Galloping consumption: Solving the crisis by creating more debt? G. Preece

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Meanwhile, as Jim Skillen says in ‘"New Politics" Still Just a Promise’ (March 13/3/09), ‘Democratic leaders in Congress are scurrying …to grab the spoils they believe belong to them. What spoils? Control of the public's debit card with which to show supportive interest groups that the Democrats are back in charge. America in a crisis? What crisis?’ Despite Obama’s declared cut to wasteful Pentagon spending, in the current bill, 44 mostly Democrats insisted on nearly a billion dollars for unwanted new ships and weapons for the Pentagon (Washington Post, 8/3/09). An entitlement mentality seems to be everywhere. We are consumed by it. You don’t even have to be good for this Santa. The sensitive hip-pocket nerve sidelines election talk of a new politics and business and politics resume as usual. Meanwhile the ice-caps are melting at the upper limit of previous predictions and Wall St may be under water by 2100.

The fact that much of the Federal first stimulus went into savings is jumped on by Mr Turnbull. It’s defended as one step closer to future consumption by the Treasurer and as prudent by Ross Gittins, the ex-Salvo Fairfax economics editor (The Age, 11/3/09, Opinion). Gittins, the IMF and Reserve Bank and industrial relations expert John Buchanan and Anglican welfare and umbrella agencies like ACOSS agree with the stimulus package, the latter especially for workers and the poor. On the virtue of saving, Gittins’ penchant for saving is shared by investment guru Warren Buffet, though Buffet hates Obama and Rudd’s Keynesian stimulus packages. He follows those revisionist conservatives saying it didn’t work during the Depression, only increasing unemployment by 1940. So the history wars have migrated from indigenous to finance issues. For Buffet and co. we just have to let companies like General Motors go under, and swallow their bitter medicine, or is it the workers’ medicine? Yet the tough love approach that says ‘it hurts me as much as it hurts you’ somehow doesn’t ring true from the people in first class who get the first lifeboats when the Titanic goes down.

If you’re confused by the two handed arguments of economists – ‘on the one hand, on the other’, or by the politically one-eyed explanations, both of contemporary and historical situations, or by the argument that what’s happening has no historical precedent, join me for a short journey down another, more religious, route – or is our real religion consumption?

Not being a practitioner of the dismal science, neither an economist nor the son of an economist, I’ll not dare to come up with a theoretical answer to the crisis. The first step in Solomonic and Socratic wisdom is to admit that we don’t know. Rowan Williams has written the best theological response to the crisis so far (see The Guardian 9/3/09) seeing the global financial crisis, like our ecological crisis, as a call to remember our creaturely finitude, both ontologically and epistemologically.

Despite the virtual and global economy we can only sleep in one bed at one time and eat roughly three meals a day – and we only know as much as our angle of space-time, class, cultural and spiritual vision allows. Where our provision comes from profoundly effects our vision, often blinding us to others (Mt 6:21-23 - our sight is where our treasure and hearts and money are). In the dust of the Babel-like Global Financial Crash (GFC) we’ve lost sight of our 2015 vision for the Millennium Development Goals or the justice, mercy and humility the Lord requires in Micah 6:8. And ‘without a vision the people perish’ (Prov 29:18). Only in the light of the Pentecostal - birth of the Church as an anti-Babel, alternative global or catholic community where the young shall see visions (Acts 2:7), can we find provision for all the world’s people. Williams also advocates a return to the roots of early, more neighbourly, relational capitalism in the shared risk, mutual trust and patience that led to limited liability companies – a kind of corporate - social covenant. Companies provide jobs, limited liability provides pooled risk. We need a re-covenanting to circumvent the short-term contractualism (quarterly returns, three-yearly elections) at the heart of our economic and ecological woes (see Sennett, The Corrosion of Character).

One symbolic and practical opportunity of recognising our covenantal and creational connections with others is ironically offered by the government’s second stimulus package. Until early April, many will get a payment of $900-$950. Before succumbing to the siren ‘call of the mall’, consider an alternative to ‘shop till we drop’, proposed by Manna-Gum (manna-gum@optusnet.com.au) and Seeds Community. Put your bit of the $12 billion 'manna from Kevin' towards healing some of our economy’s destructiveness. This could take the following forms as a sample.

1.   Support those who suffer first and most.

• Globally, since mid-2007 poorer people on three continents have suffered a serious food crisis – largely through climate change and bio-fuel for food programs causing scarcity and raising prices. This has consequences more direct and devastating than the GFC. You could give money to an overseas development project addressing the food crisis. See www.letsgiveitaway.org
• Locally, those suffering most will be the newly jobless, casual labour and those on welfare. Try supporting an agency serving such people e.g. Urban Seed, Brotherhood of St Laurence, Anglicare.
• In our own third world, many indigenous Australians constantly live in financial and social crisis. Nungalinya College and TEAR’s Commonwealth Project www.tear.org.au/projects, are great indigenous investments.

2.   Reducing our ecological impact.

• Our greatest challenge ecologically and economically is to limit climate change. The GFC has emboldened voices and interests seeking to limit climate change policies. Consider giving to advocacy groups like GetUp or the Australian Conservation Foundation.
• Use the money (with rebates) to install water tanks, solar hot water and panels.
• At the start of the Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme buy $900 of carbon credits (about 36 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions). This prevents anyone from emitting that CO2 into the atmosphere if you don’t
• Share ideas with other people at church or other groups.
• Visit  mannafromkevin.wordpress.com to share your and others’ ideas.

Gordon Preece www.preecegordon@hotmail.com is Acting Rector of Yarraville, ethicist for Christian Super and is writing on the GFC for Acorn Press with Ian Harper.