Fr John Jimenez has been a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco for 25 years, involved in parishes and schools from St Pius to Church of the Visitacion, to St Peter's and St Charles to Riordan High School. Previous to that he was a public school teacher in Oakland.

1. The Ascent of Money,
The Pound of Flesh
and The Third Way
Responsce

2. Fr JohnJimenez has been a priest of the
Archdiocese of San Francisco for 25 years,
involved in parishes and schools from St
Pius to Church of the Visitacion, to St
Peter'sand St Charles to Riordan High
School. Previousto that he was a public
school teacher in Oakland.

3. In a recentessay, "The Ascentof Money and the Pound of Flesh", Fr Jimenez
summarizesNialFergusson's"The Ascentof Money"with allusions to the
venturecapitalistMarcAndreeson'srecentessay detailingthepositiveaspects
of techinventionsthrough history,whileFerguson brilliantlymakestheanalogy
of historicalfinanceinnovationswiththeanthropologist Bronkowski's "The
Ascentof Man", fromearlycivilizationwhenhumanssettledand grew crops,
and kept an accounting fortrade on stone tabletsand thefirstuse of language,
to Fibonacci'snumbertheory and use of Sanskritand Arabicto simplifyand
improvethenumber system,and more accurate,through decimals,
accountingsystemthat allowedthe riseof the Medicisandthe firstbanking
system,particularlyamoreextensivesystemof loaning money(even fractional
reserve),fiatmoneyeven, thatallowedfor a multipliereffectineconomic
growth and technologicalinnovationthatfeeds eachothers growth, and, in
general,allows a rising tideto liftallboats.

4. Yet, Ferguson does describe the essenceof Shakespeare's point in "The Merchant of Venice", that
ultimately, a system of debt risks collapsing unless there is a "Poundof Flesh", the story where the
merchant lends money for Antonio'sfriend to win over the beloved and Antonio helps by
borrowing money, the ships that he owns as collateral, and "his own flesh", his life, if the loan
cannot be repaid.
The story illustrates at a local level that a debt system can only function when the risk ensued, if
there is no payback on a loan, is enforcedby the debtor losing all they have, even their life,
"contractsenforced", or even, seemingly, the role of mafia hitmen. Ferguson does point out that
the Medici's origin were, in essence, as loan sharks.

5. Add to this David Stockman'sinsightin his
essay,"War Machine'sEcho Chamber", war has
been the loan sharking hitman of the rise of
empires,loans allow economiesto grow and
tech to innovate, butwar becomesthe method
of imposingthe currency of the dominantpower
on those colonized,controllingproduction,
wagesand prices.
As an example, Fergusondescribes,atthe war
and supply level,the rise of Napoleonand his
defeatby EllingtonatWaterloo.The ideology of
the French Revolutionof "Liberte" evolved into a
cabal holdingonto powerthroughthe constant
threat of arrest and violence (the guillotine),and
found thatexpanding this violence into empire
building,fiatmoney financed military
expeditionsand openingof new markets and
colonies,they found their leaderin Napoleonto
keep them in power,(withmany analogiesto the
British and U.S.in the 20th century)

6. Ferguson then describes the rise of the Rothschild banks, in centers of trade throughoutEurope,
especially London, were in key positions to take advantage of the change in prices in supply lines,
and in currencies, to finance the innovation, and their banks to be the first globalist empire, able
to expand it's economic power through it's colonies, the enforcement of which, the poundof
flesh, being it's conflict with the rise of Germany that became WWI.
The folly of ideology and empire is expressedin three of Beethovan's symphonies, The Third,
which expresseshis hope for "Liberte" in Napoleon's coronation, The Fifth, the realization of the
horrorof the war machine that empire is, and the moral decision to oppose it at a deep existential
level, and The Seventh, looking out at the fields of the dead at Waterloo, the peasants who paid
the price for empire and ideology.

7. In response to this devastation,and the conjunctional role of
technolgoy in displacingpeasantsand familiesinthe 19th
century, Pope Leo XIII wrote "RerumNovarum",which
illustratesprinciplesfound inAristotle,of powerdistributed
and decisionmakingat the local level,and the primary role of
the family,and guildsof workersand craftsmen to set fair
pricesand wages, local creditunionsforenterprises to grow
(and not money accumulated into a few hands that corner
markets and fuel empire building) all of whichcan be found in
Revelationinhow ourLord grew up in Nazareth.

8. Yet, WWI, which has set in place the geopoliticsof today,only repeated the
same empire/pound of fleshmentality,and the sufferingof peasants,
familiesand villagescaughtin the middle.So, many more came to realize
Pope Leo'sinsight, whichwould come to be called Distributism,Hillarie
Belloc, GK Chesterton, Dorothy Day,Alexander Chayonov,Karl Polyani,
Wendell Berry, Bishop Otto Van Kettler, Fr VIncent McNabb, Pope PiusXI,
John Paul II.
Fora summary of these ideasand how they were lived outduringthe 20th
Century, Allan Carlson's "Third Ways" (ISI Books) givesa good descriptionof
what has been done and what could be done so that there are no more
Waterloo wastelands,and like T.S. Eliot',let"The Wasteland" be our
motivationto live outthe truth manifested atBethlehem, and lived outat
Nazareth