Socialism in France: economy contracts by largest amount in four years

Here’s the BBC with some bad news for Europe.

Excerpt:

Germany’s economy slowed to “near stagnation” last month, while France’s recorded its biggest contraction for four years, according to a closely watched survey.

The Markit composite purchasing managers’ index (PMI), which measures both the manufacturing and services sectors, declined to 50.6 in Germany last month, from 53.3 in February.

Any figure above 50 indicates growth.

France’s reading fell to 41.9 points, its worst since March 2009.

For the eurozone as a whole, the index fell to 46.5 from 47.9 in February.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said the latest data painted a gloomy picture.

“The [eurozone] recession is deepening once again as businesses report that they have become increasingly worried about the region’s debt crisis and political instability,” he said.

“The unresolved election in Italy was commonly cited as a key factor clouding the economic outlook in March, and the botched bail-out of Cyprus could well filter through to a further worsening of business sentiment across the region in April.”

Mr Williamson added that the weak showing from Germany “suggests that the only source of bright light in an otherwise gloomy region has once again begun to fade”.

Germany’s index reading was the worst in the country for three months.

The French socialist government has also been rocked by a scandal:

It is hard to think of a worse scandal for the Socialist government in France. As “President Normal” and “Mr Fair”, François Hollande’s whole being and essence was to crack down on tax evasion and financial corruption, making the wealthy pay their share in dragging France out of its economic woes. Riding his scooter, living in his modest flat and taking a salary cut, Hollande had promised that, unlike Nicolas Sarkozy before him, his presidency would be “exemplary”, squeaky clean, and totally just.

But now Jerome Cahuzac, the trusted tax tsar and budget minister who had vigorously led Hollande’s crusade against fraudsters and tax-dodging millionaires, has made a shock confession of his own monumental fraud. With investigators and journalists closing in on the truth, he admitted hiding €600,000 (£509,000) from the taxman in a secret foreign account for 20 years. Not only that; Cahuzac had spent the past four months repeatedly lying on TV and to parliament, where he insisted from the government benches: “I do not have, I have never had, an account abroad, not now, not ever.”

Last year, France decided to elect a socialist prime minister named Francois Hollande, and then the people of France voted to give him a socialist majority in Parliament. And now we are seeing the results of that decision. Hollande’s priorities are things like a 75% income tax rate, hiring 60,000 new unionized teachers, lowering the retirement age back to 60, and massive spending on government-owned housing. It doesn’t look like his plan is working to grow the French economy.

Filed under: News, Equality, EU, Europe, European Union, Failure, France, Francois Hollande, Germany, Hypocrisy, Jerome Cahuzac, Keynes, Redistribution, Secular Humanism, Secular Left, Secularism, Socialism, Welfare State

William Lane Craig lectures on failure in the Christian life

I found this audio on Brian Auten’s Apologetics 315 web site.

Here is the MP3 file.

And here is my summary.

Intro:

• the topic of failure is not one that is often discussed by Christians
• failure #1: failure in the Christian life which is the result of sin
• failure #2: when a Christian is defeated while trying to serve God
• the consequences for failure #1 can be worse for the Christian
• the consequences for failure #2 can be worse for the world as whole
• how is it possible for a person to fail when they are obeying God? (#2)
• how can it be that God can call someone to a task then let them fail?
• failure is not persecution – persecution is normal for Christians
• failure is not trials – testing is normal for Christians to grow

Bill’s failure:

• Bill had submitted all the coursework for his second doctoral degree
• but he had to pass a comprehensive oral examination
• he failed to pass the comprehensive exam
• Bill and Jan and his supporters had all prayed for him to pass
• how could God allow this to happen?

Solution to the problem:

• God’s will for us may be that we fail at the things we try in life
• there are things that God may teach us through failure
• Bill learned that human relationships are more important than careers
• we need to realize that “success” in life is not worldly success
• true success is getting to know God well during your life
• and failure may be the best way to get to know God well
• it may even be possible to fail to know God while achieving a lot
• the real measure of a man is loving God and loving your fellow man

Practical:

• give thanks to God regardless of your circumstances
• try to learn from your failure
• never give up

The ending of Bill’s story:

• Bill spent an entire year preparing for a re-take of his exam
• Bill was awarded his second doctorate “magna cum laude” (with great distinction)
• Bill learned that American students are not well prepared for exams
• the year of studying remedied his inadequate American education
• in retrospect, he is thankful for the failure – he learned more

If you like this, you should pick up Craig’s book “Hard Questions, Real Answers“, which has a chapter on this problem. And here is a similar lecture that Dr. Craig gave at his home church in Atlanta on the same topic. I’m not posting this because I’ve had a catastrophic failure or anything. But I think in this economy, I am seeing a lot of my plans dashed and I am being forced to circle the wagons a little and take fewer risks. I am being forced to aim for smaller goals, and plan for future difficulties. It does bother me that I can’t comfortably take risks to achieve the best goals that I want to achieve. But I have to play the hand I’m dealt, and do what looks doable right now. Some of my friends are having the same problem of having to recalculate what is probable and what is possible.

Filed under: Podcasts, Apologetics, Bible, Christian Living, Dealing With Suffering, Disappointment, Doubt, Failure, Hope, Hurt, Pain, Prayer, Sadness, Sin, Theology, William Lane Craig

Moody’s anticipates U.S. credit downgrade following fiscal cliff deal

Here’s the latest from the Moody’s web site.

Excerpt:

Moody’s Investors Service said that the fiscal package passed by both houses of Congress yesterday is a further step in clarifying the medium-term deficit and debt trajectory of the federal government. It does not, however, provide a basis for a meaningful improvement in the government’s debt ratios over the medium term. The rating agency expects that further fiscal measures are likely to be taken in coming months that would result in lower future budget deficits, which are necessary if the negative outlook on the government’s bond rating is to be returned to stable. On the other hand, lack of further deficit reduction measures could affect the rating negatively. Notably, yesterday’s package does not address the federal government’s statutory debt limit, which was reached on December 31. The need to raise the debt limit may affect the outcome of future budget negotiations.

[...]The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net increase in budget deficits from the fiscal package when compared to its baseline scenario (which assumes taxes on all income levels would increase) is about $4 trillion over the coming decade, excluding higher interest costs on the resultant higher debt. Based on that estimate, a preliminary calculation by Moody’s shows that the ratio of government debt to GDP would peak at about 80% in 2014 and then remain in the upper 70 percent range for the remaining years of the coming decade. Stabilization at this level would leave the government less able to deal with future pressures from entitlement spending or from unforeseen shocks. Thus, further measures that bring about a downward debt trajectory over the medium term are likely to be needed to support the Aaa rating.

This will not be our first credit rating downgrade, we had one before from Standard and Poor’s in August 2011 and a second one from Egan Jones in April 2012. So this will be the third one in a row during Obama’s borrowing and spending spree.

Would you like to see some graphs showing the impact that the fiscal cliff deal has on our long-term debt? There is a pretty good article on National Review by Yuval Levin that has the charts. The truth is that entitlements are driving our debt, and the fiscal cliff deal does nothing about it.

All Obama seems to be able to do as President is borrow from future generations in order to spend now. When I consider his drug-using years with his “Choom Gang” friends, I’m not sure that he is really qualified to do anything other than borrow and waste money. So far, he’s spent a lot more time using drugs than running businesses in the private sector, it seems to me. Maybe he has an addiction issue with borrowing and spending?

Filed under: News, Barack Obama, Borrow and Spend, Borrowing, Credit, Credit Agency, Credit Rating, Debt, Deficit, Downgrade, Egan Jones, Failure, Miserable Failure, Moody's, President Downgrade, Spending, Standard and Poor's, United States, USA

William Lane Craig lectures on failure in the Christian life

I found this audio on Brian Auten’s Apologetics 315 web site.

Here is the MP3 file.

And here is my summary.

Intro:

• the topic of failure is not one that is often discussed by Christians
• failure #1: failure in the Christian life which is the result of sin
• failure #2: when a Christian is defeated while trying to serve God
• the consequences for failure #1 can be worse for the Christian
• the consequences for failure #2 can be worse for the world as whole
• how is it possible for a person to fail when they are obeying God? (#2)
• how can it be that God can call someone to a task then let them fail?
• failure is not persecution – persecution is normal for Christians
• failure is not trials – testing is normal for Christians to grow

Bill’s failure:

• Bill had submitted all the coursework for his second doctoral degree
• but he had to pass a comprehensive oral examination
• he failed to pass the comprehensive exam
• Bill and Jan and his supporters had all prayed for him to pass
• how could God allow this to happen?

Solution to the problem:

• God’s will for us may be that we fail at the things we try in life
• there are things that God may teach us through failure
• Bill learned that human relationships are more important than careers
• we need to realize that “success” in life is not worldly success
• true success is getting to know God well during your life
• and failure may be the best way to get to know God well
• it may even be possible to fail to know God while achieving a lot
• the real measure of a man is loving God and loving your fellow man

Practical:

• give thanks to God regardless of your circumstances
• try to learn from your failure
• never give up

The ending of Bill’s story:

• Bill spent an entire year preparing for a re-take of his exam
• Bill was awarded his second doctorate “magna cum laude” (with great distinction)
• Bill learned that American students are not well prepared for exams
• the year of studying remedied his inadequate American education
• in retrospect, he is thankful for the failure – he learned more

If you like this, you should pick up Craig’s book “Hard Questions, Real Answers“, which has a chapter on this problem.

Filed under: Podcasts, Apologetics, Bible, Christian Living, Dealing With Suffering, Disappointment, Doubt, Failure, Hope, Hurt, Pain, Prayer, Sadness, Sin, Theology, William Lane Craig

Romney won the presidential debate – according to left-wing MSNBC hosts

From the left-wing Politico, no less.

Excerpt: (links removed)

Left-leaning commentators hit President Barack Obama hard on TV and the Internet after the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night, saying GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney handily defeated his more experienced opponent.

MSNBC hosts were “stunned” by Obama’s performance, suggesting the president was rusty for not having debated in four years.

“I don’t think he explained himself very well on the economy. I think he was off his game. I was absolutely stunned tonight,” Ed Schultz said.

“Where was Obama tonight?” Chris Matthews asked.

Matthews said Romney addressed Obama “like the prey. He did it just right. I’m coming at an incumbent. I’ve got to beat him. You gotta beat the champ, and I’m gonna beat him tonight. And I don’t care what this guy moderator, whatever he thinks he is, because I’m going to ignore him. What was Romney doing? He was winning.”

“It does remind you that the last debate Mitt Romney had was seven months ago and the last debate that Barack Obama had was four years ago,” said Maddow.

The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan called Obama “tired,” “bored” and wrote that he might have even lost the election.

“He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight,” Sullivan wrote, later adding, “Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn’t there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.”

Sullivan, an Obama supporter, was even more vicious on Twitter, calling Obama’s performance “terrible” and “political malpractice.”

“This is a rolling calamity for Obama. He’s boring, abstract, and less human-seeming than Romney!” he wrote. “He’s throwing the debate away.”

Another Obama supporter, liberal comedian Bill Maher, went on a similar Twitter rant, firing off such comments as, “Obama made a lot of great points tonight. Unfortunately, most of them were for Romney.”

A post-debate CNN poll found that:

According to a CNN/ORC International survey conducted right after the debate, 67% of debate watchers questioned said that the Republican nominee won the faceoff, with one in four saying that President Barack Obama was victorious.

“No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

While nearly half of debate watchers said the showdown didn’t make them more likely to vote for either candidate, 35% said the debate made them more likely to vote for Romney while only 18% said the faceoff made them more likely to vote to re-elect the president.

More than six in ten said that president did worse than expected, with one in five saying that Obama performed better than expected. Compare that to the 82% who said that Romney performed better than expected. Only one in ten felt that the former Massachusetts governor performed worse than expected.

[...]The sample of debate-watchers in the poll was 37% Democratic and 33% Republican.

[...]Debate watchers thought Romney was more aggressive. Fifty-three percent said Romney spent more time attacking his opponent. Only three in ten thought Obama spent more time taking it to Romney. By a 58%-37% margin, debate watchers thought Romney appeared to be the stronger leader.

The problem with Obama is that he had four years to run the economy, and he ran it into the ground. You can’t defend failure like that by shifting blame and pointing fingers. He failed because his ideas are wrong. We need new ideas – a different approach. But that doesn’t explain why Obama performed so poorly. Obama performed poorly because he has been totally isolated from any disagreement or critical evaluation for the last 4 years. In his mind, it’s not just the private sector that’s fine. The unemployment rate is fine, the national debt is fine, the budget deficit is fine, the terrorist attack in Libya is fine, socialized health care is fine, poor education outcomes is fine, taxpayer-funded abortion is fine, Iran having nuclear weapons is fine, and gay marriage is fine. He just has complete and utter contempt for anyone who disagrees with him – he has been indoctrinated to think that anyone who disagrees with him is not just wrong, but evil. And maybe even that all disagreement with him is motivated by racism. He came across as a whiny, petulant child, because of his ideological rigidity and lack of humility.

The mask came off Wednesday night, and it was all Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers underneath. The media and the teleprompter could not protect him from his real self.

Filed under: News, Andrew Sullivan, Arrogance, Barack Obama, Chris Matthews, Debate, Denver, Echo Chamber, Ed Schultz, Election 2012, Failure, Mainstream Media, Media, Media Bias, Mitt Romney, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow