The National Catholic Register’s Tom McFeely interviewed Sam Gregg, director of research at Acton, about President Barack Obama’s $75-billion plan to help mortgage holders at risk of default.
McFeely: What is your overall assessment of President Obama’s mortgage relief plan? Is it likely to work?
From the scuffle over “Buy American” provisions in the most recent federal stimulus package, to concerns about declining exports in countries like China, to high-profile meetings of politicians and economists, it seems like anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise.
Thanks to Clear Channel Radio, I was able to attend Dave Ramsey’s event in Grand Rapids last night. I used to listen to Ramsey on the radio quite a bit as a seminary student in Kentucky and I was always impressed by how much he was inspiring American families to live within their means and become better financial stewards of their resources and income. His own personal faith testimony is very real and inspiring and that brings me to another point concerning his presentation last night.
It’s a truism that progressive Christians emphasize the pervasiveness of structural or institutional evil, often at the expense of individual or personal sin. The structures of the world are broken and they, not individuals, are responsible for the enduring injustices in the world.
A wave of financial protectionism is embedded in much of the stimulus legislation and bailout measures that have been adopted in Europe and America in recent weeks. One result of these ill-advised moves will be a dramatic reduction in private capital flows to emerging markets in 2009. “Among the biggest losers will be Latin American nations,” warns Samuel Gregg in his commentary.
In response to the question, “What are the moral lessons of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)?”
Does the ARRA mark the dawn of a new era of government accountability, from a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”?
Read more on PBR: Governmental Accountability and Transparency?…
Brief excerpts from Lawrence Reed’s classic 1981 article on the Great Depression, published in The Freeman and now republished by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (which I just received in the mail)…
Read more on Reed’s classic piece on Hoover, FDR, and the Great Depression…
A little more than a year ago, I wrote a really nice piece on this topic– on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the nation’s first eugenics law (in Indiana).
A staggering piece by Stephen Baskerville in Touchstone…
I’ve written at length that marriage has been damaged much moreso by divorce than by calls for (or movements toward) “same-sex” marriage. Baskerville expands on that and discusses the initial “grand experiment” on marriage– the policies behind the move toward easier divorce.
In this week’s Acton Commentary, Anthony Bradley exposes the “legislative incantations” designed to artificially create consumer demand (where none exists) via the stimulus bill. “Real needs must be permitted to create real demand, and thus truly sustainable jobs,” he writes.
Read more on Acton Commentary: The Abracadabra Stimulus Plan…
