Opinion: (Mario I. Blejer, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Argentina and former Director at the Bank of England): “There are two ways to look at Greece’s majestically unsustainable sovereign-debt mountain. There is, first, a pragmatic and short-term perspective, which focuses on ensuring some form of orderly restructuring (possibly for other vulnerable European states as well) without bringing down the eurozone. And there is a “moral” perspective, which focuses on the nature of debt and on the long-term economic consequences of failing to honor it. Neither perspective is wrong; on the contrary, the problem is how to reconcile them….

“In these circumstances, the Talmud …might hold the key….

“The verse says, literally, ‘We (the court) force him until he says that he wants to do it willingly.’ So, ‘in divorces (if the man refuses to grant it), we exercise force on him until he says “I want to do it voluntarily.”‘ Similarly, if a court forces a person to sell his property, the sale is valid because it is considered to have been carried out voluntarily.

Understanding this apparent contradiction sheds light on the controversy surrounding the question of private bondholders’ involvement in the Greek rescue package. It is argued that, to avoid a default, private creditors should agree to shoulder part of the cost of the bailout. But how does one impose a financial loss on bondholders without it being classified by credit-rating agencies as a default?…

“Using the Talmudic logic, one can also show that there are mechanisms that can – and should – be used to place pressure on the parties in the interest of obtaining superior voluntary outcomes.

There are two preponderant interpretations of the Talmudic passage. One argues that coercion can change minds. When a court forces an individual until he surrenders and says that he wants to follow orders, his compliant actions are to be considered voluntary, because, ultimately, he has made the conscious decision to agree….

“The alternative is to seek a cooperative resolution, consistent with the benign interpretation of ‘forced willingness.’ This can be achieved by adopting some features of the model used in Eastern Europe, known as the “Vienna Initiative.”…

“The first pillar of that model is simultaneous involvement all parties in designing the scheme from the start…. The second ingredient is proper incentives to participate, including direct financing from bondholders’ governments…. The third component is the exercise of suasion on bondholders to achieve maximum participation, obtain binding pre-commitments, and eliminate free riders.

Since this scheme would imply losses for bondholders, substantial official muscle and peer pressure is needed….

“Therefore, under this model – and despite the initial pressure – the behavior of bondholders could be considered truly voluntary. And, while rating agencies might still regard a Vienna-type outcome as a default, the Talmudic sages show us why a more thoughtful classification is required.”
[49579]

Related Material:
Are We On The Verge Of Collapse Or At The Threshold Of A New Stage?
To Save Euro, The Crisis Has To Get Worse
The Price Of The Common Market

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - No Comments →

People still don’t understand that our salvation lies in unity. Unity is a real force, our shield and sword. We have to go forward with it.

Today, when protestors demonstrate, they are trying to break the government’s egoism with their egoism. I am not saying that the people are wrong to advance demands, but in the modern world this approach is no longer effective. Today the world is driven by a “round” force of a closed, integral system. When you enter this circle together with others, you become similar to the integral nature, and then you achieve success. If, however, you are not in the common circle, you bring destruction to yourself and others until everything falls apart completely.

Look at what is happening in the USA. The whole world is looking at Americans, but like little children, they are unable to reach an agreement about the national debt ceiling. The ceiling has already been raised several times, but suddenly it’s as if they are stuck, like something is blocking them. Everyone is pleading, “Raise it! Keep printing dollars, we need them. We will stockpile them like pickles in a barrel. After all, without them we simply don’t know how to live. Don’t deprive us of this green current since otherwise we will be left with nothing!”

But the Americans are unable to reach a decision because they have not taken on a “round” form. And the same problem will be expressed in every sphere. A country that was healthy and successful just yesterday is suddenly finding itself in a meltdown. Like a sand castle, once it reaches a certain height, it comes crumbling down, buried beneath its own weight.
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/28/11, “The Peace”
[49560]

Related Material:
The Wind Of Change
The Urge To Unite
What Will It Take To Make The Simplest Person Realize That We’re All Interdependent?

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, Egoism, News, Unity, World - 1 Comment →

Opinion: (Vladimir Rozhanovskiy, Financial Analysis Department, Nord-Capital Managing Company, expert.ru): “The situation in Britain is becoming increasingly similar to the economic mess in the United States…. The main difference is that they cannot, as in the US, ‘print’ reserve currency. Therefore, any timid attempts to purchase distressed bonds inevitably attract a surge of inflation due to the growth of money supply. In other words, while the United States basically exports inflation by increasing the might of its printing machine, Britain is forced to accept it. There is no and can’t be any single solution to the problem.”

My comment: The United States cannot resolve the problem either. This problem can be solved only by working together with the entire international community, cooperatively, on equal terms, for the benefit of all, as one organism. The world has become a single organism. Until this is understood, they won’t find a solution.
[48506]

Related Material:
America And Europe Are Sinking Together
There Is No Way Out Of This Deadlock
The Economy Is A Copy Of Social Relations

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, World - No Comments →

Opinion: (Oleg Bogomolov, economist, academician, The Russian Academy of Sciences, russia-today.ru): “The crisis we are experiencing today attests to impending radical changes in the world order. The economy is entering a phase of transition toward new forms of regulation and technological setup, where the info-nano-bio-technologies, three-dimensional product printers are acquiring primary importance. Shifts in social structure are imminent; production, culture, and international relations are becoming global….

“A mono-polar world, led by the United States, is giving way to a multi-polar one that calls for equality, consideration of interests, and consent of multiple countries….

“The symptoms of humanity’s spiritual and moral crisis are building up….

“Humanity is undergoing a shift in its understanding of what the world and life are about. The Russian authorities are seeking a solution in promoting innovation in science and technology, …much of which depends on a favorable state of the social environment.…These aspects of existence are equally in need of modernization. A person, his culture, knowledge, skill, health, and mental state are key factors in making progress. Therefore, the strategic priority should be assigned to investing less in new equipment and more in a person….

“It is time to understand that it is necessary to transition to a new model of society and economy. The initial step is to rethink the old ideological tenets and to welcome spiritual revival and renewal of human communities….

“The absence of social justice in politics is unacceptable…. If it isn’t observed, there can be neither a healthy moral climate in society nor a healthy economy….

“Any measures aimed at tackling the crisis processes will fail unless strategic priorities are defined, not so much in economy, but in social and spiritual spheres. Governmental policies should focus on education, healthcare, science, culture, education, and nurturing of the younger generation. The path to the renewal of society, improvement of its moral climate, and economic prosperity lies through these areas.”
[48503]

Related Material:
Humanity’s Global Problems
The Last Convulsions Of The Old Civilization
Global Crisis Solution: Change Yourself To Fit The World

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, Society - No Comments →

Opinion: (Joseph Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, Chief Economist of the World Bank, a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001)): “I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case….

“If Congress mandates expenditures that exceed revenues, there will be a deficit, and that deficit has to be financed. Rather than balancing the benefits of each government expenditure program with the costs of raising taxes to finance those benefits, the right seeks to use a sledgehammer – not allowing the national debt to increase forces expenditures to be limited to taxes….

“The remedies to the U.S. deficit follow immediately from this diagnosis: Put America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich….

“But matters are little better in Europe. As Greece and others face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable….

“A failure of either Europe or the US to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. A failure in both would be disastrous – even if the major emerging-market countries have attained self-sustaining growth. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.”

My comment: I have already stopped adding comments because everything is clear: We have to wait until the circumstances force bankers to get out of power, and the authorities will understand that the integration of the whole world is a fact which does not depend on them. This fact must be taken into account, and a new world should be built accordingly.
[49140]

Related Material:
Isolated In A Unified System
Humanity Without Leadership
Our World Is Like The Titanic

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, World - No Comments →

Question: Newspapers say that the terrorist who committed a horrible crime in Norway was addicted to cruel computer games and shows about serial killers. Why don’t the people of the world understand such a small, trivial concept that modern media is creating these killers and putting psychopathic thoughts into their heads? After all, this is so clear….

Answer: The world is ruled by people who know how to earn money. They are the ones who rule the courts, the systems of education and upbringing, and the governments. And they don’t plan on “closing shop” once they make money. It’s profitable for them to create yellow press and sensations that trick people, to write about terrorists and to eavesdrop on victims of terrorist acts in order to make money off them. It’s profitable for them to produce and sell as much weaponry as possible to maintain hotbeds of wars and hostilities. And it’s profitable for them to put out “special edition” news about tragedies and catastrophes.

They don’t care about anything. Each of them wants to earn from what’s his. One produces and sells weapons, and another organizes eavesdropping and gathers materials so he can sell all kinds of information even if it is shocking and unacceptable for public disclosure.

Behind all of these occurrences stands someone’s net profit. The people who receive this profit are in control of the mass media, the government, and commerce, and as a result, our world appears the way it does.

After all, there is an enormous amount of people in the world who think exclusively about money. They don’t feel anything else. The issue here is not cynicism because a cynic realizes that there is something greater here, but looks down on it. A person who makes a profit does not look down on anything. He is just not aware of it. His range of perception is very narrow, he is entirely engulfed by one activity and nothing else exists for him.

Therefore, these people are very powerful. That’s because in essence, they have just one desire. If they need the government’s cooperation to make a profit, then they implant themselves in the government. If they need an army, they implant themselves into the army. If they need the police, they implant into the police. If they need the central newspaper to write what they want, then they buy the newspaper. Behind the scenes, everything belongs to them.

Therefore, it’s profitable for these people to have an environment with an up-to-date sensibility and pleasures that are dictated to it. Precisely these people form the public opinion, turning it toward cruelty, drugs, prostitution, terrorism, and so on. It’s not that the governments are weak compared to them, but that they act conjointly.

The issue at stake is money, and money is power. Let’s see how weak money will now prove itself to be. But what will replace it? There has to be a currency, a value, or a measure of a person’s contribution and success. What can you give people instead of “hard cash” by which they measure everything? It is the equivalent and the criterion of any efforts.

Thus, it turns out that we will need “spiritual cash”—the measure of bestowal, the measure of closeness to the Creator. This is what we will use to measure our contributions and our income, while all the material things will be reduced to bare necessity.

In order to make this transition, the world has to turn upside down. For those who hold the wheel today and stand at the head of society, the most important thing is to produce products to profit from. And they will have to fall from their Olympia, or to become corrected and accept the new “currency” as their payment.
[49216]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/25/11, “Arvut”

Related Material:
New Rules Of A Global World
Bestowal Will Rule Over The World
Offering The World A Solution

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, News, Politics, Q&A, Society, World - 4 Comments →

We have never been in the situation that we are in today. We have never experienced a discrepancy between two systems. Today all of us together constitute a common, integral system (“We”), but it is egoistic. And at the same time we are inside of the natural system, which is permeated by bestowal and love. The difference or gap between these two systems is what creates the sensation of a crisis.

This difference keeps growing because we are developing in our egoism, while the upper system is coming closer to us. In particular, the crisis is being expressed precisely due to the revelation of nature.

In the past we expanded our system over the course of history, until we reached today—integrality and interconnection. However, every person continues to operate within his narrow interests, even though he can no longer shed the global bonds and is entirely dependent on others.

As a result, we end up with interdependence and mutual hatred, which stand in extreme contrast to the force of bestowal that influences us. Moreover, on the inside we are bound together with one another and at the same time, disunited to the maximum. And in addition, we are opposite to the Creator.

This opposition and difference in qualities brings us troubles. They are only starting, but at the same time they are inciting man to discover the reason for what is happening. After all, if something bothers or harms us, we pay attention to it.

Therefore, today, for the first time in history, the science of Kabbalah is being revealed to us. The time has come for us to consolidate so the Creator and creation would unite by a single force, a single connection. In other words, the time has come to correct the crisis, to get rid of the troubles, and to achieve discovering the system we are in, which is impossible without attaining the upper force.

We do not see the integrality of the natural system because we are not integral on the inside. We are discrete, disunited, and singular—each of us is by himself. I don’t have an integral mind, an integral way of thinking, and I cannot take the whole world into consideration.

But on the other hand, we constitute one whole, and by the law of a single body, I cannot make a single action unless I am sure that it will have a favorable affect on all of my systems. That is why we cannot attain success in anything.

In the modern world, no matter what system you look at, everything is falling apart: education, culture, the economy, relationships between people, families, children’s upbringing, and so on. Everything that we have created in the process of our development is crumbling. And this process will keep growing worse, becoming expressed more and more.

The problem here is not that we “screwed up” somewhere, because everything was initially programmed. It’s just that today all of our systems are opposite to the integral, correct system. Now I have to take the whole world into consideration, but by my nature, I am not accommodated to that. So what should I do?

I care only about myself, or at most—about my family, environment city, or even country…. But caring about the whole world? Even if I wanted to, how can I make this happen? I don’t have any preliminary base for that. For that I would have to be different on the inside. I must have an integral system inside of me so I would naturally think about the world as a whole just as I think about myself. That is the only way I will attain success in the economy, industry, and trade—in everything.

Otherwise, there will be no success. Today this is still weakly expressed, but soon the picture will begin becoming clearer.

Thus, nature or the Creator is obligating man to feel that he is part of the whole, a particular soul that belongs to the common soul. We suffer because we are not parts of the whole yet, and by this suffering each of us is being pushed to unite with others. However, the path of suffering is very difficult. As we know, it can bring us to death, and we’ll still have to suffer a lot until we get there.

That is why the science of Kabbalah is being revealed, wishing to explain the current state of affairs to us, to show us the system we are in, and to teach us to change ourselves, transforming from discrete fragments into integral parts, each of which contains all of the others.

For the first time in the history of human development, man no longer changes nature on the outside, does not make external egoistic actions, and does not use all of his knowledge to change something outside of him. The external changes have ended. Everything has become finally formed on the outside, has frozen, and won’t change any longer. From now on, I am the one who has to change.
[48934]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/22/11, “The Teaching of Kabbalah and Its Essence”

Related Material:
The Fruit Has Ripened
Kabbalah For The World
In Nature’s Clutches

Filed under: Collective Soul, Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Economy, Egoism, History, My Similarity to the Creator, Society, Suffering, Unity, World - 1 Comment →

Opinion: (Philippe Dessertine, Professor of Finance at the University of Paris X-Nanterre and Director of the Institute of High Finance): “Europe continues to tremble. After Ireland, Portugal and Greece, it was the turn of Italy’s third largest economy of the European Union to be hit hard by the crisis of its public debt….

“As for France, it is the next country on the list. The question is not whether we will be affected, but when….

“The euro is clearly threatened if the European Central Bank collapses. This represents both the risk of collapse of international trade and a deep geopolitical crisis, which can lead to a world war. This is what happens when states are facing an inability to exchange goods….

“In 2009, it was also a debt crisis, but a private one, which affected banks and caused their failure. We hoped to get away with growth, but it is not at the rendezvous. Today, it is the States that go bankrupt. This insane debt simply reflects the fact that the West is living beyond its means.”
[48951]

Related Material:
The EU: There Are No True Europeans!
The End Of The Pretty Model Of European Union
Everyone Is For Unification, But How Can It Be Done?

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, World - No Comments →

Opinion: (Giulio Tremonti, Italian Economy and Finance Minister, msnbc.msn.com): “Addressing the Senate shortly before the vote, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti said Europe needed a political solution to the unraveling debt crisis because no country would be spared dire consequences.

‘No-one should have any illusions of individual salvation. Just like on the Titanic, not even the first class passengers will be saved,’ he said, referring to Europe’s stronger economies.”

My comment: The world is in a predicament todayif you look at its state from a traditional perspective. Or the situation is quite the opposite if you understand that nature has given us a problem to solve: to develop towards integral society, and we have to tackle it now, without being lazy or delaying the decision. Otherwise, we will have to “work on the mistakes,” and it will be even more difficult.

The problem is in a new attitude towards the world: We must learn how to see it as single, closed, and interconnected and to realize that these connections were manifested from within human society which has developed to this level. We have no way back.

There is only one way out: to learn how to live in the new system by changing people in accordance with it. That is, we need universal upbringing and education: to study a new nature of the world.

The world has become integral and unified, and this means that we all are completely dependent on each other. To the degree that we can behave like this, we will win. Otherwise, we will lose.
[48857]

Related Material:
There Is No Way Out Of This Deadlock
Everyone Is For Unification, But How Can It Be Done?
Global Upbringing In A Global World

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - No Comments →

Opinion: (Мikhail Koroliuk, Executive Manager, IFC Solid, expert.ru): “In 2008, we entered a credit cycle contraction phase, and it will continue until 2015 at least. During this time, the world will be shaken by credit and bank crises, and the policy of “tightening the belt” will lead to weak economic growth. The European credit crisis will reach the heart of Europe, the USA will struggle with its colossal cumulative debt, and China’s debt problems will surface as well (the next major world crisis may start particularly there). So, it’s still all ahead of us….”

My comment: Somehow everybody believes that fate itself will solve our problems, without us making any effort! “We’ll get over it, even if we do nothing.” Thus we are heading toward a war. We are becoming increasingly opposite to nature that manifests to us as a unified system.
[48327]

Related Material:
There Is No Way Out Of This Deadlock
Global Crisis Solution: Change Yourself To Fit The World
When The Crisis Becomes Unbearable

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, World - No Comments →