Perhaps among the multitudes in this nominally Judeo-Christian nation, some still recall the 47th chapter of Genesis. The account of this secular event holds profound implications for our present circumstances.

Pharaoh’s dream (fat cows, lean cows) came true (as Joseph had correctly interpreted), and the famine came. The previously stored grain was sold to the fainting Egyptians. Their money was depleted and the people traded their cattle for food. They did so preferring economic loss to starvation. They purchased food enough for one year. Who could blame them?

But the famine continued. Then they sold their land and finally themselves and their own children into servitude. Pharaoh had some seed to sell as well, so he demanded and got a 20 percent tax on the harvest. That Pharaoh did well, for himself at least, with the prosperity-through-taxation business model.

Amidst our present spiritual famine (and like most famines it is of our own making), our money has begun to fail. What shall we sell to the new Pharaoh?

What is the difference between bailing out a company, taking over whole segments of an economy in exchange for control, and selling bread to a starving, dependent populace? Although our federal government has promised that their adventure into acquiring the private sector with printed script is temporary, the journey is uncharted and the destination far from certain.

Like the hungry Egyptians, we heaved a sigh of collective relief when the specter of economic collapse was apparently turned from our national door. If the economy improves quickly and business grows new legs, some contend that the prospect of federal retreat becomes more likely.

But if months of economic pain drag into years, taxes continue to suppress economic recovery, no spark has ignited the optimism necessary to prompt rational business risk-taking, more banks and business submerge beneath their debts, federal controllers will grow ever more comfortable with their role as the new overseers.

The juiciest of all takeover plumbs would be federal control of the insurance industry and its vast cash flow. If the federal apparatus (which is operated by men of enormous ambition) will not relinquish hold on the banking and automotives, we will metamorphose into the 1936 German model that resulted in a forced but later cozy 10-year partnership between the National Socialist German Worker’s Party and business people who wanted to keep their jobs.

What pyramids are waiting to be built with our unwilling, manacled hands?