America Did Not Tithe Enough, Part II
Posted on September 7th, 2008 by catalyst into the Finances category
In an unprecdented move, the U.S. Government has decided to put Fannie and Freddie in Conservatorship. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's primary function is to provide liquidity to the housing market (basically buy loans from banks, so that the banks can then loan more money to people looking to purchase homes). This duty was clearly in question the last couple of months, and the government has decided to take over Fannie and Freddie to ensure they will still be able to buy loans. It will likely double America's national debt and is just another sign that the "Housing Crisis" isn't over yet. The tie in to this blog, is that all the properties that the City Church and City Bible purchased over the last couple of years are likely to continue to drop in value. And the church's ability to refinance those loans is going to remain limited. So you know, perhaps the City Church shouldn't have spent 1.4 million on a home in DC and perhaps City Bible Church shouldn't have leased an Ice Hockey Rink in Vancouver. Not the best use of Finances. Anyway, the real reason I'm writing this is to share with you this great YouTube video mocking the whole thing. Because everyone hates a bailout:
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September 7th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Wow just watched that video and the 2 others after it “you’re being lied to” and the Ron Paul Bailout video.
This is gonna get a whole lot worse - One of them is predicting depression. Not sure what’ll happen in 2016 when the first of the babyboomers have to start withdrawing actual cash out of their retirement funds. There is no cash. Ron Paul says our dollar is being tied to Freddie & Fannie.
May God have mercy on us greedy Americans.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
America has been living beyond it’s means for too long. And the bill is coming due.
September 7th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Peak Oil and climate change will make the situation much worse, much sooner than 2016. Our present official systems are breaking. It’s time for individuals to start building safety nets of alternative systems.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
TH in SoC said:
September 7th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Peak Oil and climate change will make the situation much worse, much sooner than 2016. Our present official systems are breaking. It’s time for individuals to start building safety nets of alternative systems.
What kind of alternative systems could I as an individual build? Are you talking about becoming completely self sufficient or financially secure or both? Is this kind of like taking a squirt gun to put out a forest fire or is there really something I could do as an individual?
September 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am
C’mon, we’ve been through this before. CBC lease optioned the ice rink in Vancouver. They did not purchase it. Depending on the terms, which are not public info, it may or may not have been a good deal. I’m gonna say probably not since they said they spent 10 million renovating it. Also commercial real estate is not in a crisis as the residential market is. Especially in the Pacific Northwest, which continues to need more and more commercial resources. That means, while City Church’s purchase of that DC home may be questionable most of these church’s commercial real estate deals will probably be profitable endeavors.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:11 am
So, spending 10 million to renovate something you don’t own is somehow better? A private group in the church owns the building, true, but it still seems like a poor deal for the church. And since when should churches have commercial real estate deals that turn a profit? Aren’t there laws against that sort of thing? (Which is why CBC doesn’t own the rink.) Personally, I think PF got suckered into paying for something that’s not his.
Defend them if you must, but I don’t see how these deals are justifiable, when they money could have been spent to pay off church debt or renovate the sagging domes. Or maybe hire accredited professors at PBC?
September 8th, 2008 at 9:16 am
You’re right. Good point. I fixed the language.
Also, correct. But commercial generally lags residential. And the Pacific Northwest is lagging the country in terms of the real-estate crisis. So I stand by my statement that taking ownership of an ice-rink wasn’t a good financial decision.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Such a good point. Even if you treat City Bible as strictly a business, leasing the Ice Rink wasn’t a smart move. There were such better places to invest that money.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Look,
Lease optioning the Ice Rink was stupid. The guy who bought it paid 4 million for it and then lease optioned it to CBC. CBC, for trying to be all business savy, made a really dumb move here. They should have just done like Living Hope and leased the Regal Cinemas for Sunday Mornings only.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
But Cat, as long as our president is pro-life and professes a faith in God…who cares if everything else goes in the toilet?
September 8th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
But that would mean PBC would have to become a legitimate place of learning. PF couldn’t have 100% control over every decision…he would have to (gasp) follow Oregon law.
(Ok, I’ll stop now. Slow day at work)
September 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
My apologies for not getting back to you earlier. Your question is a very large one, and there are many thinkers who for the last several years have been formulating answers. A lot of these thinkers have posted their insights on the Web. I just started really thinking about these things last year. My very limited answers are as follows:
1. Get out of debt.
2. Transition your career to the productive side of the economy. Our problem is that the major corporate players have largely turned the American economy into a service economy consisting of people who are employed in providing services that are not actually essential - satellite TV, massage therapy, personal financial planning and other things. We don’t have many people employed providing tangible, necessary things like food, energy, manufactured goods and affordable medical care. This country has outsourced most necessary labor to other countries.
3. Learn the forgotten arts of home economics - how to grow your own food and how to store it without high-tech methods.
4. Learn to live on half your present income.
5. Relocalize your life - arrange your situation so that you don’t have to travel more than 10 miles to get most of your basic necessities.
6. Become a bicycle commuter.
For over a year and a half, I have been reading the writings of people who have awakened to the predicament our society is facing due to climate change and the end of cheap oil, people who have made it their business to understand that predicament and to learn to cope with it. Most of these people are not Christians - indeed, they are far from it. It’s a shame that there aren’t more Christians who are studying these things and writing intelligently about them. Instead, too many of us have drunk the Kool-Aid of believing that God has chosen America as a special nation entitled to a special standard of living, or that God is some giant ATM machine in the sky who will never let true Christians suffer, but who instead intends to make us all as rich as Joel Osteen. That’s not a good mindset for coping with what’s coming upon us. We should be doing better.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
You nailed it with this statement. I’m in a non-Christian world as well and see such a difference in the rational, thought out, educated understanding of our world that many of them have.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
TH in SoC said:
For over a year and a half, I have been reading the writings of people who have awakened to the predicament our society is facing due to climate change and the end of cheap oil, people who have made it their business to understand that predicament and to learn to cope with it.
JAIAM:
Is there a website we can check out or some books about these people?
September 10th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
There are two sites posted by Gail Tverberg, an insurance actuary with an extensive background in the study of energy issues. Her sites are www.ourfiniteworld.com and gailtheactuary.wordpress.com. There is a blog, “rhisome” (www.jeffvail.net) by Jeff Vail which deals with the geopolitical consequences of the present energy crunch. There is a blog, “Casaubon’s Book” (http://sharonastyk.com), which deals with the likely personal consequences of peak oil and climate change, and which proposes strategies for coping with these issues. Lastly, there is the Global Public Media website (www.globalpublicmedia.com) which I discovered for the first time last year, and by which I was first fully introduced to Peak Oil.
I also have a blog dealing with these issues (thewellrundry.blogspot.com), but my blog is less a rigorous analysis of these issues than a diary of how one person is coping with them. If you want to be quickly and deeply informed about these things, you should definitely visit the other sites first.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Just to throw in my two cents. I totally think America should get off its dependence on oil. However, I’m still not a big believer in peek oil. I’m just not sure there anyway to prove it. For all we know there could be oil wells we haven’t found yet in the ocean. I’ve seen the graphs and read the literature, and they certainly could be correct. I’m just not sold on it yet. That said, there are a million other reasons for us to stop relying on oil, that I’m not sure peek oil is a bad thing at all.