St. Mark's Lutheran » economics

Kindergarten Wisdom

Parson Brown — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:40:13 +0000

I’m not exactly sure how we got on the subject. I think we were trying to get the idea of working across to the Kindergarten son in the vain hope of picking up his room.

6 yr old – “Where does the money come from?”
Mom – “Right now Daddy works”
6 yr old – “How do you get money?”
Mom – “Well, I take care of you, and I beg Daddy for some money.” (Said with a grin.)
6 yr old – “We don’t beg, we just take it from him.”

1 step forward, 5 steps back, sigh…

The Inhuman Calendar

Parson Brown — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:52:27 +0000

One of my recurring themes is how we experience time. And the way I like to talk about it is human and inhuman ways of marking time. Here is a perfect example of the inhuman calendar. Fuller articles here and here.

Note the reason we need a new calendar.

The Hanke-Henry calendar would streamline financial operations, they write in an article republished by the libertarian Cato Institute, because Gregorian calendar anomalies make a muddle of interest-calculating conventions. Sunday-only Christmas and New Year’s holidays would also eliminate their mid-week appearances and “get rid of this zoo we’re in right now, when the whole economy collapses for two weeks,” Henry said.

God forbid the human rhythms of life interfere with the market and economic activity.

In the same vein, here is this months newsletter article looking forward to the Season of Epiphany:Jan 2012 – Pastor’s Corner

Outside Support (“A Game of Musical Chairs”)

Parson Brown — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:22:38 +0000

In the post yesterday I made a comment to the effect that “we as a country seem to be playing a never-ending game of musical chairs deciding who takes the loss.” That has been my gut financial feeling for a long time. My guess is that is the core of the anger over things like TARP and just anything that shares the word “bailout”. That is because someone with authority decided that “those folks” will not take the loss. And of course those folks were the already rich and powerful. The powerful politicians stuck the bill with the taxpayers and paid out their buddies. They will get theirs when their political career winds down or they will get it back-door when their wife gets a cream-puff director job or a hot tip on some land. That has been my thought for a long time, but I never saw that expressed by anyone else. Until now. Here is David Wessel – WSJ columnist on “why crises persist”.

It’s been five years since the U.S. housing bubble burst. Housing remains among the biggest reasons the U.S. economy is doing so poorly.

On both continents, there is no longer any doubt about the severity of the threat or the urgent need for better policies. Yet the players seem spectacularly unable to act.

What’s taking so long?

Deciding who will get stuck with the tab.

This is exactly why “stimulus” might seem to be compassionate, but it leads to more problems, and why this guy, Andrew Mellon, has long been an interesting figure to me (I was a financial geek for a long time). Mellon famously said “work the rot out”. Part of work the rot out was liquidating harshly any bad banks. By that he meant prices need to fall and the faster the better, and the best things a government can do in a downturn is uphold the law and liquidate failed stuff as fast as possible. What you can take that as instead of prolonging the game of musical chairs as a political problem, play the game as hot potato. Politics is a game of fairness defined by the mob. A political solution usually is found where just over 50% decide “this is fair”. (Of course that means just under 50% could be getting whacked). To move it to the political realm is to ignore the law or re-write the winners and losers. To Mellon, finance is completely a game of law. The mob is never really fair. The rich and powerful win it, or the whole place is turned to ruins…every time. The law is or should be impartial. Andrew Mellon would have bankrupted and liquidated his mother. And that is to be praised. That is the impartiality of the law. Under fair laws we are all equal, even if those laws aren’t perfect we know what they are. That is a first use or civil use of the law. The Hebrew prophets weigh in on that civil use. Micah 6:11 is an example, rhetorically – “Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and a bag of deceitful weights?” Also check out Lev 19:36, Deut 25:13, Prov 16:11, Prov 20:10, and Prov 20:23. I could list more. And we think God doesn’t say anything about this, heh. Our problem is that bad weights have already been used.

That first use or civil use can point to a second use of the law. It should dawn on us looking at the effects that we all will be caught with a hot potato sometime. We all will have a debt that we can’t pay. Quoting another economist – in the long run we are all dead. Governments are institutions of the law. But with God we hear the Gospel. The law would liquidate us. In Christ we find a new law…a law of grace. A king who can forgive 10,000 talents.

Update: Here is my favorite financial journalist, Megan McArdle on the folly of fairness. I guess what you could say is that she wishes we would apply grace now instead of the law. But to apply grace means you trust the person with the scepter or that you apply grace abundantly. Jubilee. The Lord who knows hearts. Think anyone would go for a wholesale debt forgiveness? Trust the US government to judiciously forgive? Didn’t think so. Even Israel never applied a jubilee year. Institutions of the law apply that law. That is why they have the sword – a terrible swift sword.

Stewardship 3: What does faithfulness look like in Stewardship?

Parson Brown — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:29:57 +0000

This is a link to post #1 in this series.
This is a link to post #2 in this series

Short Recap. Stewardship is part of the sanctified life or part of living the gospel. It would be easy to make a law of it, but we break the law. That is what the law does. It shows us where we fall short. But, the law remains a good guide of how God intends for us to live. Instead, by looking at the parables of the talents and mina, what God desires of the sanctified life is faithfulness. God has given every baptized Christian the Holy Spirit indwelling. God has given a mix of gifts to every church. What He is looking for is faithful use of those gifts. The return is not really what matters. God will bless that. The amount of original gifting is not what matters. That varies and is from God. What matters is the use. The faithful Christian does not bury the talent or wrap the mina in a cloth, but he/she uses them or you can even say puts them at risk.

Now the question is what does a faithful use look like? What I want to start with is the Ur-Story of Cain and Able in Genesis 4:1-16. Take a minute to look read the story.

In Gen 4:3 how is Cain’s offering described? “In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering from the fruit of the ground.” Now I’m going to get a little geeky here. The “in the course of time” translation is fine, but the Hebrew Idiom is literally more interesting – “it took place at the end of the days”. In other words, Cain finished everything first, and as an afterthought said, ‘maybe I should offer something to God.’ Compare that description to Abel in Gen 4:4. You can read the pretty translation at the link, I’m going to skip to the geeky one – “Abel himself moreover brought in from the female firstborn of the flock and from the fat ones”. Catch the difference? 1) Abel himself, the implied contrast is that it wasn’t Cain himself that brought the offering. 2) Abel brought in the firstborn of the flock. (I’m not going to read anything into the ‘female’ portion of that. If you want to push it you could say that offering a female was more valuable in that the female would produce milk and more sheep.) 3) Not just the firstborn but also the fat ones. The sheep that had been well fed and taken care of.

So, where Cain’s stewardship was an afterthought given without a real measure of thanks from the remains of the day, Abel’s was the first part in every way. Abel acknowledged in his offering where everything came from. Cain was checking off a box. Abel was living the gospel. Cain was living the law.

God favors Abel’s offering, but Cain’s he pays no attention to. Cain gets angry at this. [Enter grumbly voice] Stupid God, doesn’t like everything I’ve done for him. I’ll show God. [Voice off] God even warns him the sin is at his door. He needs to get control of it. But we know the rest of the story.

But for our stewardship study the message is plain. If you are treating stewardship as a law. If you are coming in at the end of the week or month out of cash and offering $5 in the hopes that God will superstitiously bless you, you are treading the path of Cain. You would be better off not putting that in the plate. Instead the gospel stewardship is a recognition of where all good gifts come from, and the deeper recognition that sacrificing the first and the fat is not a “dead weight loss”. That God is a God of abundance and living the gospel is having faith in Him to provide for all our needs.

There are all kinds of questions and buts and ifs and legal codicils that could be raised. If you want to the comments are open. But I’m out of space for today. For the next part please read Mark 12:41-44 or Luke 21:1-4. We’ll talk about some of those buts, and then transition into some very practical matters.

Monday Afternoon Quarterbacking…

Parson Brown — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:00:14 +0000

Monday is my day off, so other than errands – like hauling 38 lbs of cat litter and patching the latest David “oops” in the wall – I tend to catch up on my reading of a more secular sort.

This little article is a list of easy subtle genius. Yes, Mark Cuban, the load-mouth owner of the Dallas Mavericks, walks around in t-shirts and projects an image of doofus. But really, if you managed to sell your 3rd rate internet start-up at the top of the bubble for a couple of billion, wouldn’t you do the same thing? They don’t call it “walk away (in place of a not safe for family word) money” for nothing. Every time I’ve seen an interview with him or read something by Mr. Cuban, I’ve gone wow! that man gets it in a profound way. Only in such a strange age could practical wisdom like this be labeled as outrageous and never have a chance of happening.

Cuban’s 4 proposals to Occupy Wall Street. (If they weren’t too busy just causing a mess they’d take up this list in its entirety as as their currently non-existent platform. By the way, the current president lacking anything else to run on might promise these things and it would be real hard to vote against.)
1. Make share ownership mean something at the governance level. (i.e. no more enriching CEOs “in the best interests of the shareholders”). This is the toughest and least practical, but also the place for “community-organizers” who could do a lot more here than in a park in NYC. You’d only need to do it at the margin, get everyone on the left to buy one share in say Exxon Mobil and vote that share for shareholder movements would put the fear of God into a bunch of companies.
2. Make all financial companies partnerships. [A long time ago in a galaxy far away (about 12 years) that used to be the case. This is the ultimate way to end too big to fail and playing with other people's money at the same time. Partnerships risk their own money and are limited in leverage by what others will loan them. If they go down, like Cuban says, the former 1% quickly become part of the 99%. They just won't get that large and they will focus on real opportunities instead of seeking rents gaming the system.]
3. Limit student loans to $2,000 per year. [Go look at the teaching load of the University of Texas System or the growth of "administration" and tell me where the ever increasing financial aid has gone. Government backed non-bankruptable student loans are not a help designed for students.]
4. A per-share tax on trading. [Very easy way to eliminate trading focused on only short term advantage and "gaming the system" instead of financing and building good companies.]

Basically the sum of those things would add accountability to the system and adjust marginal costs just enough to push people into creating stuff instead of trying to game the system for an outsized share of the same pie.

Stewardship 2: The Importance and Return to Faithfulness

Parson Brown — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:30:28 +0000

This is a link to post #1 in this series.

The texts we will discuss below: Matt 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-27

I wanted to look at the parables of the talents in regards to stewardship first, and I put them both on, because I think they help each other.

The Matthew form is probably the most familiar. A man goes on a journey and gives his servants a large amount of money to watch until he returns. One he gives 5 talents, one he gives 3 talents and one he gives 1 talent. The first two double their amounts and are welcomed. The one with 1 talent goes and buries it afraid of losing it. He is “cast into the outer darkness” when the man returns. The stinging question is why were you so dumb to bury it? At least give it to the bankers to collect interest.

The Luke form has 10 servants instead of three. Each servant is given the same amount – 1 mina. 1 mina is a much smaller amount than a talent. 1 talent contained 60 minas. 1 mina was roughly 100 drachmas or 100 days wages. So the poorest servant for Matthew gets 6000 days wages or about 16 years. The second difference is the context of the parables. In Matthew the talents is in the middle of the “End Times” discourse. Jesus is answering the disciples’ questions about what the end times will be like and when they will be. In Luke the parable is right at the end of the travel narrative before Palm Sunday and after a Rich ruler fails to enter the kingdom but a blind man and Zacchaeus are welcomed. Obviously the purpose of the story is different in each gospel, it illustrates something different about the Kingdom of God and the amount of money means something different.

In one parable the servants are treated vastly differently but still opulently. In the other they are more modestly treated, but all treated the same. In what way are all Christians treated the same? The simple answer is that in baptism all Christians are given the Holy Spirit. Paul refers to the Holy Spirit as a deposit or a down payment or guarantee until the return of Jesus. (1Tim 6:20, 2Tim 1:14, 2Cor 1:22, 2Cor 5:5). Is it a stretch to see the individual indwelling of the Spirit at the equal deposit given to all the servants?
If we take the individual mina in that sense, then the rest outfolds this way. They all perform differently in the Lukan parable – One returns ten, the next 5. One comes back and has done nothing with the mina. That one is thrown out. Individual Christians from baptism through the sanctified life all live more or less faithful lives. And that is what the king says in Luke – “you have been faithful in little, you will be put in charge of much”. The only unfruitful or unacceptable course is to guard the deposit passively. Essentially say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church…” and then live as if you don’t.

In the Matthew version of the parable it is not the individual deposit of the Spirit in question, but the vastly more variable outpouring of gifts. Just looking at the church through the ages – why do some churches get apostles, prophets, miracles and strong teachers while others get thieves and abusers? We do not know. It hasn’t been revealed. What has been revealed is that this variance is how God says he’ll act until the end times. One gets 5 talents and another 1 talent. Either way the capital stake is enough to do at least caretaking business. (Put it on deposit with the bankers or maintain the capital). In this form the only unacceptable outcome is to whittle away the deposit of faith.

So, the lesson out of both is faithfulness. All the endeavors are risky. Any business is risky. Many lose money. In both of these parables those risking the deposit are all rewarded handsomely. 5 talents, a staggering some, a lifetime’s earnings, double! 1 mina becomes 10! God’s word does not return empty. If an individual or a church is faithful in their walk, God prospers it. [I should make a side note that this is not an endorsement of what we think prosperity always is. This is not a material prosperity gospel message. We might be humanly disappointed in God’s idea of prospering when he sends a church a raft of homeless to take care of instead of that bright shiny intact family.] If his people are faithful with what has been entrusted, large or small, corporate grouping or individual, God will prosper and reward the work.

So what does this mean for stewardship? The most pressing question to answer to me is: what does it mean to be faithful in stewardship? All Christians have been given the Spirit, but they have been given a great variance of material means and spiritual means. What does it mean to be faithful in our use of that variance? That will be the topic of post 3 in this series. The foundational text will be the story of Cain and Able in Genesis 4.

Congregational Meeting – Presentation Material

Parson Brown — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:19:03 +0000

The files below contain the congregational presentation from 9/25/11. If you were present you heard the discussion and presentation. If you couldn’t make it, but have questions or concerns please contact pastor or our congregational president. Going along with the sermon of the day – the presentation is a challenge to the congregation.

Congregational Update Sept 2011 – Powerpoint File

Congregational Update Sept 2011 – PDF file

Links – Transparency, Church Finance and being in the loop

Parson Brown — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:39:47 +0000

A few quick links.

Synagogues and churches are quite different, and not just in their view of the that guy from Nazareth. This talks about how they are financed.

And here is an article on probably the major line item in each of those church budgets, the rabbi/minister. I could have a few gripes, but transparency is a virtue.

Gordon Atkinson on the dangers of the sermon to your soul.

And a profound piece of wisdom that should probably be given to every graduate or heroically ambitious person in your life.

Serving Two Masters, or the Case of the Missing Moral Leadership

Parson Brown — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:49:29 +0000

This article from the WSJ is not surprising but eye opening. The jumping off point is President Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama and the Chinese response.

But China’s angry response to the news that Mr. Obama will meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader tomorrow in Washington goes straight to the point. “If the U.S. leader chooses this period to meet the Dalai Lama, that would damage trust and cooperation between our two countries,” said Zhu Weiqun, a Chinese Communist Party official at a Feb. 2 press conference. “And how would that help the United States surmount the current economic crisis?”

The background is that the US owes China a bucket-truck full of money, and China is one of the few places that has the ability to buy more of our nation’s debt. As a nation we like to support things such as religious freedom and self determination, we also like to spend more than we make. When confronted with the choice of reduced spending, or quietude on freedoms, which path does the nation choose?

The Bible and specifically the Gospel of Luke is pretty clear both what it would expect Caesar to do, and what Jesus asks us to do. Luke 16:10-13 – you can’t serve two masters. Luke 22:24-27 – gentiles and great men lord it over their people.

The lord was a patron – “the friend of the people” – and his clients were obliged to him. In the west, under the teachings of the church, that kind of vassalage, while not going away, had to be hidden. Read the quote from the Chinese official again. That kind of vassalage is coming back. He is shockingly blunt – a patron state telling a client state to look where its bread is buttered.

The message of freedom in Jesus is that we have no real Patron but the Father in heaven. Instead of serving the things of this world – serve God first. Serve the God who came to serve us. Serve the God who adopted us into his family. In the church we are all heirs and children of God. That is a much different status than a client. It recognizes the true differences between creator and creature.

You can’t serve two masters. Either it’s the hierarchy of Caesar and money or it’s the household of God. We owe Caesar and money respect, but they should not be our master. We should also not be surprised when the American Ceasar chooses to protect client relationships. If I were the Dalai Lama, I would not expect more White House visits.

Synagogue and House – Responses to the authority of Jesus

Parson Brown — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:02:21 +0000

Full Text

The gospels present everyone as recognizing the authority of Jesus. They all knew he was different. What they didn’t all do is react the same way. Luke portrays a difference in the Synagogue resposne and the response of people gathered in the house.

Our society places a high worth on work and money. So high that we have been willing to destroy or at least seriously lame our communities and social stuctures. We work 12 hour days away from where we live. When we return we don’t have the energy to do anything. So we make up words like quality time. Leaders are divorced from those ruled. Children from parents, neighbors from neighbors, family from family. All of this in the name of making a living.

If we are being honest, unless the peak oil scenarios are right and we are all forced closer to home by just being energy poor, this isn’t going to change any time soon.

Being the church will mean operating within those constraints. It also means pointing out the consequences of certain decisions. The distinctions that Luke calls out in the responses of two groups to Jesus are paradigmatic. The synagogue sits in wonder and makes reports, but fundamentally does nothing. Way too many of our churches are really synagogues. The houses respond in service and bringing all the wounded to
Jesus.
A world divorced and divorcing itself from community creates a lot of wounded. The house has the cure. It may look like many of the churches are dying, but that is how God works. Things die, so that he can take the glory in bringing them back. The real choice for churches is do they want to rise, do they want to act like the house, or are they content being the synagogue and burying the dead?