Chuck Baldwin
On this Good Friday, it behooves us to remind ourselves (Christians should need no reminder) of the significance of this season. Along with the virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ forms the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Indeed, the resurrection of Jesus separates Christianity from all the world's religions.
Furthermore, the overwhelming number of America's founders understood the connection between the Christian faith and the rise of these United States. John Quincy Adams said, "The highest glory of the American revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
Adams also said, "From the day of the Declaration . . .they [the American people] were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct."
Then, on July 4, 1837, Adams said these words, "Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is ...   more »

Throughout Western culture, today is known as "Good Friday." Christians commemorate this as the day on which Jesus Christ gave His life as payment for the sins of mankind on a hill outside ancient Jerusalem. The hill was called Golgotha – "the place of the skull."
Jesus was born in a stable in an obscure village named Bethlehem. He grew up in another obscure village known as Nazareth. He never traveled more than about 200 miles from His birthplace. He was not known beyond Nazareth until He began His public career. And that public career only lasted three short years.
His profession, prior to what he called his life calling of saving men from their sin, was a carpenter. During his life, He never ran for public office, yet hundreds of millions have followed Him over two millennia. He never wrote a book, yet hundreds of thousands have been written about Him. He never became the patriarch of a family, yet untold millions consider themselves His children. From the time he began publicly teaching, he never had a house. He was never formally educated, yet He confounded the most brilliant sages of His time. He never commanded an army, yet ...   more »

The interesting thing about economics is that it is rather like the weather in some ways. It's easy to read the signs and know that autumn is on the way, but it's very hard to predict the precise date of the season's first snowfall. (In Minnesota, Jack Frost never waits for winter, but shows up on Oct. 24, on average.) And the fact that you may be totally confident that it's going to snow this winter doesn't mean you know if it's going to be an 11-footer like 1995 to 1996 or a measly two-footer like 1958 to 1959.
Like the early leaves of autumn, the first financial institutions are beginning to fall. Globalization and financial innovation have not mitigated economic risk; they have merely allowed the wrinkled whores of Wall Street to conceal the extent of the crises and delay their inevitable day of reckoning. The idea that the various bank failures and last-ditch bailouts taking place everywhere from New York to London and Zurich are the result of unforeseen circumstances is as ludicrous as the idea of taking out an adjustable rate mortgage when mortgage rates are at historic lows. The irresponsible happy talk of the financial media ...   more »

Fed chief says, 'We did it. …
very sorry, won't do it again'
By David Kupeliany
Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that's the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
The worldwide economic downturn called the Great Depression, which persisted from 1929 until about 1939, was the longest and worst depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. While originating in the U.S., it ended up causing drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in virtually every country on earth. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "the Great Depression ranks second only to the Civil War as the gravest crisis in American history."
What exactly caused this economic tsunami that devastated the U.S. and much of the world?
In "A Monetary History of the United States," Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman along with coauthor Anna J. Schwartz lay the mega-catastrophe of the Great Depression squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve.
Here's how Friedman summed up his views on the Fed and ...   more »

by Robert Weissman
There have been few experiments as reckless, overhyped and with as little potential upside as the rapid rollout of genetically modified crops.
Last month, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a pro-biotech nonprofit, released a report highlighting the proliferation of genetically modified crops. According to ISAAA, biotech crop area grew 12 percent, or 12. 3 million hectares, to reach 114. 3 million hectares in 2007, the second highest area increase in the past five years.
For the biotech backers, this is cause to celebrate. They claim that biotech helps farmers. They say it promises to reduce hunger and poverty in developing countries.”If we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of cutting hunger and poverty in half by 2015,” says Clive James, ISAAA founder and the author the just-released report, “biotech crops must play an even bigger role in the next decade.”
In fact, existing genetically modified crops are hurting small farmers and failing to deliver increased food supply — and posing enormous, largely unknown risks to people and the planet.
For all of the industry hype around biotech products, virtually all planted genetically modified seed is for only four products — ...   more »