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Where their treasure is

08 Nov 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday's gospel Jesus praises the poor widow for contributing her entire livelihood to the treasury. The largest corporations, by contrast, are hoarding cash at levels not seen in 40 years, cautious in the wake of the economic downturn. The move is slowing the pace of economic recovery but may bode well in the long run, analysts said, because large cash balances are both a curse for the economy and a potential blessing. Hoarding means companies are spending and investing less, damping economic growth. But that leaves them with more cash to deploy as the economy improves, giving them a freer hand to acquire and to restart hiring and capital spending. Hints of an incipient economic recovery continued this week. The Institute for Supply Management said service industry jobs grew for a second straight month in October. And while the private sector continued to shed jobs overall, the number of layoffs declined in October for the seventh straight month. That stirred hopes for a better-than-expected employment report from the U.S. Labor Department this Friday and also bolstered optimism that consumer spending will now begin to increase, a critical factor for wider economic recovery. Source: Articles by Tom McGinty and Cari Tuna for the Wall Street Journal, Sakthi Prasad for Reuters, Sara Lepro and Tim Paradis for the Associated Press, and Agence France Presse

corporations economic recovery institute for supply management employment cash

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Time to stand and deliver

31 Jan 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Reeling from a string of political reversals, Democrats needed words of encouragement such as those in the first reading this Sunday where Jeremiah hears the Lord tell him: “Be not crushed.” Hoping to regain momentum, it was time for President Barack Obama to “stand up and tell” the nation Wednesday his opinion on the state of the union. In his speech he promised to help people struggling to pay bills and care for their families and also proposed a partial freeze on federal spending. Defending his approach to the economic crisis, the president said his administration acted “immediately and aggressively” to stave off a second depression but noted the devastation remains. His speech focused on getting the economy moving again. Obama reiterated that he wants to salvage an overhaul of health care, called for more money for schools, and acknowledged there had been some setbacks in his first year in office. Conscious of concern over deficits, he also called for a freeze on unfunded spending bills and promised to use his veto to enforce it if necessary. The president follows his speech with a quick trip to Florida Thursday to detail $8 billion in awards for high-speed rail. The stimulus funds would go toward grants for 13 major rail corridors. The announcement is seen as an effort by the White House to show that the president has a plan to get Americans back to work. Deficit reduction has also emerged as a major concern this week, as the Congressional Budget Office released a report Tuesday projecting that the deficit for this fiscal year will likely be $1.3 trillion. That is a slight improvement over last year’s shortfall, but the long-term budget outlook, according to the report, is for persistently high deficits that will drive the debt ever upward to the point that it could nearly equal the value of the nation’s entire economic output by 2020. Source: Articles by Richard Wolf for USA Today, Jackie Calmes for the New York Times, FoxNews.com, and Julie Pace for Associated Press

barack obama health care reform economic recovery state of the union spending freeze high-speed rail deficit federal deficit congressional budget office

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Economy hits summer doldrums

15 Aug 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

This Sunday’s reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians speaks of Christ being “raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” The moribund U.S. economy once again appears to be on life support and signs point toward a sputtering recovery. Economists had expected that growth would slow in the second half of this year as government stimulus spending dries up, state and local governments slash outlays, and companies finish restocking lean inventories. What they did not anticipate was that the economy would lose most of its momentum before the year was half over, a surprisingly swift slowdown that prompted the Federal Reserve Tuesday to announce more steps to prop up the recovery. “The anemic recovery just got even slower,” said Jay Bryson, global economist with Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina. Weak trade numbers added to the woes this week, as imports surged in June and pushed the trade deficit to its widest gap since October 2008, the height of the financial crisis. Through Christ “all will be brought to life,” Saint Paul says in the reading from Corinthians. An increase in consumer spending is the key to reinvigorating the U.S. economy, but with unemployment standing at 9.5 percent and unlikely to come down this year, consumers are not likely to return to their pre-crisis free-spending ways anytime soon, economists warn. Source: An article by Emily Kaiser for Reuters

economic recovery recovery jay bryson

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Where are the jobs?

11 Sep 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In instructing his listeners to forgive one another generously in this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable of a debtor who owed a "huge amount” to a king and "had no way of paying it back.” That pretty much sums up the state of affairs for the national treasury as well as for many of the unemployed and those whose homes have been foreclosed. The question before Republican presidential candidates in their debate Wednesday night and President Barack Obama in his speech to Congress and the nation Thursday night is how to put America back to work at a time of ballooning federal deficits. A dismal August jobs report showed zero net new jobs, prompting growing alarm that that the U.S. could slide back into recession. Fewer Americans with disposable incomes and less tax revenue for the U.S. government mean economic growth is effectively stalled. Adding to the woes of the unemployed is a move in many states to adopt lifetime limits on cash welfare benefits, such as a cap enacted this week in Michigan. Advocates for the poor warn that tens of thousands of Michigan residents will find themselves without cash assistance on October 1. The news is no better in terms of the nation’s ability to compete globally. The U.S.--which topped the annual Global Competitive Survey as recently as 2008--slipped for the third year in a row and now stands in fifth place worldwide. The weaker performance was attributed to economic vulnerabilities as well as “some aspects of the United States’ institutional environment,” notably low public trust in politicians and concerns about government inefficiency. Sources: Articles by Matthew Saltmarsh for Yahoo Finance and the New York Times and Brian O’Connell for TheStreet.com

barack obama welfare unemployment republicans economic recovery jobs global competitive survey

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Households barely hold their own

17 Jun 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“The just one shall flourish like the palm tree,” promises the psalmist this Sunday, growing “like a cedar of Lebanon.” Hardworking U.S. families wish the economy would flourish and their household income would grow, but new data suggests otherwise. The recent economic downturn has erased nearly two decades of accumulated prosperity and has left the typical family with no more wealth in 2010.The U.S. Federal Reserve this week released a report that sheds light on the precarious financial state of the American family and may help explain why the economic recovery has been slow to take hold. The Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for 2010 shows that the median value of income between 2007 and 2010 fell 7.7 percent, while median net worth plunged more than 38 percent.While the numbers are already 18 months old, the survey illuminates problems that continue to slow the pace of the economic recovery. The Fed found that middle-class families had sustained the largest percentage losses in both wealth and income during the crisis, limiting their ability and willingness to spend.“It fills in details to a picture that we already knew was quite ugly, and these details very much underscore that,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It makes clear how devastating this has been for the middle class.” Sources: Articles by Mark Huffman for Consumer Affairs and Binyamin Appelbaum for the New York Times

federal reserve economic recovery economic downturn income net worth middle class jared bernstein

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Rising housing tide should lift all boats

26 Jul 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Wherever Jesus went, we hear in this Sunday’s gospel, “a large crowd followed him.” Anyone with a home to sell these days is sure to attract a crowd as well. Americans bought homes in June at the fastest rate in more than eight years, pushing prices to record highs as buyer demand has eclipsed the availability of houses on the market. Sales have jumped 9.6 percent over the past 12 months, while the number of listings has risen just 0.4 percent, which means there are a lot of buyers out there for any property that is listed for sale. Homily help: A healthy housing market is central to a healthy economy. After many years of very slow recovery, it appears we are finally putting the crash of 2008 behind us. The question is, have we learned the lessons needed to avoid a repetition? Greed is one of the deadly sins in our tradition for a good reason. Let’s make sure that we keep our returning prosperity in perspective, and focus on making sure those left behind for so many years finally have a chance to recover. We’re all in this together! For more on the housing market, see: US home sales surge in June to fastest pace in 8-plus years

housing market economic recovery economic justice

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High poverty persists

20 Sep 2015 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The psalmist turns to God for assistance this Sunday, to “the Lord who sustains my life.” Poor people in the United States don’t know where to turn in their need, as economic hardship persists at very high levels in the nation despite economic “recovery,” according to new figures released from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The 2014 national poverty rate remained flat at 14.8 percent and still well above pre-recession levels five years into the official economic recovery. There were 46.7 million Americans living below the official federal poverty line. Homily hint: It is scandalous that the wealthiest nation in the world allows nearly 50 million of its citizens to dwell in poverty. The biblical testimony is clear: God calls us to do better and we can do better. Let’s not speak of economic recovery until such levels of poverty are addressed. For more on poverty rates, see: High poverty rates persist despite economic recovery, Census data shows

poverty economic recovery economic justice

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