Unusual Uncertainty and the Strange, Well-Maybe Recovery of 2010 – Part 1

 
It's been many a month since I've posted anything here at "The Spirit/Money Split,"
(at Good-B) and I'm happy to be back.   
 
Mostly, I've been busy wrestling my own small business out of recessionary white water and into a fast-moving but navigable stream of now nearly a full year in positive cash flow. I had some expert helping lifting our bottom line, for which I'm grateful. And, given the economic environment all around, I'm proud of what my wife, co-owner, and full partner Linda and I have been able to accomplish. Still, we're both distressed at how rare our good fortune is. So many are still suffering so gravely.
 
Before I say anything else, then, let me float a picture past you that grounds all our loftier speculations in some serious concrete. Here's a comment from Ben & Jerry's Ben Cohen in Financial Times' summer 2010 "Wealth" quarterly: "The annual Pentagon budget today is over $700 billion. You could eliminate global childhood starvation with eight days of that budget."
 
Along similar lines, early in the last decade anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott noted that the Pentagon budget for a single year could pretty well solve every major problem on the planet. That was before the impact of global warming really hit; even so, it's a point both depressing and exhilarating.
 
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