Month: February 2009

February 23, 2009

‘The Morality of Mortgage Relief’

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? Continue Reading...
February 23, 2009

PBR: Globalism in Retreat

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. Continue Reading...
February 20, 2009

Dave Ramsey’s Financial Ministry

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. Continue Reading...
February 19, 2009

Bureaucracy and Institutional Evil

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. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2009

Acton Commentary: Bad News for Latin America

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. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2009

Reed’s classic piece on Hoover, FDR, and the Great Depression

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)… Reed divides the GD into four phases: To properly understand the events of the time, it is appropriate to view the Great Depression as not one, but four consecutive depressions rolled into one. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2009

Divorcing Marriage

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. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2009

Acton Commentary: The Abracadabra Stimulus Plan

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. Continue Reading...