Biblical Descriptions Are Still Pertinent! (22 September 2016, 19 Elul, 5776)
We identify the English-speaking nations with Joseph.
It could be that numerically the Tribe of Ephraim is the major party BUT concerning Tribal Identity Manasseh dominates the USA and Ephraim the UK and the other offshoots of Britain.
One of the identifying characteristics of Ephraim was that he would be a "Canaani" meaing in the context a "merchant".
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Hosea (NASB) 12:
7 A merchant, in whose hands are false balances,
He loves to oppress.
8 And Ephraim said, Surely I have become rich,
I have found wealth for myself;
In all my labors they will find in me
No iniquity, which would be sin.
Here the word translated as "a merchant" is "Canaani."
This derives from the word for Canaanite. The Phoeniicans originated in part from the Canaanites and identified with them. The Phoenicians were merchants and called themselves "Canaani".
This became a term for "merchant" in general.
cf.
The righteous woman in Proverbs 31 is described as:
Proverbs 31 (NASB):
24 She makes linen garments and sells them,
And supplies belts to the tradesmen.
Here too, the word translated as "tradesman" in Hebrew is "Canaani".
cf.
http://biblehub.com/proverbs/31-24.htm
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
She has made and sold fine linen and has given girdles to the Canaanites.
Douay-Rheims Bible
She made fine linen, and sold it, end delivered a girdle to the Chanaanite.
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America is named after Machir the son of Manaeh. The USA is the Capitalist nation pa excellence. The very name "Machir" connotes Capitalism. The hegemony of the USA over the world parallels that which Britain once had but is somehwat different. The USA has superceded the UK on the world scene.
In its heyday the British Empire was based on trade.
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Symbiosis: Trade and the British Empire
By Professor Kenneth Morgan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/trade_empire_01.shtml
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THE TRADE OF THE EMPIRE
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=synge&book=victoria&story=trade
THE British Isles, the cradle of the British race, has during the Victorian era acquired an Empire overseas a hundred times her own size.
At her death, in 1901, the Queen [Victoria] was ruler over one-fifth of the earth's surface, and more than one-fifth of the world's inhabitants.
... Thus the British Empire was founded on trade, and exists on trade. Before ever the Queen came to the throne Britain, by reason of her steam power and ready production of coal and iron, had turned from an agricultural to a manufacturing country; and at the time of the Queen's accession she had already had a long start of the rest of the world. Added to this, she had also the command of the sea, and the finest merchant service in the world.
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Why we ruled the world by Niall Ferguson
http://www.niallferguson.com/journalism/history/why-we-ruled-the-world
Extracts:
The extent of Britain's Empire could be seen not only in the world's atlases and censuses. Britain was also the world's banker, investing immense sums around the world. By 1914 the gross nominal value of Britain's stock of capital invested abroad was o3.8 billion, between two-fifths and a half of all foreign-owned assets. That was more than double French overseas investment and more than three times the German figure. No other major economy has ever held such a large proportion of its assets overseas. More British capital was invested in the Americas than in Britain itself between 1865 and 1914. Small wonder the British began to assume that they had the God-given right to rule the world.
Nor was it only through investment that the British extended their informal Empire. Commercial negotiations also pushed large sectors of the world economy to accept free trade: witness the commercial treaties with Latin American countries, Turkey, Morocco, Siam, Japan and the South Sea Islands. By the late 19th century, around 60 per cent of British trade was with extra-European partners. Free trade with the developing world suited Britain. With her huge earnings from overseas investment, not forgetting other "invisibles" such as insurance and shipping, she could afford to import vastly more than she exported. Moreover, the terms of trade - the relationship between export and import prices - moved by around 10 per cent in Britain's favour between 1870 and 1914.
Britain also set the standard for the international monetary system. In 1868 only Britain and a number of her economic dependencies - Portugal, Egypt, Canada, Chile and Australia - were on the gold standard (which fixed the value of a country's paper money in terms of gold and obliged its central bank to convert notes into gold on demand). France and the other members of the Latin Monetary Union, as well as Russia, Persia and some Latin American states, were on the bimetallic system, while most of the rest of the world was on the silver standard. By 1908, however, only China, Persia and a handful of Central American countries were still on silver. The gold standard had become, in effect, the global monetary system. In all but name, it was a sterling standard.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that no organisation in history has done more to promote the free movement of goods, capital and labour than the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And no organisation has done more to impose Western norms of law, order and governance around the world. For much (though certainly not all) of its history, the British Empire acted as an agency for relatively incorrupt government. Prima facie, there therefore seems a plausible case that empire enhanced global welfare - in other words, was a Good Thing.
.... In the end, the British sacrificed the Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire's other sins? It did the right thing, regardless of the cost. And that was why the ultimate, if reluctant, heir of Britain's global power was not one of the evil empires of the East, but Britain's most successful former colony.
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Even today, despite the socialist policies of some of its Labour governments and general decline aspects of the "Merchant" quality are still to be found in the British peoples.
cf.
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Economic Freedom of the World
http://www.cato.org/economic-freedom-world?gclid=CjwKEAjwmf6-BRDi9fSN7Ijt1wUSJAASawcjvAdg5CpH7-MJWKqk0usLGDd3kDB2gDnhxwyNlooBuRoCevfw_wcB
The foundations of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets. As Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek have stressed, freedom of exchange and market coordination provide the fuel for economic progress. Without exchange and entrepreneurial activity coordinated through markets, modern living standards would be impossible.
Potentially advantageous exchanges do not always occur. Their realization is dependent on the presence of sound money, rule of law, and security of property rights, among other factors. Economic Freedom of the World seeks to measure the consistency of the institutions and policies of various countries with voluntary exchange and the other dimensions of economic freedom. The report is copublished by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada and more than 70 think tanks around the world.
Economic Freedom of the World: 2016 Annual Report
By James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, andJoshua Hall, with the assistance of Ryan Murphy, and contributions from Robbie Butler, John Considine, Hugo J. Faria,Rosemarie Fike, Fred McMahon, Hugo M. Montesinos-Yufa, Dean Stansel, andMeg Tuszynski.
Global economic freedom increased slightly in this year's report to 6.85. Hong Kong and Singapore retain the top two positions with a score of 9.03 and 8.71 out of 10, respectively. The rest of this year's top scores are New Zealand, 8.35; Switzerland, 8.25; Canada, Georgia, Ireland, Mauritius, and the United Arab Emirates at 7.98; and Australia and the United Kingdom at 7.93.
The United States, once considered a bastion of economic freedom, ranks 16th for a second consecutive year with a score of 7.75. Due to a weakening rule of law, increasing regulation, and the ramifications of wars on terrorism and drugs, the United States has seen its economic freedom score plummet in recent years, compared to 2000 when it ranked second globally.
The rankings of other large economies in this year's index are Germany (30th), Japan (40th), South Korea (42nd), France (57th), Italy (69th), Mexico (88th), Russia (102nd), India (112th), China (113th), and Brazil (124th).
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The leading nations of the world regarding economic freedom are:
1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. New Zealand
4. Switzerland
5. Georgia
6. Ireland
7. Mauritius
8. UAR
9. Australia
10. UK
Nos 3, 9, and 10 are basically British nations, so to some degree is Ireland (no.6).
Nos 1 and 2 are Chinese ethnic entities BUT they were founded by Britain and they serve as important outlets for British investments and trading arrangments.
Switzerland (no.4) is also basically an Israelite nation.
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Britain's Status as a Trading Nation Ties It to Europe
By Mark Fleming-Williams
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/britains-status-trading-nation-ties-it-europe
Extracts:
The story starts with geography. Britain is a relatively small island situated off a large but historically divided continent. It is narrow, with navigable rivers, natural resources and fertile land. These factors have various implications for the country's development. As an island with narrow dimensions, the coast is always nearby, making a large portion of the population maritime. Add an ample supply of wood, and conditions are ripe for the construction of a strong navy. The fertile soil allows for a stable population, while resources such as coal, metals and sheep (for wool), along with navigable rivers, provide propitious circumstances for international trade.
... The 19th-century historian John Seeley described Britain as having acquired its empire in a "fit of absence of mind." Britain's merchants led it to conquer the world. Thriving wool trade was eventually superseded by the arrival of cotton, and it became important for Britain's textiles industry to have sources of the material in warmer climes. This need, along with the promise of other exotic trade goods, drove it to establish trading posts and colonies in the Caribbean and North America. The ever-strengthening navy provided more opportunities further afield, and trading stations in India and Asia also grew, feeding an ever more rapacious British consumer. ... by the start of the 20th century the British Empire covered 22 percent of the world's land mass. ....
The United Kingdom that emerged in 1945 was a shadow of its former self. The remains of its empire dropped off in the following decades, and it found it was unable to keep up its former trading prowess. In fact, the amount of sterling held around the world by its former colonies was a great burden on the faded British economy, depreciating the currency strongly. The United Kingdom had to institute exchange controls in 1947. Manufacturing in northern England was now exposed as uncompetitive in the global market, as were the great shipbuilding cities on the coasts. Moreover, the population had grown so much in the previous 150 years that the island now needed to import half of its food. Doing so was affordable in the days of empire, but now the United Kingdom struggled to pay with its depleted finances.
... London, the epicenter of British finance, had been suffering like the rest of the country after the war. It fell far behind New York on the global stage with the U.S. dollar's ascension as the global reserve currency at the expense of the British pound. But a massive liberalization program in the 1980s, partly touched off by the removal of exchange controls in 1979, complemented investment access to the European market. It allowed London to reclaim its place as the home of international finance in the following decades (a large portion of New York's transactions are domestic), even after the United Kingdom chose to stay out of the eurozone in 1992.
London currently generates 22 percent of the United Kingdom's gross domestic product with just 13 percent of the country's population. In the services trade, of which financial and business services make up 55 percent, the United Kingdom is now second only to the United States, and with its goods trade so depleted, the entire country now relies on the sector as its source of foreign capital. The British navy is no longer an influential force in the world, but the country's trading instincts persist, facilitating transactions from the comfort of its own home.
... Of course, opportunities do exist outside the European Union. London has been pursuing the nascent Islamic finance market, in which it is the number one Western trading location, and it also plays host to two-thirds of all yuan transactions that take place outside Hong Kong and China. Historical links, similar legal systems and language similarities will all play their part in creating opportunities for the United Kingdom in former colonies, many of which are projected to be among the world's fastest-growing economies, in the decades to come.
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Why does Britain became an important trading nation?
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Britain-became-an-important-trading-nation
by
Nigel Readings
Extract:
At the time of the commencement of the Second World War Britain could pay cash for its needs for the first two years and we could use our reputation and world wide contacts (that still exist) to obtain credit and trade and we retained the naval power to enable it to happen.
It is not now just production and distribution that are important, services too such as banking and insurance, the various specialisations of the City of London that are now so much port of trade. Goods and ships have to be insured, money has to be paid and transferred from buyer to seller which makes the City of London one of the three or four most important centres in the world for such activity. We don't manufacture very much but that is largely compensated for by the services industries. That too is trade.
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