Opinion (Takeshi Fujimaki, former adviser to billionaire investor George Soros): “‘Japan is likely to default before Europe does, which could be in the next five years,’ the president of Fujimaki Japan, an investment advising company in Tokyo, said in an interview yesterday [June 14]. Japanese should hold foreign-currency products, such as those denominated in the greenback, Swiss franc, sterling, Australian and Canadian dollars, Fujimaki said.

“Should the Japanese government default, the yen may weaken to 400-500 per dollar, and the yields on benchmark 10-year bonds could surge above 80 percent, according to Fujimaki. …

“Japan’s public borrowings, the world’s biggest, will balloon to 245.6 percent of its annual economic output in 2014, up from 67.3 percent in 1984, an estimate by the International Monetary Fund shows. …

“‘There’s no way out of Japan’s crisis,’ Fujimaki said. ‘The only option left for Japan is either default or print money into hyper-inflation.’”

My Comment: There is a way out of the crisis for every country and the entire world if we understand its cause—the hyper-egoism of managers—if we begin to transform the world community from antagonistic to fraternal, and if we start to transfer the economy from over-consumption to reasonable consumption through a realistic reduction of infrastructure. Otherwise, the crisis will bring us to this through the destruction of the entire infrastructure.
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Opinion (Peter Thiel, billionaire Facebook investor, former PayPal CEO, and Palantir co-founder): “For most of recent human history—from the invention of the steam engine in the late 17th century through about the late 1960’s or so—technological process has been tremendous, perhaps even relentless. In most prior human societies, people made money by taking it from others. The industrial revolution wrought a paradigm shift in which people make money through trade, not plunder.

“The zenith of optimism about the future of technology might have been the 1960’s. People believed in the future. They thought about the future. Many were supremely confident that the next 50 years would be a half-century of unprecedented technological progress.

“But with the exception of the computer industry, it wasn’t. Per capita incomes are still rising, but that rate is starkly decelerating. Median wages have been stagnant since 1973. People find themselves in an alarming Alice-in-Wonderland-style scenario in which they must run harder and harder—that is, work longer hours—just to stay in the same place. This deceleration is complex, and wage data alone don’t explain it. But they do support the general sense that the rapid progress of the last 200 years is slowing all too quickly.”

My Comment: All the years of development after 1960 have not been beneficial for mankind. We need to rise to the next level and strive to achieve goals other than the material ones that no longer can satisfy and benefit us.
[80792]

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Opinion (Mario Monti, Prime Minister of Italy): “‘We stepped away from the precipice before, with the contribution of the political forces and sacrifices of the Italian people – but the hole is growing bigger and it may swallow us up. We are again in a crisis.’”

My Comment: From the edge of a precipice, you can fall down, but  you can fly.
[80782]

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Opinion (George Soros, financier): “Euro-zone governments have around three months to ensure the survival of the single currency,’ billionaire investor George Soros said in a speech on Saturday [June 2^nd].

“‘We are at an inflection point. After the expiration of the three months’ window, the markets will continue to demand more but the authorities will not be able to meet their demands. …’

“The European Union is ‘like a bubble’ – not a financial bubble but a political bubble – that could pop as a result of the euro-zone crisis, Soros said.

“‘In the boom phase, the EU was what the psychoanalyst David Tuckett calls a “fantastic object” – unreal but immensely attractive,’ he said.

“’In retrospect, it is now clear that the main source of trouble is that the member states of the euro have surrendered to the European Central Bank (ECB) their rights to create fiat money. They did not realize what that entails – and neither did the European authorities,’ he said.

“The euro-zone needs a European deposit insurance scheme for banks, Soros said, as well as direct financing by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) for banks, which ‘must go hand-in-hand with euro-zone-wide supervision and regulation.’ …

“Soros said that too much blame had been placed on peripheral euro-zone countries such as heavily indebted Greece and Spain, and that creditors like Germany had to share responsibility.

“‘The center’ is responsible for designing a flawed system, enacting flawed treaties, pursuing flawed policies and always doing too little too late. …

“‘The authorities didn’t understand the nature of the euro crisis; they thought it was a fiscal problem, while it is more of a banking problem and a problem of competitiveness. And they applied the wrong remedy: You cannot reduce the debt burden by shrinking the economy – only by growing your way out of it,’ he said.”

My Comment: I am not a financier, but there is nowhere to grow, and the paradox lies in the fact that we are trapped: We have found ourselves in a closed system of complete interdependence, but we act like individualistic egoists in the dark, and that is why we cannot understand why we cannot cope with the crisis. And the crisis is not in our unsuccessful attempts to handle the existing situation, but in the fact that we don’t understand that we have to change our approach, to change our thinking to interconnected and integral, and then we will understand how to break the deadlock.
[80087]

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When society becomes more harmonious and kind, we free up a lot of resources. As people begin to treat everything properly and to keep order, we no longer need an army of guards, cleaning personnel, or repairman. A great number of needless jobs go away.

Currently, humanity is winding up the production of unnecessary things. Only the necessary things such as food, clothing, everything a person requires in our world will remain, but within reasonable limits. The economy of the rational consumption is moving towards this anyway. So, there will be a huge army of unemployed people. In any case we will have to somehow balance the population and bring it to harmony and unity. We don’t have a choice and there is no other method.

Currently the entire world economy is built on the “pyramid,” on a network of consumption, and if people stop buying, then everything collapses. This is the pyramid.

Today, we are not facing a crisis, but rather, we are standing before the collapse because the pyramid will still fall. And then what?
[80064]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 05/20/12

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Opinion (Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and recipient of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economic): “Many, if not all, of the world’s most pressing macroeconomic problems relate to the massive overhang of all forms of debt. …

“Aside from wringing their hands, what should governments be doing? One extreme is the simplistic Keynesian remedy that assumes that government deficits don’t matter when the economy is in deep recession; indeed, the bigger the better. At the opposite extreme are the debt-ceiling absolutists who want governments to start balancing their budgets tomorrow (if not yesterday). …

“Of course, there is an appealing logic to saying that governments should have to balance their budgets just like the rest of us; unfortunately, it is not so simple. Governments typically have myriad ongoing expenditure commitments related to basic services such as national defense, infrastructure projects, education, and health care, not to mention to retirees. No government can just walk away from these responsibilities overnight. …

“Above all, voters and politicians must beware of seductively simple approaches to today’s debt problems.”

My Comment: There is a solution, but not in the plane of economy and finance, but in the change of the paradigm, the view of the world, society, and the goal of life. And the crisis will hit us until we become smarter and accept the future society of reasonable consumption, a society of “The Last Generation,” as necessary.
[80661]

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Opinion (Dani Rodrik, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government): “Over the next few years, the world economy slumps into what future historians will call the Second Great Depression. Unemployment rises to record-high levels. Governments without fiscal resources are left with little option but to respond in ways that will only exacerbate problems for other countries: trade protection and competitive exchange-rate depreciation. As countries sink into economic autarky, repeated global economic summits yield few results beyond empty promises of cooperation.

“As in the Great Depression, the political consequences are more serious and hold longer-term significance. The eurozone’s collapse (and, for all practical purposes, that of the EU itself) forces a major realignment of European politics. …Centrist parties pay the price for their support of the European integration project, and are repudiated in the polls by parties of the extreme right or extreme left. Nativist governments begin to kick out immigrants.

“For nearby countries, Europe no longer shines as a beacon of democracy. The Arab Middle East takes a decisive turn towards authoritarian Islamic states. In Asia, economic strife between the US and China spills over into military conflict, with increasingly frequent naval clashes in the South China Sea threatening to erupt into a full-scale war.”

My Comment: To prevent the downfall of humanity, it’s necessary to tell the world, like a sick person, about its illness and to spread this knowledge widely, to everybody, so that society becomes aware of the peril it is in. Knowing about the illness and its possible consequences is the first step towards overcoming it. Then it’s necessary to explain the reason for the situation we find ourselves in, the reason for the crisis. Having analyzed it, it’s possible to understand how to treat it. This is how the integral upbringing course is built.

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Question: Now under the conditions of the economic crisis, people’s level of wellbeing is decreasing. Will the result be that the rich will rise even higher and become “kings” and people will envy them even more?

Answer: No, there is a splitting point here. The point is that wealth has reached its extreme expression. Therefore, the national and private debts, the economic pyramids, have all become so unmanageable that they are actually facing the danger of disappearing. You might need to get rid of these debts, and these people may lose everything instantly. No matter how many pieces of papers they have, they will be worth nothing.

So the question is what should we do with what we’ve reached in the last 50-60 years, when we have switched the real value of gold with “green papers,” and have created a pyramid, network marketing, which in the absence of economic growth the whole pyramid collapses and there is no way to stop it. In addition, further growth of the pyramid is also impossible since it has reached a critical point. So the powers that be in the world are trying to get together, but they cannot reach any conclusions since there is no other way but to destroy this pyramid.

We must show them that there is no need to destroy it. We should only start dealing with education. If we begin to educate the public, we will find a new way to reach harmony, which can gradually be introduced into the current system. Then we will be able to come out of this crisis in an easy, gentle way. The rule of money will continue only in certain frameworks, let’s say the highest salaries might be ten times higher than the lowest, but no more than that. After all, this is better than the collapse the banks and all these people may suffer, if they fall from a great height.
[80522]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/21/12

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Question: How is it possible in an egoistic society to change the system of domestic economic relations of a family to an integral system of relations? In what way is it possible to look at this situation?

Answer: If the society remains individualistic, then individuals under the influence of the integral education and training system will change; they will perceive the world in a new way. So how does this person change his small world?

I think that people in a family will begin to relate to everything they do, interacting between them and consuming information for their small mutual home from the viewpoint of correct economic consumption. This means that they will have everything they need for life. And all the rest, the feeling of fulfillment, harmony, happiness, wealth, all that a person wants, will come to them specifically from the feeling of their harmonious relation to the world.

Of course, along with that, the influence of the egoistic and unharmonious world won’t overlook them, but they will actually, in any case, be internally filled with happiness and harmony that they constantly achieve for themselves.

Domestic economics will change. Out of necessity, people will be satisfied with simple food, simple clothing, plain furniture, and so on. The search for pleasure has exceeded the boundaries of corporeal interests, thus these needs will not be found at the level of self-restraint, but at the natural, necessary and correct level for existence.

The same thing also pertains to the level of income. When a person understands that he has no special demands, when he looks at the world in this way, then of course, it will be simply, easy, and free.

Moreover, the needs of people to communicate will naturally be at the level of the environment that resembles them according to their structure, according to the integrality. In this way, these societies and groups will develop.
[80357]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/21/12

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Opinion (Michael Casey, the author of The Unfair Trade, a managing editor at Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal): “In the annals of world economic experience, 2009 was a terrible year. It was the first since 1945 in which global economic output contracted in aggregate.

“Now, just three years later, we are on the verge of the same happening again. Data releases from around the world last week suggest an alarming, synchronized slowdown is underway. Another global recession so soon after the last one, at a time when an intractable debt crisis is tearing Europe apart while a divided United States is still reeling from the 2008-2009 financial meltdown, could easily undermine international trade relations and even threaten world peace.

“The tensions have turned a breakup of the euro zone into a distinct possibility. If it comes to that it would be a global catastrophe. The international banking system that developed out of the pre-crisis global savings glut is too interconnected to withstand such an event without profound losses and extreme capital flight.

“Having used up ammunition in the last go-round, governments have little fiscal or monetary firepower left. They should instead set aside their domestic agendas and engage in truly coordinated actions. To restore global investor confidence, they need to free up trade, coordinate fiscal and social policies that help rectify savings and spending imbalances, write enforceable rules requiring free-floating exchange rates and uniformly regulated financial sectors, and develop a centralized system for storing currency reserves so that the dollar loses its distorting dominance.”

My Comment: The proposed solutions can only be theoretical because the moment governments will start to undertake any changes, everything threatens to collapse completely. That is exactly what explains the inaction of the EU leaders.
[80418]

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