Last Friday morning, a week ago, we saw some of the damage of London’s worst storm in 300 years. Overnight, an unpredicted hurricane with wind gusts of over 100 miles per hour had paralyzed much of southern Britain in the first power black-out since World War II. The next day, in the 8-hour flight across the North Atlantic, Greenland and Hudson Bay to Chicago I spent much of the time (in between attempts to catch glimpses of the Arctic landscapes) poring over an extraordinary 20-page article by Peter G. Peterson in the October 1987 Atlantic Monthly entitled “The Morning After.” On the magazine’s front cover the author predicted that “America is about to wake up to a painful new economic reality, following the biggest binge of borrowing and spending in the history of the nation,” and continued, in introducing his article, to announce that “America has let its infrastructure crumble, its foreign markets decline, its productivity dwindle, its savings evaporate, and its budget and borrowing burgeon. And now the day of reckoning is at hand.” During our return to Grand Rapids we listened to the stock market’s “Black Monday” report of its worst collapse since 1929 suggesting that Mr. Peterson’s grim prediction might be fulfilled much sooner than anyone could have expected. Let’s review a few of his observations about the horrendous crisis of our economy.

Despite the recent apparent prosperity under Reaganomics, “Americans are about to wake up to reality” as “the foundations of their economic future have been insidiously weakening.” Our policy through several administrations, has had as its “root malady” a “national preference for consumption over investment.” By buying more than we produce, during the 1980s “we have transformed ourselves from the world’s largest creditor into the world’s largest debtor.” “The incredible speed of America’s transformation from creditor to debtor can hardly be exaggerated.” “Over the past six years . . . the United States has burned up more than $500 billion, net, by liquidating its foreign assets and by borrowing from abroad.”

The author foresees the recession or depression that must result from this “disastrous financial mismanagement.” “If we simply proceed with the ‘business as usual’ approach to the world’s growing imbalance, America’s foreign creditors will ultimately become aware that the situation is untenable. At that point anything . . . could cause investors around the world to decide to rid themselves of dollar–denominated assets. If the resulting plunge in the dollar‘s exchange rate persuades ever larger numbers of investors to follow suit,” the result might be “an avalanche pouring down on the dollars financial capitals, from London to San Francisco” and “could easily become our most severe economic crisis since the 1930s.” Thus he sees us following “the British route to second-class economic status” much more rapidly than they did.

While “opinion polls . . . show that the American public overwhelmingly favors, in theory, a balanced budget,” serious attempts to reduce the deficit continue to encounter, in practice, enormous bipartisan resistance,” as Congress and the Administration invent countless reasons “for minimizing the problem and postponing corrective action.

Responsibility for our current predicament lies with both Congress and Administration. Congressional financial irresponsibility has long been notorious. While President Reagan is given credit for a number of his corrective efforts, he is also faulted for acquiscing “in some of the worst, future-averting choices America has ever made.”

The author sees especially two big obstacles to correcting our government overspending. One is the problem of “entitlements”—enormous and protected payments to individuals. 85% of these are “not means-tested . . . not targeted to people living in poverty,” but to people “least likely to be poor.” The other obstacle to correcting the deficit is “the two most generous pension systems in America: civil service and military retirement programs,” most of whose recipients “are not ‘retired’ at all but working at another job and earning a second pension.”

The sweeping survey, far more extensive and illuminating than I can begin to detail, finally leads to some suggestions as to what must be done in effort to forestall the impending disaster. The deficit-spending must be stopped, the excessive “entitlements” and pension programs must be brought under control, health care costs must be curtailed, and revenues must be increased.

Will the shock of the stock market collapse and its aftermath of disturbing fluctuations be sufficient to prod Congress and the Administration to some real correction? The news of the moment seems to indicate that it might. But the long record of financial irresponsibility may make one skeptical.

Near the beginning of these disasterous 80s which saw our precipitous slide from creditor to debtor nation, I called attention in an Outlook article to the observations of business executive William M. Werber and noted analyst Herman Kahn that “Inflation is a Moral Problem” (May, 1981 Outlook, pp. 6, 7, reprinted from March, 1975 issue, p. 13, 14). Mr. Werber said, “Inflation is more a basic moral issue than one of economics. And it all begins with the moral corruption of government.” And Mr. Kahn had prescribed “first and foremost” “that the Government doesn’t spend more than it bas available. Any government that does so—except in very special circumstances—ought to be thought of as immoral. We’ve got to turn this whole fight against easy deficits and inflation into a moral issue, not just a matter of some economists’ or politicians’ calculations. The economists think it’s dumb to look at such things in terms of moral issues—as a matter of theology but it’s the only realistic way to balance the many pressures and inducements to lax behavior and unrealistic estimates.” That article went on to recall bow the French nobility’s insistence on continued government borrowing instead of raising taxes had pushed that nation into the bankruptcy that precipitated its revolution. It recalled too, how the financial collapse of Nationalist China as its yuan’s value dropped to 12 million to $1 U.S. contributed to its defeat. That article cited a Dutch politician’s observation of bow current problems were literally paralleling our Lord’s story of the Prodigal Son. Having “wasted his substance with riotous living,” be “began to be in want!”

These are, indeed, economic matters, and we need to listen to and learn from the experts in that subject. But when the world’s politicians, economists and newspeople insist that these problems are only economic and therefore have nothing to do with religion or even morals, they only show their own blindness. Refusal to pay honest bills is stealing, even if governments do it. We need to be guided by the light that the gospel is shedding on our common as well as individual predicaments.

Several mystifying current developments become intelligible when we see them as God’s judgments on the rejection of His commandments. Politicians, judges, news people and academics were commonly priding themselves on our new social “freedoms” and “rights” as the old moral laws were dismissed as completely out of date. Now we suddenly find ourselves confronted with the problem, appropriately arising out of the very conduct being promoted, of an AIDS epidemic. That new plague could wipe out a large percentage of our population, just as similar conduct long ago destroyed Canaanites. The repeal of the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” by our society has not worked very well. Now the stock market crash threatens to teach us that the similar repeal of the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” however attractive it might seem to our politicians and public, is fairing no better.*

Isn’t the gospel message of Christ’s coming good news for all people? And don’t we have to declare and show the Lord’s compassion for the victims of disasters such as aids and depressions? The gospel is good news and we have to show the Lord’s compassion, but what is the good news? It is that Christ came, as His name even indicates, to save us from sin and its consequences. That is a message that must be brought to all. But while it promises salvation to all who repent and believe, it, at the same time, assures the destruction of all who do not. The Messiah, whose corning we traditionally celebrate does indeed shed His blessing on all who receive him, but He is at the same time the one who comes, as Handel’s Messiah taught us to sing in the words of Scripture, to rule the hostile nations “with a rod of iron” and to “dash them in pieces as a potter’s vessel” (Psalm 2)! This Christmas season with its traditional lavish celebration arrives amid increasing signs in our creaking economy that “God is not mocked!”

PDJ

*It is intriguing to notice how each of the Lord’s commandments is in~oneway and another being given the same kind of treatment. Regarding the filth, we see a growing number of irresponsible parents (and schools) producing an increasing percentage of undisciplined and delinquent children. Regarding the sixth, “Thou shalt not kill,” Congress and courts show their determination to maintain the newly discovered “civil right” to murder the unborn, applauded by “progressive” religious leaders. Regarding the ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” lying has become the accepted policy of politicians and newspeople under the illusion that “it is only the image that counts,” and even our theologians and educators are telling us that “truth” is no longer defined as “conformity to fact,” but as only “relational” (or “covenantal”)! And the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” becomes unthinkable since encouraging and promoting covetousness has become the engine that must power our economy! The public rejection of God’s commandments is in each case, provoking judgments that, more or less obviously, threaten our survival.