Opinion: (Nicolas Barré, Deputy Managing Editor, Les Echos): “Earlier this year, seventeen countries of the euro area were closer than ever before to the abyss. None of the two most urgent problems has been solved. European leaders have long since lost their AAA rating in the financial markets. They are tormented, put conditions, stretch time, in short, show all their inability to bailout Greece, the country that accounts for only about 3% of the total income of the continent.

“One gets the impression that they are powerless, and yet from the beginning of the year we have seen four warning signs that a disaster is imminent.

“And the first of them is the inevitability of a Greek default. The second is the growth of distrust towards all the euro zone countries, except Germany. The third is the freezing of transactions between banks since they no longer trust each other. The fourth is a short-term decline: Credits are declining for both states and businesses.

“A real leap forward is required in order to avoid contamination of the entire European financial system, which may push the entire continent into the abyss. There is little time left.”

My Comment: Perhaps, from the lowest point of a fall, we will begin to realize the need to revise the entire system of social and economic relations and establish them on trust and equality. After all, it is the opposite processes that have led us to ruin.
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Question: Why are there serious scientists who believe that the crisis will be over soon, that unemployment will drop, and that the European economy will flourish? Don’t they see how grave the situation is?

Answer: These scientists are clever people, they are experts in their field, but the problem is that science in general speaks about laws that have already been revealed in the world and not about those that will be revealed in the future.

If the new laws that are being revealed now are on a different dimension compared to what we had before, not even one professor can say a thing about them.

We are all egoists and act within our own selfish spheres. We are used to this kind of life. We study it and this is what we understand and explore. Human society exists on this level and this is the level that all the scientists, sociologists, and psychologists work within.

This is one collective dimension we all share and in which we all are. We study it as if we perform empirical lab studies under special conditions, like in a greenhouse: we record different readings and come up with laws.

On the basis of these laws we can come to conclusions that apply to the greenhouse only if it remains in the same conditions without change. In that case, those professors might be right, although this is also a question because there are many scientists who say exactly the opposite.

The point is that the conditions today are changing for the first time in history! In the meantime, scientists don’t understand that things are changing, but I already see it from the spiritual world. But how can we prove this to people? This is why Kabbalsits have kept quiet all this time.

Even a hundred years ago Baal HaSulam began to speak about the crisis, and about the fact that we are one family, about the danger of a nuclear war. But no one wanted to listen; they called him a communist and a mystic.

But today it is already possible to speak, although there are many scientists who won’t see the crisis until it hits them in full force.

But I don’t want it to hit them so. We see that there is no choice and that we have to explain. After all, a scientist studies real life, he studies you and me! And we can’t wait until we begin to starve, until we empty the earth of its natural resources, and until millions of jobless people go out to the streets for this scientist to wake up and say, “Oh, it turns out that there is another trend…” and then to begin to study it.

I don’t want him to study these new laws on me, so that later he will be able to tell about them and get a Nobel Prize at my expense. This is why we have been given permission from Above to reveal this knowledge in advance, before this experiment is preformed on living people.

So I can declare that I disagree with the opinion of the scientist with all due respect and the appreciation I feel for modern science. In fact, according to what he sees, he is right. But there is another process going on here, which is hidden at the moment. Many people will disagree with him because they already see that something strange is happening here. To be on the safe side, it is better to assume that they are right.

After all, this isn’t an experiment on lab mice but on living people! If Spain explodes now, it will immediately spread like wildfire to Italy, Greece, and the rest of Europe.

But this doesn’t mean that scientists don’t understand. They work with numbers and statistical data, they study the world, its processes and results according to what they see: They don’t see anything yet. This is why he is right because as it written: “A judge has only what his eyes can see.”

But there is a sage, who looks a great distance ahead and sees the future states as they are being formed.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, The Zohar

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Question: It is common to take a loan from a bank and then to sit back and think, “How will I pay it back?” But in fact, there is nothing to pay it back with. How do we explain to people before they end up bankrupt or in jail that it’s not worth doing?

Answer: This requires changing not only the individual, but also the entire society, the industry, and our worldview. A lot depends upon the mass media and on the surrounding environment, that is, everything from the closest circle to the general surroundings.

The owners of television programs advertise products that people think they need to buy, people do buy a lot of them, and do so on credit. Today credit is given out left and right because the same bankers that make the loans have an interest in the company, and they end up reclaiming all of people’s possessions in order to repay their debt. This is all it is: a huge machine that is set up to drain a person of his last resources.

If we could break this cycle and through legislation against advertising, clear our mass media of all advertisements, banning all forms of advertising, where would we be? It should be understood that what is being advertised is detrimental. A person himself knows what he wants is not needed; what he doesn’t need, he doesn’t need to know about. After all, it’s better to have a few useful things than a lot of harmful ones.

This is a big problem. I hope that the current crisis will do the job. On the other hand it will simply rid people of the chance to think about that each year they must acquire more to increase the gross domestic product and chase after profits.

Profit should be internal, measured in inner comfort. I won’t feel more comfortable if instead of producing ten kinds of yogurt today, tomorrow I create twenty. This will only exacerbate the problem and no one feels a sense of responsibility.
[66415]
From a “Talk About Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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In the News (from the Centre for Research on Globalization): “The expansion of world capitalism (globalization) depended on a global cheap labor economy.

“The development of industrial colonies in the Third World resulted in the relocation of industries to these countries, leading to job lay-offs and the outright closure of a wide range of productive industries in the developed countries.

“In the absence of meaningful state regulation, this relentless process of minimizing labor costs led to a dramatic compression of society’s capacity to consume.

“The exploitation of the huge labor forces in China, India and elsewhere — and the pillage and transfer of billions from ex-communist Russia and ‘neo-liberalized’ South America — filled the coffers of old financial institutions.

“Huge surplus profits spilled over into finance, real estate, and insurance, giving capital greater social and political power. This dwarfed the organization of labor, limiting its bargaining power and multiplying profits.

“The state and state policy became their instrument as public enterprises, land, resources, and banks were privatized.

“This speculative onslaught, a worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through financial manipulation, has been the driving force behind the crisis.

“The incapacity of the capitalist system to reinvest capital in productive ways led to large scale growth of speculator capital in many forms.

“Profits were bolstered via inflated real estate based on expanded credit, highly leveraged debt and outright fraudulent ‘financial instruments.’

“Real estate speculation was extended into the working class as wage and salary earners took advantage of easy loans to join the speculation frenzy based on an ideology of irreversible rising home values.

“Having caused the financial meltdown, they have cashed in with windfall gains through the bailout money provided under the Bush and Obama administration bank bailouts. This has furthered their control over the real economy, by buying up and acquiring real economic assets; as once highly profitable companies collapse, the money managers pick up the pieces.

“The Bush/Obama bailout measures will contribute to a further destabilization by transferring large amounts of money at taxpayers’ expense into the hands of private financiers, resulting in a spiraling public debt and an unprecedented centralization of banking power.

“State-owned assets and everything under state jurisdiction is up for private acquisition as the financial establishment calls for the restructuring and privatization of state assets.

“What we are dealing with is a large-scale process of appropriation, unprecedented in history.”

My Comment: All this should explode, and the outcome depends on the awareness of what is happening. Undoubtedly, the entire system of social and economic relationships has to be re-built. But this is impossible to accomplish without a completely new approach to the meaning of the existence of society—for the sake of accumulation and consumption (an imaginary fulfillment through wealth) or for the sake of moral ascent (a feeling of reciprocity and love).

Nature (the evolutionary development of people and society) pushes us to unite. The awareness of the need allows a smooth transition to a new level of existence. Will humanity understand this?
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In the News (from The Guardian): “A thinktank, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which has organized the event with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, argues that if everyone worked fewer hours – say, 20 or so a week – there would be more jobs to go round, employees could spend more time with their families and energy-hungry excess consumption would be curbed. Anna Coote, of NEF, said: ‘There’s a great disequilibrium between people who have got too much paid work, and those who have got too little or none.’

“She argued that we need to think again about what constitutes economic success, and whether aiming to boost Britain’s GDP growth rate should be the government’s first priority: ‘Are we just living to work, and working to earn, and earning to consume? There’s no evidence that if you have shorter working hours as the norm, you have a less successful economy: quite the reverse.’”

My Comment: These are attempts to solve the problem of unemployment. But what will people do in their spare time if they are not busy with integral education? This will lead to their degradation! Besides, a shorter work week will reduce their income, and how will they make up for it? There must be fulfillment—either by alcohol or a new integral consciousness. Otherwise, this initiative will bring even greater social problems.
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Opinion: (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former IMF Chief): “Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn …sharply criticized Europe’s handling of its debt crisis and predicted as many as seven years of subpar European growth unless the Continent’s leaders changed policies.

“Europe’s political shortcomings are ‘bleeding away, day by day, the remaining confidence investors may have in politicians being able to solve the crisis,’ Mr. Strauss-Kahn said. …the IMF is ‘in limbo’ because it requires political approvals that may take months to obtain, he added. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

“Strauss-Kahn, who attended an economic conference organized by NetEase, one of China’s leading internet companies, stressed that European nations make up 25% of global GDP. If their economy stagnates, the whole world will be influenced, including China.

“He proposed that China should offer direct or indirect assistance to soothe the financial crisis in the eurozone via the IMF. At the same time, he said the IMF should raise China’s voting power in the organization.

“Strauss-Kahn said it is impossible for eurozone countries to get out of their predicament by themselves and this presented a great opportunity for China. He said China is a big country but still has to take a full role as a member of the international community. European countries may be reluctant to accept China’s help directly, and the best way is therefore to do so through the IMF.” (Source: Want China Times)

My Comment: China will not help the EU and neither will any aid, which will simply disappear as in the abyss because this crisis is not the crisis of economy, banks, or state competitiveness, but a demonstration of the lack of correct connections between people. And it will not be over until mutual guarantee is established between people, nations, and the EU countries.
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Question: Suppose that for some time during the integral upbringing courses people “brew” within the group, studying theory and doing practical exercises. But naturally, a time then comes when a person has to study integrality, to exit into the big world, so to speak.

Answer: For that we gradually begin to merge and consolidate the groups, bring them onto television, to discussions in virtual networks. Integral education, the study of integral connection, continues practically throughout their entire life until one reaches the very last level of harmony in human society and in nature.

That’s why gradual consolidation of the groups requires such a state where a person feels equally included into and connected to absolutely all levels of humanity and senses all of humanity inside of himself. Each one of us feels like we exist within a “round” society, not classified by any levels such as emotional level, IQ coefficient, or some other criteria, in other words, in a society that is independent from any innate parameters that we are not yet able to transcend.

Within an integral society, this mutual inclusion assumes such development of a person that he or she is able to use the mind and feelings of another, and through his attitude towards others this person incorporates himself into them and begins to use these “foreign” resources as his own. In this event, the personal “I” disappears in the sense that a common feeling, reason, and heart arise. And it’s as if a person connects to this total unified virtual image of man called “Adam.” Then all the differences between people gradually level out.

These are going to be exactly the conditions that humanity can only dream about: Everyone has to be equal, everyone has to live in the same conditions, states, and so on. That is, each of us will draw from one single mind and feeling, as much as one is able and as much as one desires.

At the same time, nobody will feel lacking because everything will be provided for everyone—the great mind and the great heart will relate to all.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/13/11

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In the News (from Reuters): “The global economy could withstand widespread disruption from a natural disaster or attack by militants for only a week as governments and businesses are not sufficiently prepared to deal with unexpected events, a report by a respected think-tank said.

“Events such as the 2010 volcanic ash cloud, which grounded flights in Europe, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami and Thailand’s floods last year, have showed that key sectors and businesses can be severely affected if disruption to production or transport goes on for more than a week.

“‘One week seems to be the maximum tolerance of the ‘just-in-time’ global economy,’ said the report by Chatham House, the London-based policy institute for international affairs.

“The current fragile state of the world’s economy leaves it particularly vulnerable to unforeseen shocks. Up to 30 percent of developed countries’ gross domestic product could be directly threatened by crises, especially in the manufacturing and tourism sectors, according to the think-tank.

“It is estimated that the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Asia cost businesses $60 billion, or about 2 percent of east Asian GDP, the report said.

“After the Japanese tsunami and nuclear crisis in March last year, global industrial production declined by 1.1 percent the following month, according to the World Bank.

“The 2010 volcanic ash cloud cost the European Union 5-10 billion euros and pushed some airlines and travel companies to the verge of bankruptcy.

“Costs can escalate quickly when transport or major production hubs are disrupted for more than a few days, which can in turn threaten food and water supplies and energy and communication networks, the report said.

“In the event of prolonged disruption, some businesses would be forced to cut investment and jobs or consider closing down, leading to a permanent reduction in countries’ growth.

“In general, governments and businesses are under-prepared to respond to high-impact, unpredictable events, with worst-case scenarios rarely factored into their contingency plans.

“It particularly highlighted social media networks as a useful ‘one-stop shop’ for information in the event of a crisis. In the London riots last year, social networks such as Twitter proved invaluable for many people to track the rioters’ movements across the UK capital and take precautions.”

My Comment: These examples of universal dependence and fragility in the global interconnection lead us to the need to get close enough to be able to replace each other if necessary.
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Opinion: (Pankaj Ghemawat, economist, strategist, Professor of Global Strategy at the IESE Business School, Barcelona): “DHL released the first DHL Global Connectedness Index (GCI), a comprehensive study of geo-political trade data. The study indicates that economic globalization is still not as deep as perceived and the potential for continued economic integration could represent global gross domestic product gains of five percent to 10 percent per year. GCI ranks 125 countries according to the depth and breadth of integration into the world economy and examines the connections between global connectedness and welfare. The study documents that global connectedness has enormous room to expand, even among the most ‘connected’ countries.

“’Our research shows that global economic integration is not as deep as perceived. Therefore, we see untapped potential for growth for each country and globally. Increasing global connectedness is likely to spur further growth by adding trillions of dollars to the economic turnover,’ added Ghemawat.

“’The positive impact of global connectedness on world prosperity will continue to be of great importance. The misgivings some political leaders have about increasing global trade are unfounded; its benefits far outweigh any potential downside,’ said Ghemawat.”

My Comment: It is true! It’s not only that nature around us and inside us, the external and internal connection of all objects, is manifested more and more, but as the study above shows, a human being becomes more individualistic, more distanced from others because his egoism grows. People in one room, spouses in one apartment, children with parents, and so on cannot get along.

So, it needs to be emphasized what globalization we are talking about: For the time being, the world has become like this, but not us.

Lately, an inner connection between people manifests more and more. But it is in conflict with growing alienation because of increasing personal egoism. Accordingly, group egoism (national, family) manifests less.

This growing difference between the inner and external relations causes the crisis (education, family, personal, social, and finally financial), which is the discrepancy between the two systems:

• Inner, increasing connection of humanity as one whole, which grows according to the program of nature, leading us towards an integral society and complete interdependence, as the external nature itself;
• Our growing egoistic alienation from each other.

Hence, the solution to the crisis is to bring humanity as a whole to the realization of its total connection and readiness for this connection. As soon as we begin to get closer, we will discover the beneficial influence of nature on us because we will begin to become in compliance with the law of our similarity to it.
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In the News (from The Economic Collapse blog): “For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen. Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come. Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement. At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully underfunded, and the Social Security system is on the road to complete and total disaster. A massive wave of humanity is hitting retirement age at a moment in history when the U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams.

“The following are 25 bitter and painful facts about the coming Baby Boomer retirement crisis that will blow your mind….

#1 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#2 According to a recent poll conducted by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about ‘maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement.’ Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.

#3 A study conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research has found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.

#4 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#5 On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers started to retire. For almost the next 20 years, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.

#6 At the moment, only about 13 percent of all Americans are 65 years of age or older. By 2030, that number will soar to 18 percent.

#7 Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens. By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.

#8 Back in 1991, half of all American workers planned to retire before they reached the age of 65. Today, that number has declined to 23 percent.

#9 According to one recent survey, 74 percent of American workers expect to continue working once they are ‘retired.’

#10 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work ‘until they drop.’

#11 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.

#12 A study by a law professor at the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.

#13 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.

#14 What is causing most of these bankruptcies among the elderly? The number one cause is medical bills. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#15 Public retirement funds all over the United States are woefully underfunded. For example, it has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#16 Most U.S. states have huge pension obligations which threaten to bankrupt them.

#17 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management have calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?

#18 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these ‘Social Security deficits’ are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.

#19 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#20 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#21 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars. In the years ahead expenses related to Social Security and Medicare are projected to skyrocket dramatically.

#22 The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the agency of the federal government that pays monthly retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees that were covered under defined benefit pension plans that failed. The retirement crisis has barely even begun and the PBGC is already dead broke. The PBGC says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a huge bailout from the federal government.

#23 According to a survey by careerbuilder.com, 36 percent of all Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities. So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?

#25 A survey taken earlier this year found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers admitted that they had postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the last 12 months. Back in 2008, that number was only at 14 percent.”

My Comment: The crisis has crept up unnoticed, or rather, since we did not want to pay attention to it, it brought us to the critical point where we cannot keep ignoring it and we have to start paying attention to what is happening. We are like children, and this is because everything that happens occurs at the level higher than our development. So, is it not worth listening to Kabbalists who can foresee the future…?
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