Delivered at the First Church of Christ Accumulator on a bucolic lane somewhere on the Stanford Campus.

My friends, we have had good times for the past 16 years, tax cuts, cheap money and substantial bonuses. and it has seemed that we walked in the paths of the Lord and that the Lord loved us. But now we are chastised. Financial collapse has destroyed the value of our stocks and bonds, curtailed our bonuses and threatened our very jobs.

We have taken too many risks and made loans to people of the wrong sort, people who ought never to own a house. Our excesses have brought the crash upon us.

And we have taken steps in this calamity, increasing our charity to the suffering bankers and traders of the financial sector. Following the doctrine of Friedman and Schwartz we have made liquidity available to the illiquid financier. Yet the economy stagnates.

God tests us still and lays before us another task.

Through this glorious boom we have enjoyed unprecedented power. With the help of a holy and dedicated army of lawyers and a compliant government we have rolled back many union advances and stopped the growth of real pay for the average worker. At the same time we have freed ourselves of impious work rules and increased productivity.

All has gone directly to profit, as the Lord would have us do.

Yet we have not done enough to purify our hearts and businesses. Still our employees earn far more than their counterparts in Mexico, China, India. Still they have health insurance. Still they complain of declining incomes and "hardships" while they live in conditions that are the envy of peasants throughout the globe.

We need to give these misguided people sound leadership by providing both example and incentives.

We need to follow the lead of financiers who are taking lower pay and agreeing to cut their bonuses, sometimes in half. We can show our employees that we are suffering by foregoing stock options - they are not worth that much anyhow. We can sell the company Hummers and buy Ford Escapes and we can take 5%, even 10% pay cuts - a couple hundred thousand dollars is a lot to lose.

We also need to take action. Some companies, like Fed EX, have cut pay across the board. Other companies will find it more useful to lay off employees and increase the productivity of those who remain. Job loss will surely improve the moral character of our workers. We must show them tough love.

And we must keep faith. As wages go down and productivity increases the heretics and Marxists will began to talk of underconsumption, claiming the we need to pay our workers more so that they will buy the goods that are produced.

And we will indeed see a temporary adjustment of demand as we bring our spoiled workers back to their rightful station. But this is an opportunity not a misfortune. If we show tough love and keep our faith in the Lord then our nation will win through this trial purified, competitive and, above all, grateful to the business classes that have led it.

Fools and cynics may ask: Who will demand the goods produced by these competitive firms? We scoff at their lack of faith. Quite simply, when we have purified and humbled ourselves before the Lord, He will provide demand in His own mysterious ways and we will prosper once more.

And now we will have a reading from the Book of Amity Shales.