Grand Illusion - FED

GRAND ILLUSION – THE FEDERAL RESERVE
by James Quinn
   

The average American does not know much about the Federal Reserve. The government and the Federal Reserve prefer to operate in the shadows. If the American public understood what their policies have done to their lives, they would be rioting in the streets. Most Americans believe that the Federal Reserve is part of the government. They are wrong. It is a privately held corporation owned by stockholders. The Federal Reserve System is owned by the largest banks in the United States. There are Class A,B, and C shareholders. The owner banks and their shares in the Federal Reserve are a secret. Why is this a secret? It is likely that the biggest banks in the country are the major shareholders. Does this explain why Citicorp, Bank of America and JP Morgan, despite being insolvent, are being propped up by Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner?

The history of National Banks in the United States has been controversial since the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States unequivocally states that only Congress has the authority to coin money, not an independent bank owned by unknown bankers.

The Congress shall have Power to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures (Article 1, Section 8 – US Constitution)

Our most recent horrifying experience with an all powerful central bank has led to the current worldwide financial crisis. In less than one century the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States has destroyed our currency and has allowed bankers to gain unwarranted power over the country. They had the ability and opportunity to bring down the worldwide financial system. When the average American is told that the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, they look at you with a blank stare and start wondering whether American Idol is on TV tonight. The systematic inflation purposely created by the Federal Reserve silently robs the average American of their standard of living. The government began keeping official track of inflation in 1913, the year the Federal Reserve was created. The consumer price index (CPI) on January 1, 1914 was 10.0. The CPI on January 1, 2009 was 211.1. This means that a man’s suit that cost $10 in 1913 would cost $211 today, a 2,111 percent increase in 96 years. This is a 95 percent loss in purchasing power of the dollar.

In the years following the creation of the Federal Reserve, inflation ran at double digit rates to finance Woodrow Wilson’s foreign intervention into World War I. The other notable period was in the years following President Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971. This led to rampant inflation that wasn’t tamed until the early 1980’s by Paul Volcker, the only independent courageous Federal Reserve Chairman in its history. The figures so far in the twenty-first Century seem modest. This is due partly to the methodical downward manipulation of the calculation by government bureaucrats. The period from 2010 to 2020 will show a dramatic jump caused by all of the money printing and reckless spending that is occurring today.

The average American might just conclude that prices always go up, so what’s the big deal about inflation. This is where the Federal Reserve and politicians have pulled the wool over your eyes. The CPI was 30.9 in 1964. Today, it is 211.1. This means that prices have risen 683 percent since 1964. The only problem is that your wages have not risen at the same rate, even using the government manipulated CPI. Using a true CPI figure, average weekly earnings are 64 percent below what they were in 1964. This explains why a family of five could live well with one parent working in 1964, but even with both parents working and using debt in prodigious amounts, the average family does not live as well today.

The dates February 3, 1913 and December 24, 1913 framed a year which placed our country on a downward fiscal spiral. The United States had tinkered with an income tax during the Civil War and the 1890’s, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. Until 1913, the U.S. government was restrained from overspending because it was completely reliant on tariffs and duties to generate revenue.

The Sixteenth Amendment changed the game forever. “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

When you give a Congressman a dollar, he’ll take a hundred billion. The initial tax rates of 1 percent to 7 percent were rather modest. That did not last long. The top tax rate reached 92 percent during the 1950s and today rates are still 500 percent to 1,000 percent higher than they were in 1913. The government is addicted to tax revenue. In 2007, they absconded $1.2 trillion in taxes from American individuals. Does anyone think that the bloated government bureaucracy spent these funds more efficiently or for a more beneficial purpose than its citizens could have? Without $1.2 trillion in individual tax revenue, Congressmen would not be able to add 9,200 earmarks to the current $400 billion Federal spending bill every year.


According to the Federal Reserve’s own website, their duties fall into four general areas:

1. Conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates
2. Supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
3. Maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets
4. Providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation's payments system

The American public was told that the Federal Reserve would eliminate any future bank panics. From 1913 through 1920, inflation increased at more than 10 percent per year as Wilson spent vast sums during World War I and its aftermath. From the early 1920s to 1929, the monetary supply expanded at a rapid pace and the nation experienced tremendous economic growth. By the end of the 1920s, speculation and loose money had propelled asset and equity prices to unsustainable levels. The stock market crashed in 1929, and as the banks struggled with liquidity problems, the Federal Reserve cut the money supply. This was the greatest financial panic and economic collapse in American history so far - and it never could have happened without the Fed's intervention. The Fed caused the bubble with loose monetary policy. The Depression did not become Great until the Smoot Hawley Act in 1930 destroyed world trade and the raising of the top income tax rates from 25 percent to 63 percent in 1932 destroyed the incentive to earn money. Over 9,000 banks failed and a few of the old robber barons' banks managed to swoop in and grab up thousands of competitors for pennies on the dollar.

The Federal Reserve’s primary mandates were maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. Their other chief function was to supervise and regulate banks to ensure the banking system is safe. Let us assess their success regarding their mandates:

• Unemployment reached 25 percent during the Great Depression; attained levels above 10 percent in 1982; and will breach 10 percent in the next year (Grade: Failure).
• Since the Federal Reserve’s inception, the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power (Grade: Failure).
• Interest rates have been anything but moderate since the inception of the Federal Reserve. They have consistently caused booms and busts by setting rates too low or too high (Grade: Failure).
• The Federal Reserve was supposed to supervise the activities of banks. Instead, under Alan Greenspan, they stepped aside and let banks take preposterous risks while giving an unspoken assurance that the Fed would clean up any messes that they caused. This total dereliction of duty gross negligence has led the greatest financial collapse in history (Grade: Failure).

Anyone who is not mad as hell at this point is not paying attention. Your tax-and-spend political leaders and your banker-controlled Federal Reserve have borrowed and spent your tax dollars, your children’s tax dollars, and their children’s tax dollars desperately attempting to prop up this bankrupt system. The unleashing of a never-ending tsunami of printed dollars by the Federal Reserve makes every dollar worth less. They have systematically created inflation that has slowly but surely reduced your standard of living. Politicians in the pocket of lobbyists, corporate interests, and bankers have used their power to tax in order to spend trillions on worthless projects in their districts to insure re-election. The combination of taxing and printing has led to a National Debt of $11 trillion.

Money Creation Glitch - Interest

Excerpt from "HOW MONEY IS CREATED, DISAPPEARS, AND WORKS, AND THE VALUES INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS" by Paul Krumm

While banks are generally credited with the creation of money, it is still the traders who go to the bank to borrow who are making the commitment to place goods or services on the market to repay their debt. So, as mentioned above, traders are still the functional creators of money, rather than the bank. As these traders place their goods and services on the market, and repay their loans, the money they issued (borrowed) is extinguished.

However as also noted above, when the loan is originated, and the money created, an additional debt, or tax is set up as interest on the loan, which must be paid to the bank mediating the money creation process. Interest creation is a functional glitch in the system, one which must be understood. When money is created in the current loan process, money with which to pay the interest is not created. Interest owed is only set up as a debt to the bank. No money is created to pay it with. As a result of this bookkeeping system the principle put into circulation is insufficient to repay the principal and interest owed. So either the trader uses money that someone else borrowed to pay his interest, or he does not pay all the principal and interest.

In the first case, someone else is in a worse position to make their payments. In the second case this trader is drawn into a downward spiral of debt. No matter how hard we try, somebody always has to lose. Because money is not created with which to pay interest, interest can never all be paid. Because traders have to pay out interest, they never have enough money for all their needs. Scarcity of money drives up prices, meaning  money becomes worth less, which we call inflation.

Economic growth masks the inflation issue, by bringing in new wealth to borrow on (monetize), creating more money with which to pay the ever increasing interest tax load. In the current system, the economy must continually grow so that there is sufficient money available to keep the system operating. This system flaw caused by interest creation is the reason why economists commonly see the need for an economics of growth, rather than sustainable, dynamic steady state (homeostatic) economics.

Total outstanding interest and total current interest due and payable increase exponentially over time. In other words, as time goes on, outstanding debt becomes larger and larger with respect to the sum of all exchanges, what we call Gross National Product (GNP) the productive capacity of our nation.  Because the overall interest load grows exponentially, it inevitably grows to be a larger and larger part of GNP. As the interest load becomes a significant portion of GNP, the system breaks down, because an ever larger portion of money is going to pay the growing interest load. A recession or depression is necessary in which some of the debt, and its interest load, is wiped out thru unpayable debts and bankruptcies. Sometimes smaller banks even fail, if too many of their clients are forced into losses and foreclosure.

Bankruptcies and bad debts move control of wealth to those who control assets and the money creation process. In the long term, inevitably all the money becomes concentrated in the hands of a very few people who control the money creation process, and the economy and culture disintegrate. This was one of the major factors that led to the disintegration of the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Our Federal Government creates money by borrowing from the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank is an interesting institution. Its board of governors is appointed by the President, with confirmation by the Senate.  However its stock is owned, and the governors are paid, by the banks. Major decisions are developed by the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve, with concurrence of the Board of Governors. The Open Market Committee is chosen by the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors consists of bankers and economists who are knowledgeable of and favorable to banking interests, so the Federal Reserve is effectively controlled by the banking industry.

Wealth Gap Widens

Social Inequality In US Hits New Record

Earlier data released by the US Census Bureau established that every section of the population outside of the top 5 percent saw their real income fall between 2000 and 2005.

According to one recent study, while real income for the bottom 90 percent of the population fell by 11 percent between 1973 and 2005, those in the top .01 percent bracket, comprising some 14,000 households with annual incomes averaging nearly $13 million, saw their take increase by 250 percent over the same period.

What emerges from the data are the effects of a long-standing social policy involving a massive transfer of wealth from working people, the great majority of the population, to a handful of the super-wealthy, who have enriched themselves at the expense of the rest of society.

This is not merely an American, but rather a global policy that has been carried out on the backs of the working class of every country. A study released last week by the Boston Consulting Group found that the world's 9.6 million millionaires-comprising just 0.7 percent of the earth's population-now control $33.2 trillion in wealth-roughly a third of all the wealth in the world. According to the study, the world's wealthiest 0.1 percent-those with $5 million or more in financial assets-now owns 17.5 percent of global wealth.

Meanwhile, half of the world's population-some 3 billion people-live on less than $2 a day.

The demagogy of the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates about defending the "middle class" notwithstanding, these policies have been enacted by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The growth of income inequality in America has continued unbroken since 1973, spurred by the high-interest-rate, recessionary policies enacted by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker-Democratic President Jimmy Carter's appointee-with the deliberate aim of driving up unemployment, slashing wages and unleashing a big business offensive against the working class.

By Bill Van Auken
16 October 2007

US Economy Stalled - 2011

US Economy Stalled
BBC News

The US government has released its latest set of economic growth figures - which includes a set of revisions going back all the way to 2003. The figures show that the recession - in 2008 and 2009 - was actually much worse than thought.

And on Friday, the Commerce Department said that second-quarter growth was much weaker than first thought, and revised the previous quarter down sharply - from 1.9% to 0.4%. So just what it is holding back the US economy? Deeper recession.

One of the most telling facts of the set of revised figures is the new insight it gives into the extent of the recession. "At the time, we were thinking that the numbers weren't as bad as what we seeing," says Carl Riccadonna, an economist at Deutsche Bank in New York. "Now we know that the recession was deeper than we thought."

While the length of the recession - when the economy was shrinking - stayed the same, the contraction in real terms from the peak to the nadir was 5.1% - one percentage point more than thought. Businesses can't hire until consumers start spending, but people won't spend unless they're sure they have jobs”

Carl Riccadonna Economist, Deutsche Bank Trillions were committed to bailing out the economy at the time - and the US economy is still in a hangover from the heady growth of the mid-2000's.

The anaemic growth in the US economy is simply explained, according to Mr Riccadonna. "It's the weakness in consumer spending," he says. "The numbers are picking up half as well as they normally do in a recovery." Consumer spending accounts for 70% of the US economy. Add to that, in a remarkable change in habits, people are saving more.

The savings rate has gone from zero at the height of the economic boom to about 6% now - which is billions of dollars being diverted from the economy and set aside. With interest rates at record lows in the US, meaning that savers are getting little return, this illustrates how nervous US consumers are now of spending their money. Especially on expensive one-offs, like a new house.

"You have all these longer-term problems, like a particularly poor labour market, very tight lending conditions and the housing market in a double-dip, with [property] prices still falling," says Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics.

In the second quarter, for example, personal consumption only rose at an annualised rate of 0.1% from the previous three months. Proof of that is exports have remained strong. Exports rose at an annualised rate of 6% in the second quarter. Last year, they rose 11.3% from 2009. So the weakness is due to Americans themselves. Why? Perhaps because the number of jobless remains stubbornly high.

Economic Reports Indicate U.S. Economy Heading Down
seekingalpha.com

Default notices on U.S. home mortgages rose 33% in July. Retail sales and food services rose only 0.0% -- adjusted for inflation they were negative. The CPI inflation measure for August came in at 0.4%, almost as high as it was in July. Weekly jobless claims rose again this week, coming in at 428,000. All are pointing to an economy in trouble.

The Great Recession began in the housing market after subprime loans started to default in large numbers in 2007. The U.S. economy will continue to have difficulties until all the excesses are ringed out of house prices. Government policy has instead been geared toward stabilizing the market with temporary fixes. The Federal Reserve instituted a number of programs to funnel money into the mortgage markets to protect the banks that had too much exposure to real estate loans and the Obama administration has created programs like HAMP (Home Affordable Mortgage Program) to lower the foreclosure rate. Banks themselves have avoided or delayed foreclosures as long as possible because they don't want the properties on their books. All the government's efforts have certainly slowed down the rate of foreclosures and that may ultimately be all that they accomplish. A 33% increase of foreclosure notices in July indicates a new wave of foreclosures is likely next year.

Meanwhile, U.S. retail sales are declining if you take inflation into account. Retail sales increased strongly with rising home prices in the first years of the 2000s, but after the housing market turned south they have yet to recover. They have been held up by trillion dollar plus annual federal budget deficits, Federal Reserve money printing, and government stimulus programs including the "Cash for Clunkers" gift to the auto industry. Despite all of these efforts, retail sales and food services were up 0.0% in July (the same 0.0% for jobs created in August). The mainstream media reported 0.1%, but this is only the retail sales component of the report. The report is not adjusted for inflation, so even if retail sales rose 10% a year, but inflation was also 10%, there would be no actual growth (although that is not the story you would get from mainstream news sources).

The Companion Bible - EW Bullinger

Please get yourself a copy of the Companion Bible by E. W. Bullinger. His major works include: A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament; Figures of Speech Used in the Bible; Numbers in Scripture; Primary editor of The Companion Bible. If you do not have a copy of this Bible on hand, boy, you are missing out!

Pg 146  (Bullinger was criticised harshly and more louder as the more he wrote and he says...)  God's prophets were men who could never swim with the stream, they were never popular, they could never make popularity their aim,  they could never look on success as their end. And it is the same today with God's spokesmen and witnesses... If any of you do not believe it, try it! Be a faithful witness for God; dare to stand alone with him, and you will soon see that you will have to "suffer persecution"... In a letter written in 1908 Bullinger shared with a friend his manner of dealing with those who opposed him... "I have long said "Lord I am going to delight myself in Thee and in thy Word and Thou must look after all who oppose themselves. I will try and instruct them (in meekness) but Thou canst deal with them as I can not and may not." From that time I have enjoyed great peace. Some opponents He has chastized. Some he has turned into my closest friends and zealous defenders!!

Pg 41 the story was told by a close friend: "At the time of his ordination in 1861, Dr, Bullinger was still a stranger to that vital experience known as  conversion. This took place during his first curacy. There was, among those attending the church, a godly lady who was in the habit of expressing her opinion on the sermons preached.  Feeling interested in knowing what she had said after a week night sermon which he delivered in the absence of the Vicar, he (Bullinger) was surprised to learn that her only comment had been "poor blind young man". These words led subsequently to his conversion, for they set him to thinking, and he went on his knees to ask God to show him if he was indeed blind. Ond of his regrets in after life was that this lady died without ever knowing the result of her words.

His ministry thenceforth bore abundant evidence of his faith in the Gospel as "the power of God unto salvation to evryone that believeth". With this new experience came the profound a0nd abiding reverence for the Word of God which so notibly characterized all his sermons and writings. For him the Book became the Supreme authority. He was often heard to advise his audience not to believe anything simply because he said it, but to search th Bible for themselves." (kind of sounds like what PM has been saying for years).

Pg 78 "Bullinger's opposition to the British and Foreign Bible Society's open policy of accepting versions other than the Authorized Version was often quite forceful. In a reply to a demand from a Mr Knapp, for an apology during a correspondancee later printed in the Portsmouth Times, Bullinger wrote: "If in my zeal and jealousy for that Word I have said anything that may wound Mr. Knapp, I beg him to pardon me.They are the words of a friend. I Prefer to put my confidence in God rather than in noblemen or committeemen, however eminent, but I am not become thier enemy because I tell them the truth."

Pg 80 ( Bullinger was looking at Gen 3:15 where the Vulgate currupted the last part to read "she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel"  Of this he made a comment of what I call Mary worship, he wrote;) "I can produce evidence from pope, archbishop, abbot, and priest, besides a number of Romish books to show that this text thus currupted, is universally referred to the Virgin Mary, and made the ground of transforming to the creature the glory belonging to the Creator. "  (oops I forgot to capitalize the religious titles)

Pg 86-89 (is about Bullingers introduction to C.D. Ginsburg who was commissioned to translate the Bible into Hebrew, later to compose the work on the Massorah (appendix 30 in CB) and the same is who Bullinger references to in The Companion Bible.

Pg 103 (contains Bullingers stand against "scientific theories" so prevalent by the late 1890s and by Bullys thoughts here the same can be said of todays so called scientists. I love this quote)   " Instead of making the Bible agree with science, science must agree with the Bible. If it does not, it is only because it is "science falsly so-called," and not real science. Scientianis the Latin word for knowledge. Whereas very much of what goes by the name of "science" today is not science at all. It is only hypothesis! Read man's books on this so-called science, and you will get tired of the never ending repitition of such words as "hypothesis," "conjecture," "This is the reason that such theories, which are falsely dignified by the same name as science, are constantly changing. We talk  of the "science of Geology," or of "Medical Science"; but read books on geology or medicine, for example, written fifty years ago, (about 1840) and you will find they are now quite "out of date."

But truth cannot change. Truth will never be "out of date." What we know can never alter! This of itself proves that the word science is wrongly used when it is applied only to hypotheses, which are merely invented to explain certain phenomena. It is not for such theories that we are going to give up facts. It is not for conjectures that we are going to abandon truth..."

Pg 129 (Bullinger did a work called "Things to come ". It was a monthly publication that he did, and I quote "From the first issue in July 1894 to his death in 1913, Bullinger continued to leave his imprint on "The things to come." He wrote what he felt to be the truth regardless of the opositions of others, and he never shrank from a fight. The possibility of being misunderstood had long since ceased to worry him. He expressed his feelings in the following answer to one correspondant:

"...it may be well to say that, when writing, it is absolutely impossible to guard against all the various ways in which words can be misunderstood. If we were to attempt to do this we might do nothing else, and never get forward at all." And to another person he wrote: "you ask "whether any important Theologian or writer endorses or agrees with Things to come." We really can not tell you, as it does not matter in the least whether they do or not. The all important question is-Does "Things to come" agree with the Word of God, for there and there only "important writers" "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Pg 134 "The Word of God may, in one respect, be compared to the earth. All things necessary to life and substenance may be obtained by scratching the surface of the earth: but there are treasures of beauty and wealth to be obtained by digging deeper into it. So it is with the Bible. "all things necessary to life and godliness" lie upon its surface for the humblest of saint; but, beneath that surface are "great spoils" which are found only by those who seek after them as for "hid treasures."

Pg 140-141 (Bullinger and Ginsburg went into the Vatican library in 1899. on the cieling was paited some scenes of interest Bullinger wrote...) "In the first, that of the council of Nicaea (325ad) no prelate or potentate occupies the chair. The Bishop of Rome and the Emperor Constantine both decline to preside, and the Bible is placed on the chair. In the succeding pictures man becomes more and more insignificant. In the second it is (The Bible) by the side of the chair; and it gets smaller and smaller; until, at the Council of Trent (1545), it nvanishes altogether. This is (though doubtless undesigned) a fitting symbolical representation of the relations between the Church and the Bible! As the one increases in authority, the authority of the other decreases."

On his tombstone has his 3 favorite verses and they are Phill 3:10 "that I may know him and the power of his resurection"  Psalms 119;162 "I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil"   And  of course we all knew this had to be one ... 2 Timothy 2:15 "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

- fig tree cafe post

History - New International Version NIV

The New International Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible. Published by Zondervan in the United States and by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, it has become one of the most popular modern translations in history.

The New International Version project was started after a meeting in 1965 at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois, between the Christian Reformed Church, National Association of Evangelicals, and a group of international scholars. The New York Bible Society (now Biblica) was selected to do the translation. The New Testament was released in 1973 and the full Bible in 1978. There are a couple of very rare 1973 editions which are signed by a few of the translating committee members which were released before the other 1973 and 1978 editions. It underwent a minor revision in 1984. A planned 1997 edition was discontinued over inclusive language. A revised edition titled Today's New International Version released a New Testament in March 2002 with the complete Bible was published February 2005.

Keith Danby, president and chief executive officer of Biblica, once known as the International Bible Society, said they erred in presenting past updates, failed to convince people revisions were needed and "underestimated" readers' loyalty to the 1984 NIV. A new revision was released 2011.

The core translation group consisted of fifteen Biblical scholars. The translation took ten years and involved a team of up to 100 scholars from the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The range of those participating included many different denominations such as Anglicans, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Christian Reformed, Lutheran and Presbyterian.

The translation is a balance between word-for-word and thought-for-thought. Recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries helped in understanding traditionally difficult passages to translate. Familiar spellings of traditional translations were generally retained.

According to the Christian Business Association, the New International Version has become the most popular selling English translation of the Bible, having sold more than 215 million copies worldwide.

N. T. Wright has written: "When the New International Version was published in 1980, I was one of those who hailed it with delight. I believed its own claim about itself, that it was determined to translate exactly what was there, and inject no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses…. Disillusionment set in over the next two years, as I lectured verse by verse through several of Paul's letters, not least Galatians and Romans. Again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV beside it, I discovered that the translators had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said. …[I]f a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about."

In 1973, they [International Bible Society] published the New International Version New Testament. Translation costs were nearly double the initial estimate. They sold their New York City building, and board members mortgaged their homes to finance the translation. Despite sacrificial giving from staff, board, and donors, they ran out of funding. In 1975, Zondervan agreed to sponsor the remaining work in return for commercial rights to sell the NIV Bible. NIV royalty income has enabled Biblica to expand its Scripture distribution worldwide and has provided millions of people with free or highly subsidized Scriptures.

- wikipedia

Zondervan went public in 1976, issuing stock on the NASDAQ. Following the success of the NIV Bible, the company began to acquire other businesses. In 1980 religious music publisher John T. Benson Company was purchased, making Zondervan the second largest producer of religious recordings in the United States. In the early 1980s other acquisitions included religious publishers Chosen Books, Francis Asbury Press, and Fleming H. Revell Company, and a specialty bindery, Tapley-Rutter Company.

Zondervan's business, while based on the apparently steady and predictable religious book market, was actually more tenuous than it appeared. In 1979 there were difficulties related to the bookstore chain, resulting in unexpected losses. Though sales and profits more than doubled within the next five years, with annual revenues in 1983 of $93 million, in 1984 accounting irregularities hid losses of several million dollars. These were ultimately attributed to poor inventory control and unanticipated expenses such as unrecoverable publishing advances, but the company's chief financial officer was dismissed and Zondervan was sanctioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A lawsuit from a disgruntled New Jersey investor followed, eventually settled out of court for $3.6 million in 1989.

Just before the discovery of its financial problems, Zondervan had chosen James Buick as its chief executive, replacing Pat Zondervan's successor, Peter Kladder, who had been with the company since 1956. Buick, a former executive of Brunswick Corporation, immediately had his hands full. Zondervan posted losses for the next several years following the bookkeeping debacle, and in 1986 a hostile takeover attempt was organized by British financier Christopher Moran. After months of wheeling and dealing, including a visit from Moran to Pat Zondervan and an emergency prayer session held by employees, the company's board reached an agreement with its stockholders to seek a third-party buyer. Not long afterwards, Moran began quietly selling off his shares. The stock price, which had been driven up by the takeover attempt, plummeted when Moran's selloff was discovered. Many investors were angry and when the company was finally sold over a year later for $56.7 million to Harper & Row, other lawsuits were initiated on behalf of investors who felt the board had accepted an unfairly low price. During the course of the takeover attempt, Zondervan had also sold off its Revell and Chosen Books subsidiaries, and had closed a Grand Rapids-based printing operation.

Harper & Row (which soon merged with British religious book company Collins Publishing to become HarperCollins) was owned by News Corporation Ltd., headed by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's other interests included the Fox film and television studios and several tabloid news publications. Zondervan employees and the company's chairman emeritus expressed concerns that the publisher's traditional religious, evangelic focus would be changed as part of a more aggressive pursuit of profits, much as they had also worried about Moran's intentions several years earlier.

In January 2005 Zondervan was once again in the news with its TNIV after initiating a $1 million advertising campaign and approaching Rolling Stone magazine with an ad for the "hip" bible. Rolling Stone, long the bastion for free speech and often outrageous content, refused the ad, believing its audience would not appreciate a Bible advertisement. News of the refusal sent shockwaves throughout the magazine's readership and beyond. As Rolling Stone faced angry readers and advertisers, Zondervan benefited from numerous publications clamoring to show their political correctness and carry ads for the TNIV. In the end, Rolling Stone caved and Zondervan had a plethora of media outlets for the controversial TNIV. Other Zondervan hits during the year included a glossy, new edition of the NIV for women that looked more like an issue of Glamour or Vogue, and Rick Warren's still popular The Purpose-Driven Life, which remained on both the Christian and mainstream bestseller lists.

- answers.com

Zondervan Corp., once a respected Christian publishing firm, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became a public company via a big initial public stock offering some 15 years ago. This was about the same time the NIV Bible was published by an outfit in New York called the International Bible Society, which financed the project. They then gave Zondervan Corp. the exclusive rights to the publication of the NIV version of the Bible.

After the initial offering, the stock's price rose moderately but later the price fell sharply and many investors lost money. In 1985, a New Jersey investor filed a lawsuit which said he was induced to buy Zondervan stock because of false statements the company made to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 1989 it was widely reported in the press: "Zondervan Corp. of Grand Rapids, Michigan, reached a $3.57 million out-of-court settlement with investors who contend they lost money when irregularities were found in the religious publisher's financial records."

By 1988, Zondervan, suffering from declining sales, was in financial trouble as a result of expanding too fast in the early 1980's. In July 1985, the Wall Street Journal reported, "In 1978, the company introduced the New International Version of the Bible, which is the market leader in Bible sales--in the past two years several investors have bought and sold stakes in Zondervan, sparking speculation that the company had found a buyer. In May an investor group had made a $10.50 a share offer, but the two sides couldn't reach an agreement."

Then, aggressive media magnate Rupert Murdoch bought Zondervan for $56.7 million or $13.50 per share. Zondervan's stock jumped $4.25 per share on the announcement. Murdoch, an international world citizen who started in Australia, was building a media empire via his company, News Corp. The following month, the tycoon Murdoch gobbled up the nation's largest circulation magazine, TV Guide, also Seventeen, and Good Food magazines plus the Daily Racing Form on a $3 billion cash binge which was the second largest media deal ever. The seller was Walter Annenberg, 80-year-old Jewish publishing partriarch, who privately owned Triangle Publications whose lucrative national magazine distribution business takes not only their magazines to newsstands but also many others including Reader's Digest."

In recent years Murdoch has built a media empire worldwide with revenues over $10 billion (64 percent in U.S.A., 19 percent in United Kingdom and 17 percent in Australia and the Pacific Basin). Holdings include Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Fox Broadcasting Co., Fox Television Stations, Inc., Harper-Collins, TV Guide, and FSI (multi-page free standing inserts each week in 390 local Sunday newspapers). Also owned in the United Kingdom are The Times, The Sunday Times, Today, Sun and News of the World. These account for one-third of all national newspapers sold in the U.K. market with the latter two having the largest daily and Sunday circulations respectively in the English-speaking world. Also 50 percent owned is British Sky Broadcasting Ltd., the leading U.K. direct-to-home satellite television broadcasting service. News Corp. is also the largest newspaper publisher in Australia.

This year expansion into Asia commenced with purchase of 66 percent interest in Star Television, the Hong Kong satellite TV company that broadcasts to 38 nations, mostly in the Middle and Far East. Also purchased were Chinese newspapers. Recently News Corp. signed six cable channels that will carry News Corp's programming beginning around mid-1994, enabling the company to reach 25 percent of all U.S.households.

In October 1992, News Corp. sold $850 million notes and bonds plus $313 million common stock (over $1 billion total) with $25.5 million in underwriting fees to the offering syndicate headed by Merril Lynch, including Allen and Co., Citicorp Securities, Donaldson, Lufkin, and J.P. Morgan Securities.

A News Corp.'s division active in the United States is Harper-Collins engaged in the educational texts markets via its Scott, Foresman School Division which publishes educational programs for school grades kindergarten through twelve, and the Harper-Collins College Division which publishes in most major disciplines in the college curriculum from the introductory level through graduate courses. The subsidiary directed at the Christian evangelical market is Zondervan Corp., holder of the valuable exclusive rights to the NIV-Bible. In the U.K., Harper-Collins' religious division publishes the Good News Bible, hymnals, and liturgical works. News Corp., American Depository Receipts (ADR's), listed on the New York Stock Exchange, symbol NWS, had a low this year of $36 per share, a high of $63 and is currently trading around $52. The Co. has long-term debt of $7 billion (about 63 percent of capital) and is ranked by Value Line as "below average" for safety....

- Jay Klopfenstein (The Christian News)

Greece Rioting

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Hundreds of youths smashed and looted stores in central Athens and clashed with riot police during a massive anti-government rally against painful new austerity measures that won initial parliamentary approval in a vote Wednesay night.

The rioting came on the first day of a 48-hour nationwide general strike that brought services in much of Greece to a standstill, grounding flights for hours, leaving ferries tied up in port and shutting down customs offices, stores and banks.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets of the Greek capital to demonstrate against the austerity bill, which includes new tax hikes, further pension and salary cuts, the suspension on reduced pay of 30,000 public servants and the suspension of collective labor contracts.

Creditors have demanded the meaures before they give Greece more funds from a €110 billion ($152.11 billion) package of bailout loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund. Greece says it will run out of money in mid-November without the €8 billion ($11 billion) installment.

But Greek citizens said they already are reeling from more than one-and-a-half years of austerity measures.

"We just can't take it any more. There is desperation, anger and bitterness," said Nikos Anastasopoulos, head of a workers' union for an Athens municipality, as he joined the demonstration early in the day.

The bill won initial approval in the 300-member Parliament late Wednesday, with 154 deputies voting in favor on principle and 141 against. A second vote, on the bill's articles, is due Thursday. Only after that procedure will the bill have passed. A communist party-backed union has vowed to encircle Parliament Thursday in an attempt to prevent deputies from entering the building for the procedure.

The new measures have even prompted some lawmakers from the governing Socialists to threaten not vote for at least some of the articles in the bill. But Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos insisted there was no choice but to accept the hardship.

"We have to explain to all these indignant people who see their lives changing that what the country is experiencing is not the worst stage of the crisis," he said in Parliament. "It is an anguished and necessary effort to avoid the ultimate, deepest and harshest level of the crisis. The difference between a difficult situation and a catastrophe is immense."

Hours before Wednesday's vote, one of Athens' largest demonstrations in years degenerated into violence as masked and hooded youths pelted riot police outside Parliament with gasoline bombs and chunks of marble smashed from buildings, metro stops and sidewalks.

Police responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Authorities said 50 police were injured in the clashes, along with at least three demonstrators, while 33 people were detained for questioning or arrested for alleged involvement in the rioting. At least three journalists covering the riots were also slightly hurt.

Long after Wednesday's demonstration was over, violence continued, with police fighting running street battles with youths setting up burning barricades along the back streets near Athens' main Syntagma Square and near the tourist area of Monastiraki.

Thick black smoke billowed from burning trash and bus-stops, and debris lay strewn along the capital's broad avenues. A hurled gasoline bomb set fire to a sentry post used by the ceremonial presidential guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament.

In Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, protesters smashed the facades of about 10 shops that defied the strike and remained open, as well as five banks and cash machines. Police fired tear gas and threw stun grenades.

The general strike is set to continue Thursday, with all sectors — from dentists, hospital doctors and lawyers to tax office workers, taxi drivers, prison guards, teachers and dock workers — staying off the job.

Air traffic controllers scaled back their strike from 48 hours to 12, allowing flights to take off and land after noon on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, European countries are trying to work out a broad solution to the continent's deepening debt crisis, before a weekend summit in Brussels. It became clear earlier this year that the initial bailout for Greece was not working as well as had been hoped, and European leaders agreed on a second, €109 billion ($151 billion) bailout. But key details of that rescue fund, including the participation of the private sector, remain to be worked out.

Derek Gatopoulos and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed to this report - Elena Becatoros (Associated Press).