In the News (from ATkearney): “The Global Cities Index provides a comprehensive ranking of the leading global cities from around the world and includes the companion Emerging Cities Outlook (ECO), which measures the potential of cities located in middle- and high-income countries to become even more global.

“New York and London lead this year’s ranking in the A.T. Kearney Global Cities Index (GCI), followed by Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Among the top 20 cities, seven are in the Asia Pacific region (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul, Sydney, and Shanghai), seven are in Europe (London, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin), and six are in the Americas (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Toronto, and Buenos Aires). Cairo is the leading city in Africa, remaining in the top 50 despite Egypt’s political and economic turbulence.

“The companion Emerging Cities Outlook (ECO) builds on the GCI’s insights to measure the potential of cities located in middle- and high-income countries to become even more global. According to the ECO, the 10 cities that are most favorably positioned to advance over the next 10 to 20 years are Jakarta, Manila, Addis Ababa, São Paulo, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur.”

My Comment: It speaks of great globalization and dependence in the world.
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In the News (from Facte.ru): “Over the past 50 years, Germans have become richer by 400%, while the number of people suffering from depression has increased by 38%. Advertising instills a feeling of inferiority in people if they do not buy the new, the fashionable.

“$500 billion is spent on advertising per year; this money is enough to make humanity feel miserable. Only $50 billion a year is necessary to solve the problem of hunger in the world.

“The main problem is not that we should throw away good things because they are out of fashion. The human tragedy is unjustified expectations. Having bought a new car, a man enjoys it for a very short time. If the next day his friends get a car better than his, this joy will be limited to just one day. Without noticing, many of us become unhappy in the pursuit of new fashionable things.”

My Comment: Getting out of this race is possible only by consistent participation in one’s own re-education under the influence of the right environment according to the method of integral education and upbringing.
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Opinion (Alina Savelyeva, assistant to the Dean at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, Higher School of Economics, Moscow): “In 2008 the Head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned of the grave consequences – of governments being overthrown and wars – that could arise from the sudden increase in food prices on world markets.

“The ability to provide enough food for yourself, and have a surfeit to sell for export, is becoming a way for states to influence world politics and the economy, says Alina Savelyeva. It was the rise in food prices that triggered the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and elsewhere.

“Arab governments were unable to keep food prices down and soon there were mass street protests, demonstrations followed by serious political unrest. An article in The Daily Telegraph suggested that the upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia signaled the beginning of an era of ‘food revolutions.’

“The idea of food as a weapon was formulated by Earl Butz, US Minister of Agriculture in Richard Nixon’s government back in 1974. These days, approaching agriculture as an industrial supplier of an ‘alternative weapon’ is common both in developed and developing countries. The term ‘food power’ has been coined in English. But any power or force (even military) is not only an instrument of attack or destruction, but also for containing one’s enemies, in the ‘carrot and stick’ model.

“The World Bank report on International Development in 2011 named three types of threat to food security that could lead to military conflict: 1) natural (drought and flooding), 2) economic (major price changes for basic food products) and 3) political, i.e., a ban on access to land resources or social support programmes.”

My Comment: Natural disasters and the accumulation of arms will bring the world to a threatening state. We are able to affect the first type of threat naturally and indirectly by striving to eliminate the second and third threats.
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Opinion (Nikolai Kashcheev, Senior Director, Head of Corporate Department, Promsvyazbank, Russia): “The world today is at a breaking point, not in favor of the systems that continue to live under the laws of tradition. Directions, trends change. Now, progress is achieved only by joint efforts of people from all over the world.

“The fruits of that progress are successfully used only because technology and knowledge flow from one laboratory to another, from one country to another. These trends continue to work on the creation of the horizontal global economy.

“For this to effectively pass from the system of defense or scientific laboratories into our daily life, the following is needed: a) the capitalist system, based on profit and b) globalization, when efforts can be concentrated, while being distributed.

“This works in finance through crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. By being closed, we will fail, which has already happened today to several obsolete economies that may serve as a warning.

My Comment: The main thing is to understand that only unity can lead us to the next stage of development. And unity should be not capitalistic, but altruistic. But this understanding will gradually come.
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Opinion (Michael Khazin, economist): “Modern society is characterized by an extreme contradiction: its control system is based on the feudal principle (a rigid vertical), but the elite is built by tribal lines. One can enter the tribal elite only by blood, that is, through marriage.

“As a result, various problems arise. They used to be solved by increasing the number of wealthy people – the financial elite. Due to the stimulation of lending, the number of wealthy people has increased ten times, compared to the amount that the economy can sustain.

“That calmed talented and energetic people. Their real role is to serve the elite. Their emergence was a mechanism to reduce social and management tensions.

“This situation has ended. But what can be done with the active, but not yet rich? After all, if in the last decade the share of total income, which the financial sector redistributes in its favor, increased by five times, and as the crisis developed, the economy of the developed countries drops by half, then the financial sector will be reduced by ten times.

“They can undermine the modern state and its elite, at least under the pretext that the elite have allowed the crisis, with which they do not know what to do.

“The servants that were nurtured by the elite are becoming its worst enemy.

“The conflict between the elite and those whom it nurtured will become the basis for the destruction of Western society and liberal ideology. A traditional society can become an alternative to the nouveau riche.”

My Comment: There cannot be any alternative; there is no place for guesswork; there is just a single solution: restructuring society itself towards truly liberal values, through the method of integral education and the wisdom of connection.
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In the News (from Slon): “The world is becoming more connected – 35% of goods cross borders, compared with 20% in 1990; more than a third of financial investments are international transactions; 20% of the Internet traffic is international; total trade is 36% of the global GDP (but it is still below 52% in the pre-crisis 2007). Russia was ranked 9^th out of 131 countries in the ranking of connectedness with the world economy.” 

My Comment: All reports show how everything is interconnected, although in fact, our interconnection is much greater because connections between people, cultures, and the mixing of populations are not considered.

Nature programmed further development of humankind in growing unity, and we cannot avoid this program. The more we resist it, the more we will be forced to obey it through more suffering. The laws of nature are inevitable.

In previous stages of development (evolution), nature developed matter from still to vegetative to animate. We also belong to the animate part of nature because we developed unconsciously. But on the next degree of “the speaking human being” (Adam – from the word “domeh,” similar to nature, the Creator), we have to rise consciously, attracting the force of nature on our own accord.

In this way we become equal to it, as partners, rather than those who instinctively follow its orders from within. The wisdom of Kabbalah talks of how to rise to the next stage of development. That is why it was hidden until our time, waiting for the end of our instinctive  (unconscious ) development.
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Opinion (Sergei A. Karaganov, Dean of the School of World Economics and International Affairs at Russia’s National Research University Higher School of Economics): “It is quite obvious that the economic consequences of the current crisis will be much more profound than they now seem – even for Europeans. But what is happening now, it’s not just the collapse of the geopolitical system but much deeper.

“Disabling Visa services, banking instruments, is actually an undermining of the whole economic system that was created by the West, but enjoyed by the whole world, which is now economically greater than the West. Apparently, we’ll have huge tectonic shifts for decades.”

My Comment: The collapse of this system occurs at all levels, otherwise it can not be replaced by the next system. And the next system is integral, fully interconnected, and completely opposite to the existing system. Thus, the collapse of the existing system is gradual, but global.

We will be able to replace the old egoistic system with the new altruistic system only by re-educating humanity. Kabbalah is revealed in our time just for this operation.
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Opinion (Timi Ećimović, PhD, professor and Chairman for life of the SEM Institute for Climate Change): “Money, a human invention, is rooted in ancient history, but it took only a half a century in the 20^th century to turn from a assistant to a master – and at the beginning of the 21^st century, our civilization became secondary in importance after the master money, which has turned from a master into a monster.

“But the entire power of this money monster is not enough to curb climate change, and people need to find a way to achieve a sustainable future without the domination of the money monster, but in the context of sustainable development and harmony with the biosphere of the Earth. The sustainable future of humanity is the harmony between the human and nature/the biosphere of the planet Earth.”

My Comment: We are weak before the power of money, but climatic and other environmental changes will force humanity to change its behavior.
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In the News (from Harvard Business Review Blog): “Recent evidence suggests that the paradigm of ‘variation is value’ may be shifting. More and more, consumers are conveying their preference for fewer choices and simpler customer experiences. For example, a Forester Research survey earlier this year noted that consumers are foregoing unlimited choices in the computing world in exchange for more ‘curated’ choice, where providers sort through the possible applications for individuals and recommend a limited subset. Similarly, at a Future Agenda Conference in August, much of the conversation was about ‘less variety.’ As one professor noted, ‘fewer choices provide higher levels of satisfaction.’ 

“The narrowing of choices by these companies has not only made it easier for their customers but has also increased revenues and margins. With fewer products or services to promise, all of the associated supply chain, facility, and support processes can be slimmed down, saving considerable money and energy. Even automobile companies and airlines seem to have learned this lesson. General Motors’ process of shedding brands and narrowing down their product portfolio may have been painful, but this made it easier for buyers to understand the new GM and for the company to focus its resources on producing better cars. Similarly many airlines have cut routes and frequency of flights, giving them fuller planes and more efficient use of their assets.”

My Comment: This comes not from a desire to be the best, like nature in all its actions, but by the desire to maximize profit. Nevertheless, this is in the right direction. And then comes the right intention.
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Opinion (Michael Khazin, economist): “The 30 years of demand stimulation resulted in a situation when households consume more than they get by 25%. But today, all the tools to stimulate demand have been exhausted – this decline in demand is the underlying mechanism of the crisis, and there is no reason to believe that it will end in the near future.

“Most likely, the “bubble” will burst by mid 2015 and will cause massive bankruptcy of households and the financial system.”

My Comment: There is no doubt that this event will happen if socio-economic relations do not switch to rational consumption, closing unnecessary enterprises and the equal distribution of essential goods and services.

But this is only possible in parallel with a broad awareness campaign for the need to move to a new level of relations and implementation of the method of integral unity. It is necessary to try to introduce it when small problems arise, instead of bringing society to a deep crisis and possibility of a world war, when society will accept this method unwillingly as the only way of salvation.
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