The Finger of God

A few nights ago, a terrible thunderstorm passed through New York City, striking the Bank of America building in Mid-Town Manhattan. Most people don’t believe in “Acts of God.” Most insurance companies refer to these calamities as “Acts of Nature.”

An Act of God connotes a violent act of retribution, vengeance, and even most Christians would argue that since Jesus came and took all our sins upon His shoulders, that God is a kind, loving, and merciful God. God is kind and merciful to the repentant, and even for them, they still have to check in at the Pearly Gates, where Saint Peter and Jesus are waiting to check their passports and “wand” their souls.

God never said that He wouldn’t knock us up side the head now and then to let us know when we’re going in the wrong direction. For Him, a lightning strike may only be a gentle tap. Or it might be a wake-call. Or punishment. (“Hey Stupid, I set off lightning strikes for over half an hour. How many warnings did you need to get off the beach?!”)

He gives us ample opportunity to get out of the way of those “Acts of Nature”. Still, we don’t heed them. When the Pharisees decided to test Jesus, demanding that he show them signs from Heaven, He replied, “O ye hypocrites. Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” Evidently, we don’t do either very well and see neither the signs of the sky or the times. We certainly don’t take signs from the sky as messages from God.

$91 billion dollars. That’s how much Bank of America accepted from one of Obama’s stimulus plans, courtesy of Obama, according to Mark Steyn, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh program today. All to cover the costs of borrowers who never had the means to pay back loans, investors who figured (wrongly) that Uncle Sam could come up with the cash for backing the loans, and various corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who looked the other way to make it possible for banks like Bank of America to get Brownie points for supporting the Community Reinvestment Act.

Now, God generally isn't concerned with money matters. He figures that’s the work of the Devil (someone we never hear about). If you want to go around making deals with the Devil, that’s your problem. But don’t say He didn’t warn you. However, many innocent people got caught up in the financial mess, people who’ve gone to work, paid their bills on time, given to charity, and not spent beyond their means.

God apparently looked over Bank of America’s books (and probably others, as well) and wasn’t too happy seeing all that red ink. He probably saw the minus-zero interest conservative savers are getting – paying – on their dwindling savings. Our God isn’t like the Muslim/Socialist God. If you’re using people’s money, and making interest on it, then you should be paying them back some of that interest.

Money people had been saving for their retirement is gone and a bunch of agnostic (at the very least) bureaucrats are telling people how the government is going to take care of them. God can only be thinking, sarcastically, “Why how magnanimous of them….”

God heard Rev. Wright say, “God damn America!” God couldn’t have been too pleased about that. “I’ll decide for Myself who I’m going to damn and who I’m going to bless, thank you very much.” At least the song “God Bless America” is a hymn – a prayer.

Then there was Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters who roused her Democrat followers by crying, “The Tea Party can go straight to Hell.” But Waters served on the Committee on Financial Services. Her “American Dream Down Payment Initiative” would have allowed high-risk borrowers to take out mortgages with no money down.

The initiative failed. But Countrywide Mortgage began writing no downpayment mortgages within two years, according the book Reckless Endangerment. Waters was also Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s fairy godmother – along with Barney Frank. In Waters’ opinion, in appointing a new regulator for the housing pair, “we were trying to fix something that wasn’t broke. We should do no harm to these GSEs. We should be embracing regulation…”

Countrywide sold off some its mortgages to Bank of America, who put the risky loan bundles under a special, protected division of its operation until it could sort through the mess and weed out the bad loans from the good. Presumably that’s why BOA had to accept $91 billion from the government, that is to say, the taxpayers.

Our barrel roll downhill isn’t over, judging by the markets. The price of gold is shooting to unheard of high prices. Eventually, that bubble is going to burst, too. But when the buyers try to turn their gold into cash (I’m told), the cash isn’t going to be there. The only way for magic cash to magically appear is for the Federal Reserve, on Obama’s orders, to magically print it.

Don’t expect God to do it for us. He specializes in lightning bolts, not Monopoly Money, and He can conjure up more lightning bolts than the Fed can conjure up greenbacks.