced world trade system, the world economy is predicted to enter into a depression that makes the last look like a walk in the park. The new adversary, however, is a potential swine influenza pandemic set to stifle world trade even further due to each countries’ respective containment attempts. To make things worse, the United States has initiated a new passport requirement that will cripple the North American economies.

A new passport requirement set by the United States Homeland Security department has been watched very closely by officials and interested laymen for the past few years that will likely make life extremely more difficult for the Canadian economy, but particularly those industries reliant on consumers and tourists from the United States spending their hard earned dollars in the Northern economy at places like Casinos and tourist venues. Indeed, these venues were primarily established to recoup declining revenues generated by a dwindling manufacturing sector.

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The other challenged that has recently presented itself has been the introduction of the Mexican Swine Flu that originated in that country and quickly spread to almost every country in the world. Many countries such as the United States are considering protectionist measures to contain the spread of the virus, and many politicians like Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has called for closure of the US border until the outbreak is cessated.

“The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement. “I am making this announcement because I see this as a serious threat to the health of the American public and I do not believe this issue is receiving the attention it needs to have in the news,” Massa said.

The World Health Organisation has repeatedly said, however, that the newly mutated H1N1 virus is not found in pigs – although the animals can be the vessels for the “genetic reassortment” that produces new strains – and that pork meat is safe to eat. Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary office with the UN Food and Agriculture Officer in Rome, said the Egyptian order was “a real mistake”. “There is no reason to do that. It’s not a swine influenza, it’s a human influenza,” he said (WHO, 2009).

The new passport requirement is set to decimate these industries when it comes into effect in June, 2009. Since only 20 to 30 per cent of Americans have valid passports, it is likely that the people who do not have them will not be travelling to Canada or Mexico as previous until they obtain one. The industries currently reliant on Americans travelling to Canada and Mexico for business, tourism, and pleasure purposes will no longer be able to engage in these activities unless they have passports or risk law enforcement sanctions.

As the NY Times reports, the new passport rules brings worry to tourism areas such as Niagara Falls where they say the new rules could discourage millions of visitors from coming to one of the nation’s most majestic and romantic tourist attractions and result in billions of dollars a year in lost revenue (NY times, 2009). Other affected regions of the country going whose tourism industries will likely be decimated will be Windsor, Ontario, and Sarnia, Ontario.

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“I think there will be an impact,” John Winston, general manager of Tourism London, warned yesterday. “It is just another barrier for people to go through if they want to go back to the U.S.” Especially hard hit could be bus tours, which rely on people on moderate incomes and seniors for business, Winston said. The London region relies on the U.S. and other countries for about 12% of its tourism business, he added (Cnews, 2009).

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All signs are pointing to a total economic, political, and social collapse in the United States, but also in Canada once the full effects of the economic crisis spreads to its norther neighbor as the US economy slows to a halt. Since Canada depends mainly on the United States for its economic well being, any kind of economic collapse of the United States would immediately obliterate the Canadian economy. Indeed, during the Great Depression, Canada was affected more negatively than the United States. Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% (compared to 37% in the US).

Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933. Many businesses closed, as corporate profits of $396 million in 1929 turned into losses of $98 million in 1933. Families saw most or all of their assets disappear, and their debts become heavier as prices fell. Canadian exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to 1933. Worst hit were areas dependent on primary industries such as farming, mining and logging, as prices fell and there were few alternative jobs (Wikipedia, 2009).

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Remiscent of proposed border amnesty changes that the Bush administration was trying to railroad down the throat of Congress, the Governor of California stated his opinion voicing opposition to increased immigration and lax border controls. Seeing Mexico is such a drastically different county in terms of social, health, environmental, and economic standards, it is unwise to further open the already porous border that the Amnesty Program would have done. The problem with the current situation is that NAFTA essentially makes the borders extremely porous in both economic and immigration facets.

In the economic area, corporations are allowed to take legal action – potentially overriding sovereign countries’ legal precendents — over their right to profit from that market. In the immigration front, NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, has driven the Mexican farmer off the land due to low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Some 2 million Mexicans have been forced out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. (Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices climbed by 50%. No wonder many so Mexican peasants have called NAFTA their ‘death warrant (Common dreams, 2006).

In a nutshell, NAFTA, the ficticious free trade agreement once labelled as a “new international structure, not simply a trade agreement” by former Secretary of State and murderer, Henry Kissinger, is a method to force countries to lower their standards built up over decades of court and legal struggles. These countries signed up to NAFTA and the World Trade organization are indeed starting to realize the full effects of so called “free trade,” which is in fact a permit to allow countries to dump their slave labor goods on their markets.

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It seems that with all the financial debacles, swine flu pandemic worries, trade imbalances, and the banking failures, that each country is starting to collapse into protectionist measures designed to protect their respective interests. Indeed, as John Raulston Saul mentions in his book, the world is on its way to a collapse of globalism. The past three decades have been marked by unimpressive economic growth and sharply increasing economic inequality, and recent years have seen a marked rise in economic populism, nationalism, and conflict, much of it within states.

Why is this all happening?

To bring about the end to all industrialization and the production of nuclear generated electric power in what they call “the post-industrial zero-growth society”. Excepted are the computer- and service industries. US industries that remain will be exported to countries such as Mexico where abundant slave labor is available. As we saw in 1993, this has become a fact through the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. Unemployables in the US, in the wake of industrial destruction, will either become opium-heroin and/or cocaine addicts, or become statistics in the elimination of the “excess population” process we know of today as Global 2000 (John Coleman, 2002).

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The recent spread of the potentially pandemic swine flu discovered in Mexico that spread across the world in the past few days could give world governments the ammunition they need to further increase already heightened levels of government intervention in already severely disrupted economic systems caused by the faulty monetary and financial system.

Governments might, in the short run, have an easy alibi to curtail so called free trade flows and other measures which are the last lifeline of the economy and could further degrade slumping trade between countries. Giving credence to the often used mantra that “governments should never waste a good crisis,” this swine flu, the so called war on terror, and the economic and financial collapses certainly give governments an excuse to “use crises to further their agendas.”

The World health organization, an arm of the “unholy trio” of the World Bank, International Monetary fund,. And the World trade organization, has already pushed its doctors to warn governments to contain the spread of this deadly new swine flu that has already claimed the lives of more than 100 people in Mexico and spread to many other countries of the world courtesy of fast human transportation systems.
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World economic markets have already reacted erratically to this news of a potentially new pandemic, and some politicians have already called for closing of borders to stem the spread of it. Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) said the border should be closed until the threat is resolved. “The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement (The Hill, 2009).

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The problem here is that markets have not had an overly negative reaction to this new swine flu, but if government intervention becomes increased, and likely will, it may cause markets to adverse extremely negatively due to the big hand of government stepping in to destroy markets further than they already have since the economic crisis and the government central bank interventions around the world.

Indeed, public debt has increased exponentially in many countries after all of the easy public money that was dumped into dying markets and companies. Japan had a similar problem in the early 1990s where the government intervened and created “zombie companies” that never recovered.

Also, if we were to see an increase in the severity of this new swine flu, and if it were to increase to a pandemic, analysts say this would cause a repeat of some of the government intrusions that worried many investors last year. From the introduction of controls to contain capital leaving countries, to the nationalizing of banks in the US and the fall of many previously stable companies, we are seeing some nasty government intervention indeed. The swine flu’s economic impact has already been felt in mexico where they saw their peso drop 3 per cent on Monday.
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John Raines, deputy director of political risk at London-based consultancy Exclusive Analysis, said even if swine flu was controlled and no more destructive than the SARS outbreak, it would likely further hit trade particularly in agricultural products.

“At the very least, I would expect them to use it as a way of supporting their domestic pork industries,” he said. “Trade is always the first to go and it is an easy excuse for protectionist measures. But if it became a true pandemic, affecting millions, then all bets are off.”

However, trade restrictions prompted by public health emergencies like the swine flu outbreak are permitted under international law, if they are only maintained as long as necessary, White & Case law partner Brendan McGivern said.

Totally unexpected “black swan” events such as the outbreak of the First World War — when investors suddenly had to adapt to the prospect of global conflict in a matter of weeks — have sometimes prompted draconian intervention and have had a seismic economic impact (Alertnet, 2009).
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Could Plagues Be God’s Punishment?

The Plagues of Egypt (Hebrew: ???? ?????, Makot Mitzrayim), the Biblical Plagues or the Ten Plagues (Hebrew: ??? ?????, Eser Ha-Makot) are the ten calamities imposed upon Egypt by God in the Bible (as recounted in the book of Exodus, chapters 7 – 12), in order to convince Pharaoh to let the poorly treated Israelite slaves go. The Plagues of Egypt are recognized by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Could the decadence and immorality of the world finally be at a breaking point; so much that plagues and various other so called natural disasters could be on their way to destroy humanity. Indeed, the 10 plagues were not just punishment to the Egyptians. He uses plagues to chasten and discipline people for their disobedience and faithlessness. This is what has happened to the world today.

Indeed, it was Dr. Henry Kissinger who wrote: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.” “Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that “depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World” (Rense, 2004)

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Will Pandemic Protectionism Kill Off Globalization?

Protectionism is rapidly replacing free trade as the political, if not the economic, orthodoxy. Lord George Bentinck would have loved it (Dizzy was only along for the ride during the Corn Laws debacle, as his subsequent embrace of free trade demonstrated). Globalisation is in retreat. Recessions do funny things like that; and it gets worse as it deepens into full-blown depression, as this crisis will do.

Globalisation has failed. The chief reason for this failure is not the current recession – that is only the occasion – but the neglect of governments around the world to respond to it fiscally and culturally. Now it is too late. Every time demonstrators against foreign contractors appear at factory gates, the local MP has to support them. (Gerald Warner, 2009).

GENEVA — The World Health Organization convened a meeting of an emergency advisory group Saturday to discuss the outbreak of swine flu which has infected people in Mexico and the southwestern United States.

WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan said the group would advise her on whether the worrying disease outbreak, which is reported to have claimed at least 20 lives so far, should be deemed a public health emergency of international concern.

NAPOLITANO SAYS US SHOULD SHOULD PREPARE FOR NEW FLU OUTBREAK SOON EVEN IF THIS ONE FIZZLES OUT (Reuters, 2009).

The world scientific community, including many disease research organizations, and scientific experts have been predicting an over due appearance of a pandemic similar to the Spanish flu and the black plague for many decades now. The former was responsible for the death of some 50 million people worldwide in the first half of the 20th century (1914) and was so deadly that the victims’ corpses were quickly and effectively destroyed due to fears of re-emergence. The death of 50 million people devastated world economies because of both human capital loss, but also mass protectionism due to quarantined borders. A pandemic would deal a major blow to a world economy already knocked into its worst recession in decades by the crisis in financial markets.
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History suggests a new pandemic is long overdue, but has been delayed by accidental discoveries of anti-biotics. Politicians can ignore it, like they are effectively doing concerning the economic crises, but eventually it comes around full force, hitting victims devastatingly hard. The three pandemics of the 20th century were all linked to birds, but the new emerging viral disease has spread to humans, pigs, and other species; effectively crossing species gaps. The worry here is that viruses and bacteria have been quickly adapting to conventional medicine’s arsenal of anti-biotics and anti-virals, respectively.

Countries Prepare for Next Pandemic

The top EU health official urged Europeans on Monday to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico because of the swine flu virus, and Spanish health officials confirmed the first case outside North America.

When the next influenza pandemic strikes, New Zealand’s borders are likely to be closed to all incoming travellers. The lock may be on for several days, says a pandemic planning guide for businesses. All passengers may be quarantined for at least eight days, says the guide, published yesterday by the Ministries of Health and Economic Development.

The United States, however, has no plans on closing borders for the current bout of swine flu that has infected thousands of people worldwide and killed hundreds. Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) said the border should be closed until the threat is resolved.

“The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement. “I am making this announcement because I see this as a serious threat to the health of the American public and I do not believe this issue is receiving the attention it needs to have in the news,” Massa said.

It appears as if the cheerleaders of the re-emergence of such a deadly flu similar to those described above is making headway onto the human race. Indeed, academics and scientists such as Dr. Pianka, formerly of Texas University, was a large proponent of the re-emergence of a deadly flu to advocate killing off 90% of the human population in order to save the planet. “He then showed solutions for reducing the world’s population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” writes Mims. “War and famine would not do, he explained (WND, 2006).

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It looks as if Dr. Pianka will get his wish, as there are four manifestations, commonly used by God in The Bible, for executing judgment upon people who reject Him and His commandments. These four are: the sword, famine, wild beasts and plague (see Ezek. 14:21). These are repeated over and over and are also mentioned in conjunction with the plagues of Revelation. Humanity has many sins to pay for indeed. The strange thing here is that Dr. Pianka is not the only person or group of people who have advocated for the extermination of a large segment of humanity, or the “useless eaters” as Henry Kissinger was quoted as saying. Henry represents the collective interests of the New World Order chiefly spoken through groups like the Council of Foreign Relations.

A New Plague?

The global pandemics that the 21st century encountered 6-8 years ago such as SARS and the outbreaks of bird flu in China have been the contemporary outbreaks that worried global scientific communities and spurred tremendous amounts of conspiracy theories. Infections like the bird flu encountered in China were suspected as being the proof that the influenza virus was on its way to spreading to humans; crossing the barrier from species to species. Indeed, this was the case with the H5N1 virus that did spread to humans, but was mainly contained in areas like China thanks to quick quarantines. he World Health Organisation has warned that H5N1 could seed a human pandemic that could infect one fifth of the world’s population, and hospitalise 30 million, of whom some 20 per cent would die (WHO, 2006).
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In a strange series of coincidences, President Obama, while visiting Mexico during his trip in April, 2009, came into contact with a man infected with the suspected emergence of the next major flu pandemic spread by contact with swine. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported (Bloomberg, 2009).

Pandemics encourage protectionism?

Pandemics, if they were allowed to flourish, would easily do so even easier than the outbreaks of the early 20th century because of the increased mobility of humans. Increasing trade between countries with diverse cultures and standards, courtesy of the so called free trade agreements amorously pushed by the world’s elite, make it easier for people and transport to easily spread disease. To curb outbreaks, governments of the past have utilized border restrictions and outright closures of them to halt outbreaks, but the World Health Organization (WHO) believes there is no need to close Mexican border despite over 1,000 cases of human infections with swine flu registered in the country, Mexico’s health minister said Friday (Xinhua, 2009). The caveat here is that they say this because they do not wish to spur even further protectionism that the financial crisis of late has been encouraging.

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It appears as if the addage “never let a good crisis go to waste” is ringing especially true with the current financial crisis ravaging the economies of the world, but especially the former economic powerhouse, the USA. Rohm Emanuel’s famous quote regarding the current financial crisis, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste…it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” Indeed, according to a former professor of Public Administration at the University of Windsor, “governments use crises to push their agendas.”

Employing a crisis to push a specific policy agenda is certainly not new, as many past events such as government sponsored terror or false flag incidents have shown. It appears that the Canadian government is using its illegitimate power over the Canadian people to push a certain agenda in the form of the long suspected goal of a North American Union similar to the European Union. This is just another step on the treacherous road to continental integration and a North American Union on the European model in an incrementalist fashion.
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See the press release on Harper’s website here.

“The CentrePort Canada initiative involves using the James Armstrong Richardson International Airport and surrounding land as a hub to import goods from Asia and Europe and then distributing those goods throughout North America by air, rail and road. The governments of Canada and Manitoba are jointly funding the next phase of this project, which involves building a high-speed transportation corridor.”

Flashbacks:

• Ignatieff on Obama visit: Crisis an opportunity for continental, global integration
• $12B for infrastructure forms key pillar of stimulus package
• Architect of North American integration urges reboot
• Border ‘two-headed monster,’ industry minister says
• “North American Parliament” Meets At Integration Forum
• Continental Business Lobby Releases List of Priorities for Government to Address at SPP Talks
• New Documents Reveal North American Union PR Campaign
• North American Union plan headed to Congress in fall

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Area mayor questions wisdom of CentrePort plan in region frequently flooded

National Post, PATRICK WHITE

WINNIPEG — With long stretches of Manitoba’s roads and rails submerged beneath floodwaters that continue to baffle forecasters, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his government’s support yesterday for the construction of a Winnipeg-based road and rail hub.

The federal and provincial governments will chip in more than $100-million each to build a four-lane expressway that would link CentrePort – a 20,000-acre manufacturing, warehousing and transportation depot slated for construction near the Winnipeg airport – with major rail and highway networks.
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The announcement was made as flood-protection officials upgraded crest forecasts along the Red River to the third-highest levels in the past 100 years.

Mr. Harper, who spent much of the day with Manitoba Premier Gary Doer touring the sodden Red River Valley by helicopter, pledged federal assistance to homeowners.

“The federal government stands ready to assist in any way that is needed,” he said.

But as money flows into the CentrePort project, one southern Manitoba mayor questioned the appeal of a North American hub that relies on transportation arteries so frequently severed during times of flood.

“If we want to be recognized as a mid-continental trade corridor we have to able to provide the transportation, and right now that’s where we are lacking,” said Dale Hoffman, mayor of Morris, Man., situated 70 kilometres south of Winnipeg. “We have to get our highways out of the floodwaters first.”

Morris sits along Highway 75, the main road between Winnipeg and the U.S. With a ring dike surrounding Morris sealed off due to high water, traffic is detouring 45 minutes around the town.

Mr. Hoffman showed Mr. Harper around the town’s extensive dike system yesterday, but said he didn’t have time to suggest solutions to the highway problem.

One of Mr. Hoffman’s proposals involves digging a channel along the Red all the way from the U.S. border to Lake Winnipeg, a 180-kilometre span.
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“You’re talking possibly a 50-year project,” he said. “What we need is a vision for how we’re going to stop the flooding from happening every third year.”

Mr. Doer said he discussed flood-proofing Highway 75 with Mr. Harper yesterday.

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“We have five or six options we’re looking at,” he said.

Meanwhile, some residents north of Winnipeg whose houses were battered by automobile-sized ice pans over the weekend returned to assess the damage. In all, floodwaters have damaged about 200 homes, the province says.

In St. Laurent, 90 kilometres north of Winnipeg, overland flooding crept across half the town’s roads yesterday, swamping basements and causing cancellation of school bus service.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said town councillor Hugh Sigurdson. “All the water decided to come at once and come with a bang – and it’s not done yet.”

Indeed, flood forecasters raised the expected crest of the Red River in Winnipeg by half a metre yesterday. The city asked for volunteers to top up 60 dikes and raise 40 more.
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Chief provincial flood forecaster Alf Warkentin said unprecedented ice cover, high local runoff and an unusually long crest north of the border have all worked to complicate his projections.

“Forecasting is never 100 per cent accurate,” he said. “Sometimes you get a little surprise.”

The media and business community has been feverishly hyping and trumpeting the economic crisis that started in September as if they were blindsided by it like a drunk crashing into a crowd full of people on a friday night drive. What God commands Christians regarding alcohol is to avoid drunkenness (Ephesians 5:18). The Bible condemns drunkenness and its effects (Proverbs 23:29-35). While the common person may be fooled by the economists and mainstream media gurus, the knowledgeable person knows that this economic crisis has been a long time in the making.

The reliance on credit, loans, mortgages, and imaginary money was not always so prevalent as it is in today’s society. Back in the day, people actually used to save, nations used to produce and consume at a somewhat level rate, and countries were composed of somewhat homogeneous populations accounting for a relatively stable society and economic system.
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The problem the world finds itself in now was mainly caused by government intervention in economies through the introduction of central banking in the early 20th century after the tragic “war to end all wars.” These interventions were offbeat solutions proposed by the socialist politicians of the time; many of which were brainwashed by socialist and communist propaganda — remnants from the great World Wars. The common man saw the idea of collectiviziation of resources as a pseudo tribal activity. The problem now is that government has run rampant with power usurped from decentralized actors known as states and provinces.

Most countries in the world now have central banks and heavy hands of federal government where power is wielded by power mad politicians. This power started to really take heed during the crises of wars like Vietnam where President Nixon imposed a totally fiat money, or government issued currency system whereby he took the US dollar completely off of the gold standard based on the Bretton Woods agreement established at the end of World War II. This quickly ended the government limitations to creating money, or credit, without a physical limmitation such as gold. Now all money is basically printed out of thin air from digital computer banks.

Governments are not the only entities issueing and utilizing credit. As you probably guessed, common people are now being suckered into using credit as a day to day living arrangement paying for such things as food, gasoline, and heat and has become increasingly prevalent as such. People have been using the first “plastic money” ever since its introduction in 1951 and it has been increasing ever since then. In a perhaps ironic arrangement, the first credit cards were issued for “Diners club” card holders and was made on February 8, 1949 by Frank McNamara, Ralph Schneider, and Matty Simmons at Major’s Cabin Grill, a restaurant adjacent to their offices in the Empire State Building. The very thing that keeps people alive (food; real), has become the very thing that will destroy them (credit; fake).
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Indeed, the current economic crisis has blatantly exposed the weakness of the “In God We Trust” slogan engraved on most of, if not all, American currency in the form of loss of consumer confidence in the economic system caused by engineered financial meltdowns such as the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac loan crisis. “The financial crisis provides our great opportunity to set the world on a new sustainable path, as many sacred cows, which have stood in the path of change, are being slaughtered by the day as the crisis unfolds” (Club of Rome, 2009).

in Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35-36, Deuteronomy 23:19 and other places God’s Law forbids interest on money; “thou shalt not steal” is the Law. “Thou shalt not charge interest of your neighbor,” is the Statute. The Judgment or penalty for charging interest and theft by deception via a debt-usury banking system could be anywhere form making restitution all the way to capitol punishment.

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Once again, it was the Roman soldiers who mocked Jesus in Matthew 27 31 just as they are mocking Mr. Schiff in this video. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

The credit crisis is about to expand into other areas of the economy dependent on this imaginary bond and promise of payment: the credit card industry. Since 1951, when the first credit cards were issued, over 6 billion credit card offers were found in our mailboxes, an average of 6 offers per US household per month (2005 statistics). The average American household’s credit card debt in 1990 was $2,966. In 2007 it was $9,840. It is clear that another crisis is emerging; one that could very well be the final nail in the coffin of main street. Indeed, credit cards are shaping up to be the next chapter in the financial meltdown, promising to stymie consumer spending, drag on the economy and force a whole new wave of financial difficulty on Americans.

The US may be moving into the next phase of the mortgage crisis. It’s called the credit card crisis. Which means there may be more defaults, lower spending limits, and perhaps higher interest rates for the 75 percent of Americans who have credit cards.

When times get tough, you do what you have to do to pay your bills. For more people, that means maxing out credit cards to put food on the table and gasoline in the family car, even paying the mortgage. Financial experts say it’s a road to disaster.

Living off credit is not doing a lot of Americans much good as their debt and defaults continue to rise. “Well, this is going to be as bad as the recession of the early 90′s,” said Tom Davidoff, Asst. Professor at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Davidoff says we’re seeing the next phase of the worsening economy.

“Wages are lower. People make less money. That means, one, they can’t pay the bills they already have and, two, they’re feeling stretched so they’re not going to pay for stuff with cash. They’re going to pay with credit cards. That’s going to raise their credit card balance and make it more attractive to wipe out the debt by default,” said Tom Davidoff (ABC News, 2009).

Absolute Proof The Financial Crisis Was Engineered

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive “teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets (Washington Post, 2005).

“Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” author John Perkins argues that the United states has created a modern-day empire through the use of economic blackmail and the undermining of foreign governments. Perkins zeroes in on hot spots around the world such as Venezuela, Tibet, Iraq, Israel, Vietnam and others and exposes the network of events in each of these countries that have contributed to the creation of the American Empire and international corruption. John Perkins spent three decades as an Economic Hit Man, business executive, author, and lecturer. He lived and worked in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and North America.
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Then he made a decision: he would use these experiences to make the planet a better place for his daughter’s generation. Today he teaches about the importance of rising to higher levels of consciousness, to waking up – in both spiritual and physical realms – and is a champion for environmental and social causes. He has lectured at universities on four continents, including Harvard, Wharton, and Princeton.

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Written by EconoChristian.com with various sources stated herein.