Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2014: Will the Rich Go on Strike Against Pope Francis?

CNBC reports:

Pope Francis' critical comments about the wealthy and capitalism have at least one wealthy capitalist benefactor hesitant about giving financial support to one of the church's major fundraising projects.

At issue is an effort to raise $180 million for the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York being spearheaded by billionaire Ken Langone, the investor known for founding Home Depot, among other things.

Langone told CNBC that one potential seven-figure donor is concerned about statements from the pope criticizing market economies as "exclusionary," urging the rich to give more to the poor and criticizing a "culture of prosperity" that leads some to become "incapable of feeling compassion for the poor."

Langone said he's raised the issue more than once with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, most recently at a breakfast in early December at which he updated him on fundraising progress.

"I've told the cardinal, 'Your Eminence, this is one more hurdle I hope we don't have to deal with. You want to be careful about generalities. Rich people in one country don't act the same as rich people in another country,' " he said[...]

Dolan told CNBC that he had heard from Langone and said, " 'Well, Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father's message. The pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people.'"

12 comments:

  1. " The pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people."

    His profanity....er, I mean the pope would do better to study economics before pontificating on it. He's being arrogant thinking he can talk about something he knows nothing about. Wouldn't Catholics call that sinful?

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    1. Study this:


      Many of my prognostications were in the ballpark, but I have continually underestimated the ability of central bankers and their Wall Street co-conspirators to use the $2.8 billion per day of QE to artificially elevate the stock market to bubble level proportions once again.

      If I wasn’t such a trusting soul, I might conclude the .1% financial elite, who run this country, created QEternity to benefit themselves, their .1% corporate CEO accomplices and the corrupt government apparatchiks who shield their flagrant criminality from the righteous hand of justice.

      Even a highly educated Ivy League economist might grasp the fact that Ben Bernanke’s QEternity and ZIRP, sold to the unsuspecting masses as desperate measures during a crisis that could have brought the system down, have been kept in place for five years as a means to drive stock prices and home prices higher. The emergency was over by 2010, according to government reported data. The current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve would have been viewed as outrageous, reckless, and incomprehensible in 2007. It is truly a credit to the ruling elite and their media propaganda arm that they have been able to convince a majority of Americans their brazen felonious disregard for the wellbeing of the 99% is necessary to sustain the .1% way of life. Those palaces in the Hamptons aren’t going to pay for themselves without those $100 billion of annual bonuses.

      http://www.theburningplatform.com/2013/12/31/2013-dense-fog-turns-into-toxic-smog/


      I'd call the criminal class sinful.....

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    2. "Study this:"

      Did my studying thank you. you're not telling me something I don't already know.

      "I'd call the criminal class sinful....."

      Yeah. Pretty obvious.

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    3. As soon as I read stuff like the .01% or 1% or whatever and then followed up with some sort of crime or injustice that they supposedly are guilty of for simply being included statistically in that group, I know I'm dealing with a very shallow thinker. This kind of thinking is at the root of all racism and bigotry. People/individuals commit crimes, not groups, not corporations and not even governments. You are feeding the hate machine which will ultimately destroy this country.

      Are some rich people horrible, you bet. The same goes for poor and middle class people as well. And here's a shocker for you, some of us that are rich were poor and middle class people at one time. Kill the rich and you kill the middle class. I would never have worked as hard or taken the risks I did, if I didn't believe I could attain economic prosperity. If you want to help your fellow man, start a business and give him a job and then encourage him to do the same.

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    4. I think whatever the Pope utters should qualify as "pontificating".

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    5. "I would never have worked as hard or taken the risks I did, if I didn't believe I could attain economic prosperity."

      Congrats on your success. Too bad many people like stealing it. Punishing hard work and rewarding laziness. That's a crime in my book.

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    6. Infinite fiat channeled through crony capitalists to cover bad bets, enrich, and maintain status quo ad infinitum is a crime in my book.

      Those outside the channeled fiat lose....so save the righteous bs for the sheep.

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    7. Langone's favorite banker is Dimon....hmmm...

      Why Did the Justice Department Kill the Madoff Subpoena Against JPMorgan?

      By Pam Martens: December 31, 2013


      Since December 16, major business media have failed to dig deeper into a potentially blockbuster story involving the Justice Department’s refusal to honor a Wall Street regulator’s request for a subpoena against JPMorgan Chase to obtain Madoff related documents the firm was refusing to turn over. JPMorgan Chase was Madoff’s banker for the last 22 years of his fraud. The Trustee in charge of recovering funds for Madoff’s victims, Irving Picard, said in a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court this Fall that JPMorgan stood “at the very center of Madoff’s fraud for over 20 years.”

      It’s a big story when a serial miscreant like JPMorgan – which has promised its regulators to change its jaded ways in exchange for settlements – risks obstruction of justice charges by denying one of its key regulators internal documents. It becomes an explosive story when the Justice Department, the highest law enforcement agency in the land and the regulator’s only source of help in enforcing a subpoena for the documents, sides with the serial miscreant instead of the regulator.

      The Inspector General’s office clearly believed there was merit to the OCC’s claim because it issued its own administrative subpoena for the documents, according to the CNBC story. JPMorgan refused that request as well, leading the Inspector General to ask the Justice Department to enforce the subpoena – a request it refused to honor.

      One week ago, David Cay Johnston picked up on the subpoena story for Newsweek, writing: “Bernard Madoff’s principal bank, JPMorgan Chase, has for years obstructed federal bank examiners trying to ascertain what it knew about his gigantic Ponzi scheme, an official document obtained by Newsweek shows.”

      Johnston cited an internal document he had obtained from the Government Attic, a public interest website that posts documents it obtains from Freedom of Information Act requests. Johnston said that “The JPMorgan memos Justice declined to pursue are almost certain to show that years earlier the bank had grounds to suspect Madoff was running a fraud.”

      http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/12/why-did-the-justice-department-kill-the-madoff-subpoena-against-jpmorgan/

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  2. I hope he realizes how absurd that sounds..

    It's like saying "The pope loves white people. He also loves black people." The fact that you would segregate people amongst classes / race / etc shows that the Pope's intellect is severely lacking.

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  3. Here is Mises on the bloviating of religious types against capitalism:

    "The reformers, in exhorting people to turn away from selfishness, address themselves to capitalists and entrepreneurs, and sometimes, although only timidly, to wage earners as well. However, the market economy is a system of consumers' supremacy. The sermonizers should appeal to consumers, not to producers. They should persuade the consumers to renounce preferring better and cheaper merchandise to poorer and dearer merchandise lest they hurt the less efficient producer. They should persuade them to restrict their own purchases in order to provide poorer people with the opportunity to buy more."

    Mises, Human Action.

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    1. show me the market economy....where?...the religion is plutocracy....wake tfu!

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  4. Pope Francis has been among the poor for a long time and knows their struggles. The rich on the other hand accumulate wealth and all the Pope is saying share your good fortune with the poor. We all know gathering wealth to a point where you are no longer in need of $$$$$ to survive ie. you have purchased everything you will ever need becomes a game of accumilation. Give all of that portion to the poor. Not just a small %.

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