Opinion: (Eitan Avriel, Managing Editor, themarker.com): “In everyday life, one’s logic usually works perfectly well. If a person or family consumes above their ability and gets into debt, the correct cure for this will be reducing consumption and debt.

“The logic works in the opposite direction as well: If a person wants to succeed but doesn’t have money, he has to get a credit from banks or investors, fight the markets, and try to realize his dream, mercilessly beating his competitors.

“However, when it comes to macroeconomics, this logic ceases to work and often gives opposite results. A bank will usually have not more than 10% of the money it has to return to its customers, and if all the clients ask for their money back, it won’t be able to cope with this situation.

“In macroeconomics, if all citizens who are in debt decide to decrease their living standards, reduce their consumption, and liquidate their liabilities, the whole economy will find itself in a heavy crisis. Demand will decrease, companies will close, employees will be made redundant, the demand will go further down, and this vortex will suck down the whole economy. What works …on a personal level becomes a trap on the level of economy.

“This also works the other way around: If the public decides to take out a loan and spend the money, the economy will develop for a limited period of time. But the debts will rise, prices will go down, bubbles will burst, banks will secure their assets, and we will be back to the 2008 crisis scenario. What makes you happy isn’t always good for your economy, and thus isn’t good for you too. It’s strange and non-intuitive, but true.
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Opinion: (Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times): “Could things go bad again? I mean really bad – Great Depression bad, world war bad? The kind of cataclysmic event my generation has learned to think belongs only in the history books.

“There is certainly a sense of foreboding in Europe at the moment. Speaking in Berlin on Monday night, Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, warned: ‘We are standing on the edge of a precipice.’  President Sarkozy of France cautioned recently: ‘If the euro explodes, Europe would explode. It’s the guarantee of peace in a continent where there were terrible wars.’”

My Comment: Kabbalah teaches us to see the next stage of development (evolution) in the realization of a mistake. We shouldn’t go against the movement of nature; rather, we just need to change the worldview and see that the world is integral and fully interconnected.

We used to develop in our individual egoism, and according to the law of evolution, we have to begin to connect into a single mass: the system of mutual guarantee. It is to our detriment to make a step back and try to stay in the previous egoistic individualist paradigm (worldview).

After all, nature has its own plan, and we are in it. If we go against this plan, we will plunge into suffering. We must begin integration immediately: educate society, explain to everyone, not the cause of the crisis and ridiculous attempts to get out of it, but how to use it to rise to a qualitatively new level.

We have two options: to learn from suffering (hunger, cold, and war) or to reveal the next stage through our transformation and correction. This could be easily done by the method of Kabbalah. This method of changing society from egoistic to integral has been waiting for this particular application for thousands of years.
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Opinion: (German Chancellor Angela Merkel): “German Chancellor Angela Merkel says there are no easy or fast solutions to Europe’s economic crisis, but the agreement by eurozone countries last week for more fiscal discipline was a good step.

“The German leader said while the path to full ‘fiscal union’ in the EU would be a long process that may take years…”

My Comment: This process will take years because only when people realize the futility of looking for solutions in old paradigms will they consider heeding a different solution, one that requires changing the way we relate to the world.

The world must understand that the new attitude toward life isn’t about constant and aimless growth. Rather, industry must satisfy basic necessities instead of promoting purposeless hoarding. This would also free people up to be educated on the next level of civilization: unifying above the individual ego of every person into a single whole.

Nature is pushing us toward this, and this pressure will only continue to build. In the past we have always developed by compulsion, as the ego developed within us. But we felt this development as desirable because we are inherently egoistic. However, now nature is forcing us to rise to the next level of our development, which is about rejecting the ego. And that is why nature gradually shows us that our ego is evil.

The choice is ours. We can advance toward rejecting the ego and building the connection between us under the coercion of blows, such as the present crisis, wars, epidemics, or natural disasters. Or we can arrive at the realization that it’s better to rise above the ego in favor of unity and an integral society before the ego fully reveals itself as evil. To this end, we need to institute a system of integral education and upbringing of the whole humanity. The task is far from simple, but it is the only way to avoid catastrophes.
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Lately we are observing many problems in the world, crises on different levels that are expressed in different ways. No matter what man does, he sees that he does not succeed anywhere—not with his children, nor his family, work, himself, or the climate. At the end of the day, the most important aspect, the system of security and supply, meaning the financial system, the economy, is destroyed, and who knows whether man will be able to provide the necessities of life for himself.

All of these states are meant to bring us to the realization that there is one reason here causing all of these problems. As we know from the science of Kabbalah, there is no other reason besides the upper force, “There is none besides Him.” But this singular force is constantly revealed to us in different forms, by virtue of which we advance.

Either we advance by the good path, with inspiration, desire, and aspiration to the goal, or we advance by the path of suffering, not aspiring to the goal but unwillingly running towards it to get away from the current state.

Therefore, everything that becomes revealed inside of us and among us, everything that we aren’t able to do in the connection between us, in the attainment of the goal, in unity, in everything—we have to connect all of that together into one powerful, common demand for correction. Then, during the study, and especially while reading The Book of Zohar, the Light will come through and correct us.

If we aim at the goal, as much as we can recognize it according to our degree, then the Light will do its job. Therefore, everything that seems bad to us in our society, in dissemination, in every one of us, in the understanding of the path, in the connection with others, we have to try to ask for this to be corrected as something that’s common to all.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/11, The Zohar

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Opinion: (Achim Wambach, PhD, Professor of Economics, University of Cologne): “This crisis is a crisis of confidence. We need to create market structures in which participants will trust each other.

“The main task of economists is to develop a scientific basis for creating institutions, conducive to restoring confidence in the market. The crisis has shown that everyone behaves exclusively rationally: Politicians save the banks, the banks play against the states, and states are driving themselves deeper into debt.”

My Comment: Confidence is impossible without full awareness of complete mutual dependence, without an understanding of a single system of integral humanity, which we reached in our development and which requires us to become integrally connected.

And this is impossible without educating everyone in the spirit of integral humanity as one family. Without realizing and implementing this model of behavior, we will not survive in the new conditions of nature.
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In the News (from Panorama.it): “‘It is important [for Europe] to keep the single currency for one main reason: Europe needs to compete with … China, India, Russia, Brazil and the United States of America,’ explains Stefano Caselli, an economist at Bocconi University in Milan. ‘The smallest of these countries is nearly as large as the EU, so Europe needs the euro to compete more strongly….’

“This is why it is dangerous to play the breaking of the euro zone. … ‘We will immediately trigger a spiral of rising prices of consumer goods and inflation…’ adds Caselli.

“Financial speculations … require only one thing: Europe has to actually become one nation, where it’s not enough to have a single currency. You need a centralized government, where each state is willing to give up part of its sovereignty, starting with Germany.”

My Comment: There is only one right way: towards a greater integration, to the point of creating a single government. However, this requires preliminary education of the public in the spirit of an integrated society and mutual guarantee.
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Opinion: (German Chancellor Angela Merkel): “‘We have started a new phase in European integration,’ Mrs Merkel said.

But she made it clear that this was a long-term process that would take years.”

My Comment: Europe cannot be rebuilt on the old egoistic principles. The laws of the world have changed: The laws of an integral system are manifested in society, and a financial and economic system needs to be built in accordance to them. Europe could be an example for the entire world.
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In the News (from TheMarker): “Analysts are becoming more pessimistic about the present situation in Europe.”

Dylan Grice, a research analyst at Société Générale’s Global Strategy Team: “… compared Germany’s policy today against the policies that enabled the rise of Hitler. Specifically, he said that post-Weimar, Germany became too aggressive about fighting inflation, thus prompting deflation, thus prompting more unemployment, thus enabling the rise of the Nazis.”

Bob Janjuah, strategist, Nomura Bank “said that any talk of the ECB saving Europe was a mere pipedream.”

Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank: “If you don’t think Merkel’s tone will change, then our investment advice is to dig a hole in the ground and hide.”

George Goncalves, Managing Director and Head Of Us Interest Rates, Nomura Securities: “We could be approaching the point of no return for the fate of the euro… We still believe there is time to prevent worst-case scenarios, but these sort of watershed moments reveal one thing, that market practitioners are ill-equipped to navigate the political process, especially one that is driven by 17 different governments.”
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Opinion: (George Soros, billionaire investor): “The world financial system not only isn’t functioning, it’s on the brink of collapse…

“The Hungarian-born philanthropist, who recently spent time in areas where his charities are active, such as Africa, said he sees a growing bifurcation between emerging and developed countries – and he’s more confident about prospects for the emerging ones.

“Despite their assorted problems, including corruption, weak infrastructure and shaky government, developing countries are relatively unscathed by the ‘deflationary debt trap that the developed world is falling into,’ Mr. Soros said…

“The current global financial system is in a ‘self-reinforcing process of disintegration,’ Mr. Soros warned, and ‘the consequences could be quite disastrous. You have to do what you can to stop it developing in that direction.’

“While the economic and fiscal woes of the developed world remain critical, Mr. Soros said his recent travels gave him a sense of optimism about Africa and the Arab world.

“‘A lot of positive things are happening,’ he said. ‘I see Africa together with the Arab Spring as areas of progress. The Arab Spring was a revolutionary development.'”

My Comment: Were it not financiers who brought the world to its collapse? And now they still claim to be its advisers and leaders! They consider the Arab revolutions they have made as progress because it suits them. But the general crisis will sweep everything away and will force to think not in terms of dollars, but integrality.
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Opinion: (Eyal Winter, Silverzweig Professor of Economics, Director of Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “If with the help of the business press, society changes criteria for business success, the business culture in the country will change.

“I summon the business press to create the following alternative ratings, which will help achieve this goal: a social company rating, a social magnate rating, honest consumer treatment rating, decent work load rating, contribution to environmental control rating, and production of socially profitable goods rating for companies or social magnates.

“We should consider the income of a magnate who has made his wealth on building hospitals and safe living in the country, even if he did this for the purpose of making a profit.

“Property owners will be unable to remain indifferent to these ratings. The desire to compete, be successful, and earn social acceptance is evolutionary. It exists among people. If we are able to redirect this desire to the right direction, even the most cynical magnates will turn into social magnates, and instead of competing on our backs, they will compete for our well-being.

My Comment: Of course, honor, respect, and acceptance are the most important rewards. If we can increase their importance in society, we will be able to shift the value systems of the whole society.
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