This Is News?

The BBC is reporting that it has received copies of plans for American air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military infrastructure. I don't know who leaked these plans and why, but is it really a surprise that the United States has developed a plan of attack should the need to bomb Iran arise? The Department of Defense has contingency plans for attacking most countries in the world, if not all of them. Heck, we even have a plan for invading Canada. What's more, given that a military confrontation with Iran seems more and more likely all the time, it only makes sense that the Pentagon would develop and u-to-date plan of attack to eliminate its primary target- Iran's nuclear program- while taking measures to limit Iran's response capability.



I'm curious, though. One of Iran's tools of response would undoubtedly Hezbollah. Has the United States taken steps to limit Hezbollah's ability to respond to an American attack on Iran? Have the United States and Israel worked out an arrangement whereby Israel would reinitiate attacks on Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon? If so, would the Lebanese government support such a move, hinder it, or stand aside? The article doesn't say, and that's probably for the best.

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This'll Do A Lot of Good

According to Reuters, there are some people in the space business who want the U.N. to take the lead in preventing asteroids striking the Earth. Measures will include intense periods of negotiations with the asteroids, inspections by the International Asteroid-Earth Agency (until the asteroids kick out the inspectors), and corrupt trade arrangements which allow U.N. officials to enhance their collections of space rocks.

Meanwhile, on the Ecumenical Front

The Times of London has published a story about leaked Anglican-Catholic documents laying out a possible path to reunification between orthodox Anglicans and Rome. While I am encouraged by the partial repair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic schism on the whole, it seems a shame that this reunion is being driven by schism within the Anglican Communion and that the radical elements within the Anglican Communion are driving it to suicide by changing fundamental teachings on issues of faith and morals (ordination of active homosexuals, the blessing of homosexual unions, etc.). The pursuit of Christian unity should be driven by the desire to see Christ's prayer in John 17 that all Christians be one, not in an attempt to avoid being dragged over the edge of a cliff by those who would subjugate eternal verities to progressive ideology. In other words, I would rather see a reunion between London and Rome than see Rome gather up the survivors as London wrecks itself on the shoals of fashionable ideology.

Still, I can't possibly imagine any Pope plunging the Roman Catholic Church into the sort of crisis in which the Anglican Communion now finds itself. Homosexual acts have always been considered immoral by the Roman Catholic Church, and as defender of the deposit of faith as defined by Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium, no Pope would ever knowingly sanction any practice that undermined the Church's teaching on this matter. This means the ordination of those known to be active homosexuals will never receive official sanction (even if many bishops have turned a blind eye, with disastrous consequences from which the Church has yet to recover), nor will the blessing of homosexual unions (never mind polyamorous relationships). The Church must rest upon eternal verities (indeed The Eternal Verity), else she will surely founder and sink. And by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, it is the Pope who strives to ensure that the three-fold cord of Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium binds the people of the Roman Catholic Church to Christ, the bridegroom, and through Him, to God the Father, Creator of all things and their Foundation.

He's Doing What?!? I'm Confused

Hugo Chavez is planning to solve Venezuela's growing inflation problem by simply "lopping three zeros from the currency." At best, this move won't make the situation worse (sort of like waxing your car in an attempt to fix its busted radiator). If something costs $5.00, lopping a couple of zeros off the currency doesn't alter the cost of the item. It only makes yesterday's $5.00 worth $.05 today.

Of course, if people conduct their financial transactions with cash, this means the value of a bill is worth, in this case, 1,000 times what it was. Thus, people are richer, and the problem is solved, right? Wrong. Money, like everything else in economics, is subject to the law of supply and demand. Lopping three zeros off the currency effectively increases the money supply by 100,000%, and the value of money will adjust until supply equals demand (i.e. prices will shoot through the roof until the situation looks the same as it did before but is really 1,000 times worse).

To prevent prices skyrocketing, Chavez is looking to implement and enforce price controls, but as the story notes, this will lead to decreased supplies of goods and services. In addition artificially low prices will artificially raise demand. The combination of artificially low supply with artificially high demand will lead to widespread shortages of goods and services as demand far outstrips supply. As a result, Venezuela will have the worst of both worlds: lots of worthless money they can't spend on anything, at least officially. I'm sure the black market will do quite well.

As Alberto Bernal says of Chavez in the article, "He has a funny understanding of the problem."

GM Needs More Problems

Apparently, GM is in preliminary talks with Daimler Chrysler to see about purchasing the Chrysler Group from Daimler. In the short term, this strikes me as being a bad idea. Both GM and Chrysler are struggling and having to lay off workers to cut costs. GM acquiring Chrysler would only exacerbate this problem as redundant personnel (and possibly redundant infrastructure) would have to be eliminated, while GM would have to spend large amounts of money to make Chrysler's systems compatible with its own. If the situation is managed well, things could work out in the long run, but GM has enough of its own problems without having to worry about Chrysler's as well.

I expect GM's executives realize this and don't really expect anything to come of this.