Opinion: (Stanley Fisher, the Governor of the Bank of Israel): “’We’ve run out of our normal bullets and out of our heaviest bullets, but there could be room for quantitative easing if that decision was made, and that would have an impact.’

“’We are at the end because the economy went through a massive recession and the financial system was very badly hit, including the banking system and housing finance. Many people have mortgages that are under water, and that situation hasn’t been fixed yet.’

“There are clear concerns almost everywhere that we could have a very slow period, both in the United States and in Europe.’

“’The difference among governments is that there are governments that are cutting back already, …and other governments that don’t see a way of doing that without reducing demand seriously.’

“’We are in very difficult territory. This is not where the textbooks five years ago would have expected us to be: with interest rates at zero, with massive budget deficits. In those circumstances, you’re operating under extreme conditions, and the textbooks aren’t quite sure what to do in those cases.'”

My Opinion: If Stanley Fisher, who led the Israeli economy faultlessly over the years, is talking about the unpredictability of the situation, it means that the world economy is at the lowest point of the fall. It’s time to realize this and act using the new economic methods: the method of the “integral” economy, where everything is calculated as “for the family.”
[53123]

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The economic system should match the condition of society. Until now, we developed and modernized the egoistic system, in which everyone earned according to his strengths and abilities. Raw materials, the army, politics, fraud, and so on, everything was connected to the network of egoistic ties between us, and everyone’s formula was to maximize profit.

However, profit can be different. For instance, some pay huge amounts of money to be respected and feared. Others opt for something else, and it all depends on the type of society. But ultimately, all means become part of the network that connects us and essentially determines everything.

By joining it, we spoil it by our egoism, envy, lust, and vanity as individuals as well as nations because the general and the particular are equal. Consequently, this network, stretching over the entire world, is permeated by all kinds of desires, soaked by the sweat of history of countries and nations, and imbued with their religions and dreams about the future.…

Everything is woven into this network, and therefore, we cannot understand it. The entire reality is entangled in the network of our corrupted egoistic relationships. There are too many variables and factors of influence, and we do not know how to describe them with one formula: hundreds of countries, presidents and prime ministers, armies, money, natural resources, religious preferences and mentality, past achievements, and hopes for the future…

It is impossible to understand this immense set of data, and that is why our economic system is defined by that poor picture that we are able to discern from the common network. Respectively, the one who is able to understand it better can foresee and earn more.

This has happened so far. According to the law of equality of the general and the particular, I could extrapolate my qualities on the country and the whole world as we all existed in one egoistic nature. To a certain extent, I could understand the functioning principles of the country and the world, and build and coordinate government institutions of power and control accordingly.

However today, our connection is being replaced by another. A new program has been installed and is constantly updated to the latest version. It obliges us to increasingly seek unity and mutual guarantee, and although this does not comply with our desires, this is the state of affairs today.

We, on the other hand, do not know how to approach this network and are losing the ability to communicate with others correctly. The world experiences the deficit of trust: Banks do not trust manufacturers; governments do not trust each other. And this is natural. Before, the connection was clear: “You give to me, I give to you.” We understood each other in our egoism.

But the situation has changed. We have not changed ourselves; we are still in our old nature, and at the same time, we discover a new relationship that is totally incomprehensible to us from our previous positions. We do not even notice its altruistic nature.

This is where the problem lies, which the usual methods cannot solve. The question now is how society will advance towards unity. The reasons are unimportant: Either the economy, a security threat, or the need for social appeasement may push us toward it. In any case, only in the move toward unity will society suddenly begin to understand the world: “Ah, that’s how it is! What can be done now? What should we do?”

We should introduce integral upbringing. There are no other solutions. We must learn and become clear on how to build a new oneness not based on our previous connections and nature; how to change our nature a little. And even if I do not wish this at all, this is the only possibility to adapt to the nature that is being revealed to us, to the network of altruistic relationships. Only then will we be able to put our life in order; otherwise, we will lose the way completely and go bankrupt in every possible way.

The modern economy is built on the principle of “give and take,” as it is said: “Go and earn from each other.” What will happen if people, industrial sectors, countries, and the whole world are not able to deal with each other? The world will return to subsistence farming: I consume what I produce. This is a disaster, but the world might come to this.

And that is why an integral upbringing and the understanding of global relationships are so important today. We definitely need to find the right forms of presentation to explain this to the world.
[53312]
From the 5st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/1/2011, “The Nation”

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Opinion (Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank): “The head of the World Bank warned Sunday that many key market players have lost confidence in recent weeks, pushing the fragile global economy into a ‘new danger zone.’

“Robert Zoellick said events the past few weeks in Europe and the United States already have had an adverse impact, and could signal even bigger problems ahead.

“‘There was a convergence of some events in Europe and the United States that has led many market participants to lose confidence in the economic leadership of some of the key countries,’ Zoellick said.

“‘I think that those events combined with some of the other fragilities in the nature of the recovery has pushed us into a new danger zone,’ Zoellick said. ‘And I don’t say those words lightly.'”

My Comment: This problem can be solved neither by financiers nor by politicians, but only by a gradual transition to an integral society. In such a society, any changes will work if all social problems are solved together, like in one family.
[53344]

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In the news (From Yahoo News): “The head of the European Central Bank on Tuesday defended his institution’s decision to help stabilize the bonds of Spain and Italy, but indicated that the ECB doesn’t see itself as the eurozone’s lead firefighter for long.

“‘It is the worst crisis since World War II, and it could have been the worst crisis since World War I if leaders hadn’t taken the important decisions,’ [said] ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet.

“Trichet didn’t directly confirm that the ECB has been buying up the bonds of Italy and Spain, saying only that his banks ‘is in the secondary market’ for eurozone bonds…

“The ECB head also indicated that his bank still sees the main responsibility for fighting the debt crisis with eurozone governments and not the central bank.

“‘I won’t say’ how long the ECB will buy bonds on the secondary market, Trichet said. ‘What we expect is that the governments do what we consider to be their job.’

“He said eurozone countries needed to implement recently taken decisions to allow their bailout fund to buy government bonds on the open market ‘as rapidly as possible.'”

My Comment: Of course, everyone understands that this is done out of despair. Nobody has a rescue plan. People still don’t feel that it’s vital to hear that the solution is in the social dimension, in bringing the entire society to mutual guarantee, even in the name of saving the nation. But the program of nature has plenty of pressuring methods in store to compel humanity to seek unity, the similarity to global nature.
[52987]

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Opinion (George Soros, financier): “A comprehensive solution to the euro crisis must have three major components: reform and recapitalisation of the banking system; a eurobond regime; and an exit mechanism.”

My Comment: I wish the plan was accepted! Then, they would discover that it does not work. Under other circumstances, Soros, perhaps, would be right, but not in our time, when the old economic laws are no longer active. In the integral and global world, nothing works but actions directed to the benefit of society.
[53240]

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Opinion: (Paul Krugman, professor of Economics, the Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics): “Has market turmoil left you feeling afraid? Well, it should. Clearly, the economic crisis that began in 2008 is by no means over.

“But there’s another emotion you should feel: anger. For what we’re seeing now is what happens when influential people exploit a crisis rather than try to solve it.

“For the fact is that right now the economy desperately needs a short-run fix. …When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability.

“Unfortunately, giving lectures on long-run fiscal sustainability is a fashionable Washington pastime.…

“What would a real response to our problems involve? First of all, it would involve more, not less, government spending for the time being — with mass unemployment and incredibly low borrowing costs, we should be rebuilding our schools, our roads, our water systems and more. It would involve aggressive moves to reduce household debt via mortgage forgiveness and refinancing. And it would involve an all-out effort by the Federal Reserve to get the economy moving, with the deliberate goal of generating higher inflation to help alleviate debt problems.”

My Comment: Of course, something must be done, but no action will succeed unless it is aimed at uniting us into an integral society. On the contrary, this will expose our desperate situation even more in order to show us more clearly and painfully where society should be heading, until we understand that this direction should be only towards the similarity with global, unified nature.
[53244]

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Question: Is the wave of protests in Israel due to the role of the nation of Israel, or will all nations come to this eventually?

Answer: The same problems will have to be solved in the entire world. On the corporeal level people will be obliged to provide mutual guarantee that will ensure social justice. Then the nations will be able to introduce a just distribution as they see it.

And it doesn’t matter how much you give to everyone. What is important is the final sensation: We are all together and we are fine. I am satisfied with what others have received and I am among them.

Regardless of which societies and countries we are talking about, the key is that everyone feels satisfied. And this is not a matter of money, but precisely of the final sensation.

In the interim phase, we have to provide to those who lack food and basic necessities. We need to raise the needy above the poverty line—there is no need to even discuss it. They receive the necessary supplement and together we move on to discussing our current problems. When a person has nothing to eat, there is nothing to talk with him about, while the rest depends on the sensation.
[52453]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/24/2011, Talk on Arvut and Social Justice

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Opinion: (David Dapice, Chief Economist, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Associate Professor of Economics, Tuffs University): “When European leaders interrupt their August vacations, they’ll return to their offices and learn just how bereft they are of ideas in dealing with the economic crisis threatening the world. From Washington to Brussels to Tokyo, leaders have been squabbling and fumbling, seemingly oblivious of the global threat. The farce in the Capitol Hill leading to the downgrading of U.S. debt by Standard & Poor’s, the feckless response of the European Union to the spiraling sovereign debt crisis and the trade surplus prompting Japan’s devaluation of the yen all point to a dangerous bankruptcy in leadership.

“In the U.S., bickering politicians drove the country to the brink of default, and their last-minute compromise failed in stopping the downgrading of U.S. debt.

“A grudging and feckless response of European leaders to the crisis thus far has reduced rather than restored confidence.

“In Japan, the debt to GDP ratio is an astonishing 200 percent, meaning its debt amounts to two years’ worth of wealth created by the country.

“China managed to boost lending for questionable investments…. Indonesia, Russia and Brazil rely on commodity exports to an uncomfortable degree, and many of these prices have begun to slide—oil has dropped 15 percent from recent highs.

“Perhaps the most disconcerting element in this is that few leaders or even intellectuals have ideas for solutions likely to be considered.

“Despite frequent talk of an interconnected world, the myopic leadership in the world’s leading countries seems oblivious to the fact that all are in one boat.”

My Comment: Leaders can only pretend that they are in control because it’s no longer possible to govern using the old methods. The reason is that the upper world is approaching us, as if descending upon us, but its qualities of complete interconnection, bestowal and love are opposite to those of our world. This is why we feel the crisis—we sense our oppositeness to the upper world.

The situation won’t improve until we realize that we have to change in similarity to the upper world, its governance, to become similar to it in full interconnection, bestowal and love. You say it’s unfeasible? By inflicting suffering upon us, Nature will compel us to it. Or, we will want to change ourselves, and then we will need the wisdom of Kabbalah. At some point in the future, we will meet….
[52053]

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Opinion: (Professor of Behavioral Economics Dan Ariely, Duke University): “Gut feelings are often wrong…. Because if you think about it, the conditions under which you could develop good gut intuitions are conditions in which you do the same things over and over with very small changes, and you see an immediate effect. …Much of what’s happening in the market has no connection to what you have done, and there’s so much noise into it that it’s really hard for the human being to observe the market and understand the relationship between what you have done, what companies are doing, and what happens.

“You know all these programs when people come the day after something happened and… say: ‘Oh, I knew this all along; here is the story and here is why.’ You have all these pundits who give you an explanation of what has happened yesterday. Of course, the question is if they can predict what will happen tomorrow, and they don’t go there because they know that they can’t.

“We did an experiment in which we took some events in a stock market: IBM stock went up, IBM stock went down, etc. and we created these computerized pundits… which [sometimes] gave the standard explanation, but sometimes they would give the opposite explanation. Then we asked people how much they trusted these pundits… and would they invest in the next period according to their advice.

“It turns out that no matter what explanation they gave, as long as they gave an explanation, people followed them. I think this comes from our great desire as individuals to tell ourselves a story that explains what is happening.”

My Comment: In other words, we don’t care what the causes of the events are; we just need a story, whether it is valid or not. It gives us solace, like to a child in his mother’s arms who wants a fairy tale just because he hears it from the mother. We are looking for solace, not an explanation! But it doesn’t fix the economy!
[51533]

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Opinion: (Kim Sung-Hwan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea): “The international community has experience in overcoming economic difficulties such as the global financial crisis of 2008. But no country can cope with such global shocks alone. This requires close cooperation among all members of the international community. Today, it is extremely important to combine efforts.”

My Comment: Cooperation should exist not because no one has strength to overcome the crisis alone, but because the crisis was caused in order for us to discover the need to unite into one whole.
[52037]

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