As discussed in Chapter 18, worldwide capital investment relates to worldwide savings (debt and equity) by a mathematical identity. Increasing debt and equity relates, identically, to increasing capital investment, as long as the increases are sustained without decimation by future crises.

To achieve an 8 percent per annum growth in capital, fear of crises must be eliminated. As long as we overcome fear, there is no limit on the ability of humans to increase capital—the process is a simple function of trust and efficiency.

Transparency allows trust by open disclosure. Protection from fraud sustains trust by precluding the risk of crisis. Freedom of exchange combines trust with resources to generate capital.

Since all forms of capital are generated by combining capital needs with the trust that some humans have in other humans (we are neither creditors of, nor owned by, extraterrestrials), the fruits of reconciliation, prosperity, and life are the ability to further provide reconciliation, prosperity, and life. As with the formula for compound interest, the more reconciliation and prosperity, the more abundant life becomes. The more abundant we make life, the greater the chance for reconciliation and prosperity. The greater prosperity becomes, the greater the possibility for life and reconciliation. These are all exponentially related and all are summed up as benevolence.

The theology of the golden and silver rules is, therefore, the psychology of financial stability. The secular economics of forcing transparency on money changers is the mechanism for preventing fraud and the crises that follow. Temple leaders who could not change for fear of losing profits under Roman scrutiny lost the Temple to Roman anger a mere 40 years later.

Financial stability is the process that can generate whatever is needed to preserve reconciliation, prosperity, and life. Unless achieved, the consequence of the next 40 years just might be the end of everything.