The Limits of Tolerance

The Catholic Church and I have an understanding. I let them continue to minister to their estimated 1.131 billion adherents and in exchange I expect them to keep their God-bothering to themselves. It’s like religious Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Admittedly, this has always been a tenuous relationship – they don’t care for atheists, and I’m not a fan of unabashed, arbitrarily administered social oppression. Still, we try. Unfortunately, His Holiness Joseph Ratzinger has been pushing the friendship lately, with a slate of proclamations and deeds that extend the limits of my considerable tolerance. I’m of a mind to put the Vatican On Notice, and here’s why:

1. Out loud Holocaust Denial

Look, I know that there are a percentage of nut-bags out there that insist that the Holocaust was manufactured by historians to increase sympathy for Jews. It’s not a new argument (though it never gets any more logical). Usually though, there’s an agenda: President Ahmadinejad needs to feed on anti-Semitic sentiment to distract his subjects from his ineptitude, while terror groups like Hamas and The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood espouse it as a matter of course in their fight against the Zionists. Still, one expects the Vatican (who stayed ‘neutral’ during the actual event) to have the sense be keep inflammatory rhetoric to a minimum on the subject. Reinstating excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson – who popped up on Swedish TV claiming “that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished… but none of them by gas chambers” didn’t seem like a super smart play. The Pope described the reinstatement of a Holocaust Denier as "an unforeseen mishap”.

2. An Unnecessarily Rigid Pro-life Agenda

I also know that being a staunch Catholic (or even Christian) is often synonymous with a zero tolerance pro-life stance. I’ve never been one for issuing decrees on personal issues such as these – but in any case, it’s nice to think that in exceptional circumstances even one’s most deeply held views can be flexible enough to allow reason to prevail. Let’s say, if a 9-year old girl was impregnated after her step-father raped her – she would be at least be entitled to avoid giving birth to her own siblings? Right? Well, when it happened in Brazil this month, the Catholic Church excommunicated the girl, her family and the doctors who performed her abortion. As told by Time Magazine: "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. Evidently, an open and shut case.

3. Treating Abstinence-Only Sex Education Like a Real Policy

Abstinence-Only Sex-Education is not effective at reducing anything, except the levels of Government funding going to Actual Sex Education. According to the British Medical Journal there is "no evidence" that abstinence-only sex education programs "reduce risky sexual behaviours, incidence of sexually transmitted infections, or pregnancy" – a small detail that did not prevent the Bush White House from spending exhaustively on it. Now, while Bristol Palin and I agree that it’s a failed ‘policy’ – Pope Ratzinger disagrees, arguing that it has a primary role in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. He claims that “[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. Indeed.

Such as it is then, I’m at the end of my tether with dear Ratzinger. I’m of course not a fan of organised religion at the best of times – but the Vatican seems to be going the extra yard lately to alienate friend and foe alike. In the wake of hundreds of years of corruption and greed, decades of child abuse scandals and an ongoing refusal to join us in the 21^st century -  it makes a President wonder what it will take to bring the whole sham down.     

Too Big To Fail

As the United States government extended its bailout of massive insurance company AIG to USD$150 billion, President Barrack Obama and many others are declaring the company "too big to fail". This company did not materialise from thin air into a 200 billion dollar behemoth, nor was it operating under the radar prior to the financial crisis. It was merrily making enormous profits guaranteeing debts which in the climate of a booming economy is like fishing with dynamite. Much back slapping ensued and the regulators had a busy time congratulating themselves on creating such fine economic times to allow this prosperity. Then, wouldn't you know it, cracks started to appear in the aquarium and the AIG suddenly was reminded that the insurance business involves the risk that you'll occasionally have to pay claims. Further - if you're insuring copious sums of highly obscure engineered financial products like the CDOs that became worthless when the housing bubble burst, there's a very good chance that you'll find yourself having to pay lots of claims at once! Now of course as a business you would plan for such occurrences and spread your risk and keep sufficient capital reserves to survive such a scenario - wouldn't you...

You probably would unless you were too big to fail. Then you might be forgiven for thinking that since the government is certain to bail you out if you find yourself with hundreds of billions in liabilities, you may as well enjoy the benefit of that taxpayer funded insurance policy and go on taking enormous risks to rake in the profits. It's a pretty sweet deal to be sure - keep all the profits and pay nothing for the guarantee you'll be protected if it ever does go bad. That's why you wont hear one word of complaint from me about the behavior of AIG. They behaved as any rational company would under the circumstances.

My complaint is with the policies of market self-regulation and minimalistic government that created this mess. The abject failure of the regulators to manage the growth of AIG and others like it into giants too big to fail has ironically expanded the governmental realm far beyond where even the left-leaning major parties would have it. The US government now officially owns 80% of AIG courtesy of these loans and cash injections. It has been nationalised. The fact of the matter is it actually owns the losses of the entire company as it has made it perfectly clear that if the company needs further help it will be forced to step in. It just doesn't own all the potential profits, only 80%. Worse, it has owned the entire company ever since it allowed it to become so large it's failure would catastrophically destabilise the financial markets - it just didn't collect any of the profits back in those prime days either. Now the taxpayers are finally entitled 80% of their rightful profits but they find themselves proud owners of a steaming financial heap still hemorrhaging money courtesy of the financial collapse brought on by the risk-taking behavior the regulators implicitly sponsored.

Think on that some, dear voters. Next time you hear someone touting the evils of government interference, the infallibility of financial markets self-regulation and other such talk I hope you will consider the consequences carefully. You are paying a premium for your car or home insurance and you rightly don't expect it for free. Learn from our mistakes and don't allow this situation to arise again where the tables turn and you are the one writing insurance policies.