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God’s a capitalist
(by John Stanton and Wayne Madsen)
The evidence is irrefutable. Whether through one of “his”
subsidiaries—Islam, Catholicism or
Christian Evangelical—it’s clear that God believes in one
world under capitalism and demands
of his minions a healthy investment portfolio of stocks and mutual funds,
and an unquestioning
faith in the corporate purveyors of greed and corruption. God is extravagant
in tastes, paternal in
his worldview, and relishes the publicity he gets on US currency and
in daily recitals of US
Pledge of Allegiance. He is thrilled at the building of palatial houses
of worship around the
world at the expense of the hundreds of millions of those who are impoverished
and struggle to
find food, clothing and shelter. Is their any doubt that God favors
the ruthlessly powerful and
wealthy: the Bushes and bin Ladens, the Murdochs and Alsauds, the Rumsfelds
and Cheneys?
God has no problem with income disparity and the brutal competition
that is capitalism. In fact,
he encourages it, applauds it. His beloved imbecile, US President [sic]
George Bush II, spoke
recently for God when he said that all matters political come from God
and that God should have
a say in appointing judges to America’s courts. But there’s
more. The president [sic] owes God
because God helped him become a real capitalist by helping him become
a millionaire.
With so many poor, so many middle-income households struggling to make
ends meet, can their
be any doubt about where God’s priorities are? Is it any surprise
that God is hard at work through
his corporations lobbying the US Congress for more tax breaks, manipulating
world financial
markets, changing tax codes everywhere to favor his wealthy minions,
and making sure that
corporate executives receive immunity from prosecution?
Saintly Investments
At Crown Financial Ministries, “God’s Financial Principles”
are taught to practitioners.
According to Crown, God suggests that disciplined financial management
comes from investing
according to the financial advice in the Bible. No econometric models
here. “It is the blessing of
the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it” (Proverbs
10:22). With that advise,
Crown provides religious leaders and their flocks with the necessary
tools to invest and manage
money for easy living and, of course, turning earnings into donations
back to God’s bureaucracy.
God invests through his various subsidiaries making money on everything
including hip
replacement gear, video games, soft drinks, genetic engineering and
defense contracting.
Over at Christian Stewardship Funds, God’s investment managers
are pretty picky about
“evildoers” who might get their hands on God’s money.
Christian scrubs its funds and shuns
investments in stocks or bonds of companies involved in abortion, alcohol,
gambling,
pornography, and tobacco industries. Christian claims that it is the
only index mutual fund family
with these screens. But wait!
The Timothy Plan goes one step beyond the Christian financial offering
and claims that it is “is a
family of mutual funds offering individuals, like yourself, a biblical
choice when it comes to
investing. If you are concerned with the moral issues (abortion, pornography,
anti-family
entertainment, non-married/same-sex lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and
gambling) that are
destroying children and families you have come to the right place.”
Oddly though, one of
Timothy’s portfolios includes investments in BioGen, a company
that develops drugs through
genetic engineering and Electronic Arts, purveyors of violent video
games.
Also in the mix is KPMG Consulting, the firm with many US defense contracts
and responsible
for the flaky audit of Xerox.
BusinessWeek reports that KPMG is under investigation by the SEC here
in the US and is
getting hammered in Germany. “On Apr. 24, KPMG Germany was forced
to disavow the
financial reports of former client Comroad, a small software maker based
near Munich. The
embarrassing reason: On Apr. 23, a new auditor found that 97 percent
of Comroad’s reported
sales in 2000 came from a nonexistent company. Former Comroad CEO Bodo
A. Schnabel is in
jail, awaiting trial on fraud charges. In an attempt at damage control,
KPMG has said it will re-audit
all 35 clients whose stocks trade on Frankfurt’s tech-heavy Neuer
Market.” Nothing like
some good old-time Christian fraud. But it’s the return that counts,
no matter whether it’s
tinkering with the genetic code (obviously God’s not concerned
about that anymore) or the
linkage to malfeasance that many of Timothy’s investments have.
Show Me the Money!
“In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful”
reads the banner at the Islamic
Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1975, the bank’s
purpose is to promote
“economic development and social progress of member countries and
Muslim communities
individually as well as jointly in accordance with the principles of
Shari’ah, i.e., Islamic Law.”
The bank helped get the attention of Wall Street and subsequently in
1999, the Dow Jones
Islamic Market index was created which contains roughly 1,862 Shari’ah-compliant
stocks from
34 countries with a market capitalization of US $11 trillion. The FTSE
Islamic Market Index
contains 660 Shari’a–compliant companies and includes notables
such as Coca-Cola and
Microsoft.
Islamic financial advice, like their Christian counterparts at Crown,
are laced with quotes from
“holy” works reminding the investor or borrower of the gravity
of investing with God or
borrowing from God. “Be fearful of a day when you shall be returned
to Allah, then everybody
shall be paid, in full, what he has earned. And they shall not be wronged.”
That admonishment
appears on an Islamic-banking site after a discussion of finance and
borrowing. According to the
Qur’an and the Bible, messing around with God’s money—not
getting a good return—can get
one into a lot of trouble and cause problems on judgment day.
Of course, no look at God’s finances would be complete without
the Catholic Church. The
Catholic Values Investment Trust puts God’s money into roughly
100 Blue Chip stocks but the
money can only be invested after the Church Magisterium and the trust’s
Board of Advisors
reviews the stocks to make sure that the companies represented by the
stocks adhere to God’s
teachings. The board has as its members Margaret Heckler, a former congresswoman,
ambassador and US government bureaucrat, and two former ambassadors
to the Holy See in
Rome. Investments include defense contractors General Electric and ITT
Industries, Alcoa
Aluminum, American Express, Coke, Pepsi and oil and energy conglomerates.
Put up US $
1,000 and you can get in on the high yields of the Catholic Trust.
In the immortal words of Pastor Simon of Cheltenham, UK, “We see
God—far from being
averse to money—gives power to get wealth. Power to get wealth
is available with God. So what
do we need to do? We need to remember God and recognize His plan for
wealth in the hands of
godly men and women.”
So get out there and be the best capitalist taskmaster you can. And
remember when you put your
soul up for auction on E-Bay, drive a hard bargain with God. After all,
he’s a capitalist too.
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer on national security affairs
and Wayne Madsen is a Washington,DC-based investigative journalist who
writes and comments frequently on civil liberties and human rightsissues.
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