My Christmas Wish: Quantitative Easing

I had never heard of the term "quantitative easing" until about a month ago. I was walking in my neighborhood in Northwest Arkansas thinking about all the houses on the two streets around us that have been foreclosed, are for rent, or are for sale. Usually the total is around sixteen. On this day, however, NPR was speaking of quantitative easing as a way of quietly stimulating the economy. Instead of the messy business of a new stimulus plan that must be approved by congress, why not just flood the economy with $600 billion dollars of new printed money? I thought it was a fabulous idea and longed to be put on the Christmas list for just such a gift to our family.

Many of us could greatly benefit from receiving a free gift of printed money just in time for the holiday. After all we could go to the mall and shop freely for our families without pulling out the credit card even once. We could fill our pockets with money and pay in cash. Heck, we could even afford to be generous to others in need and share some of the cash with them.

Unfortunately, the new printed money will only serve to weaken our already weakened dollar and to put us as a country in further risk that the Chinese will simply call in our debt. It might help our exports, but then we become the country we have been criticizing: namely China who has been manipulating its currency in order to increase its exports also.

The future months will reveal the impact of quantitative easing upon the U. S. economy. In the meantime, it would be very nice for Santa to fill our stockings with cash to at least pay the After-Christmas bills.

The Tragedy of Zahra Baker

Our book club has just completed its discussion of Danielle Trussoni's Angelology. The question we spent the most time discussing is this: "Apart from religion, is there such a thing as pure evil?" One need not look much further than the latest child murder, that of Zahra Baker in North Carolina, to know pure evil must exist. As we have heard and seen from videos of her on television, she was a child who had experienced much trauma in her ten years. Yet, amazingly enough, every picture showed a happy, smiling child.

Evidently she was being raised by her grandmother in Australia before she came to the United States to live with her father Adam and stepmother Elisa. She lost a leg and her hearing because of treatment for bone cancer. The way she lost her life is still being determined by the authorities although the evidence strongly points to the father and stepmother. Elisa evidently gave directions as to where to locate Zahra's body. We must ask ourselves as a nation once more, "What kind of person would kill such a beautiful, innocent child?"

Neighbors of the family have now come forward to report their concern for Zahra, sharing stories of a stepmother's berating of her stepdaughter because she would not use her prosthesis as much as her stepmother thought necessary. What is the lesson we can learn from Zahra's murder? Obviously, it is to report to the authorities any suspicion of child abuse. We cannot be silent on this issue. Pure evil does exist, and it robbed Zahra of the life she might have had.

Lives of Sacrifice and Service

My friend JoAnn and I blindly chose a movie to watch together on Thursday. I say blindly, but in actuality we had both read a review and came away from it thinking we would be watching a love story. It was anything but. It was Never Let Me Go based on the novel by Ishiguro. The storyline centered around clones that were intentionally created in order to supply vital organs for their "originals" as needed. It was rather horrifying to say the least.

Of course, since the original, cloned sheep Dolly was created in 1996, many issues have arisen regarding the ethics and morality of the process. Many have gone on to speculate about how clones might be used to extend life almost indefinitely. The movie version raises not only those issues but also focuses on whether clones have souls, can be original and creative themselves, or can fall in love and experience the same emotions as all people.

The movie also centers perhaps on a larger theological issue. At one point near the end of the movie, the Garden of Eden is alluded to as one character is reading to another. Could the author of the novel have been also pondering the destiny of God's creations? We are taught as Christians, for example, that our purpose in life is to live lives of sacrifice and service just as Jesus did. At what point can, and do we, decide if sacrifice for others is too demanding and will eventually exhaust us? Are we like clones who blindly accept this purpose here on earth?

The movie is intriguing--not necessarily one I would have chosen with more information on its content. It is, nevertheless, one I cannot easily forget.