Wall Street mayhem & homeschoolers
“It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.” —Psalm 118:8, 9
By David Tulis
As a homeschool mom or dad, you are in a position to understand the economic collapse on Wall Street better than many people.
Just look at the path your life has taken.
A drama similar to Wall Street’s played out in the narrative of your marriage and the arrival of your first child. From early on you had expressed an unwillingness to follow the herd. With fear of God in your hearts, you both clambered to a piece of high ground from which to see a broad prospect.
From the vantage point you saw two courses of action. To the right, a difficult, narrow path, that of faithful obedience to God. To the left, a broad highway. You chose the right way, the narrow one. You wanted to be a homeschool mom because you had read about public schools and the way in which they inspire atheism, moral relativism and intellectual stultification.
There stood the public school, on the side of the broad highway filled with your neighbors, town leaders and pew sharers at church, all of whom endorsed it. The structure stood immoveable, its red brick catching the evening sunlight, winning but somehow unreal; you picture it in your mind with images from the small public school near your first house, and borrowed your childhood experiences as a public gradeschool pupil..
While your children were still tots, or maybe a little older, you and your husband elected to homeschool — to take the educational path that is individual, personal, free market-oriented and Christian.
You decided to avoid the corporate structure of the public school, its mass functions and factory orientation, its delegation to unseen experts and advisers and faraway specialized nonprofit groups which suggest those incessant “reforms” you read about on Metro page; you avoided its surveillance, its immunization rules, its propaganda for the political and religious status quo.
You avoided the great promises it makes about a solid return on your investment. You ignored the fact that you could become a shareholder at no cost to you — it was free. The benefits suggested in the prospectus for this house of public education were many — could you not, as a consumer of these free services — find employment to increase the family income and create a better inheritance for your children? Could you not take advantage of the system to “find yourself” and develop the true you?
The turn of mind which led you to refuse this free public benefit is the same which caused the great panic of 2008. Confidence. Or lack of it The great crash of Black September and a federal “rescue” that will torment our country for the next 75 years was a panic. The crisis was a run on the bank, a dash to safety.
Investors darted quickly starting Sept. 15, selling stocks in questionable corporations and banks and buying assets they deemed safer. They abandoned the fabled houses of finance that had peddled investments and securities as safe, which were in fact of unknown value or worthless. They dumped at discount.
The great concern as Esprit goes to press is whether this tangible fear will spread from the big investment houses and retirement funds down to Main Street and the retail investor — that is, you and your family.
Will you sit tight? Will you, the small stockholder and mutual fund member, remain confident in the system? Will the federal rescue announced Sept. 19 satisfy you that your money is safe?
If the common person is not reassured by the federal decapitation and takeover of the entire top of the official and corporate economy, he too will bail out.
If 1 percent of American investors bail out of their banks, the entire system could collapse, as the banking sector is leveraged to the gills and has no liquid base. For years I have heard from The Moneychanger newsletter and other publications just how leveraged the banking system is. (It violates the 8th commandment against theft and the 9th commandment on false representation.) The guarantor of banks, the FDIC, is bankrupt, too, intending to petition Congress for cash and more taxing authority on the banking industry.
There has been a run on the bank nationally that has wiped out big financial houses. If there is a run on the bank at the consumer level, the system could be on its knees. The “cascading defaults” that Alan Greenspan warned about could become a reality. They’ve already started; will political intervention halt it.
But you already know about such things.
There already has been a run on the bank.
That is — the bank of the American public school.
You and your family bailed out, sought safety. Lacking confidence that the institution which everyone trusted, you went to the teller, as it were, and withdrew your money.
Rather than relying on the big houses of American education to make you prosper, you said, “No, I think we can do better at home, without all the experts and academicians and studies and think tank analyses. I am not confident in you.”
I want to ask you a question in light of your previous bold steps to separate yourself from big institutions with your human capital.
Do you trust the people in New York and Washington who have bailed out giant corporations and promised to saddle you with “hundreds of billions” in obligations, according to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, for the greater good? Do you trust the corporations that are keeping your savings or your deposits?
If you trust them — and everybody else does, too, simultaneously — then that financial company will surely be there when business opens following the coming weekend (assuming the tumult continues into the new month). But what if you’re wrong, and everybody else is right, and they get to the teller before you, what then?
The seemingly seamless apparatus of government and media worked in the last two weeks of September to avert a Main Street run on the bank. Is it working?
You distrusted the government in education. But maybe you can trust its representatives in the area of investing and savings and banking. Maybe. Trust your gut.
Whatever you do, you have to remember that God is sovereign over all things, and that He is just and righteous in His judgment — and his mercies.