Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

Hard Defaults Are Inevitable

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Kyle Bass, Hedge-fund manager, Hayman Capital Management): “In his latest investor letter Kyle Bass lays out his case that a wave of hard defaults is coming.

“His basic argument: The world is just saddled with too much debt.

“Throughout history, he says, total debt-to-GDP only ever breached 200% when nations were spending on war. Today we’re at 310%.

“Says Bass: ‘There is no savior large enough with a magical pool of capital to stave off this unfortunate conclusion to the global debt super cycle. We think hard defaults are imminent.’”

Comment: If we look at the crisis of humanity in this way, then, of course, there is no salvation. If we look from the perspective that the world finally will climb out of its dead-end “development,” and head not toward financial development, but toward a civilized, unified integral society, then it turns out that we are not in a crisis, but at a turning point between the fall and a great ascent to a brighter future. It would not be in competition, mutual destruction, and victories at any cost and to our own detriment, but in an integral, confident, peaceful flow of life.
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“New Icelandic Volcano Eruption Could Have Global Impact”

In the News (from BBC News): “Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland’s largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century.

“Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland’s east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. …

“There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma. …

“The last major eruption occurred in 1918 and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept into the ocean by the resulting floods.

“The volume of water produced in a 1755 eruption equalled that of the world’s largest rivers combined. …

“In 1783 volcanoes in the area erupted continuously for eight months, generating so much ash, hydrogen fluoride and sulphur dioxide that it killed one in five Icelanders and half of the country’s livestock.

“‘And it actually changed the Earth’s climate,’ says Mr Cochran.

“’Folks talk about a nuclear winter – this eruption generated enough sulphuric acid droplets that it made the atmosphere reflective, cooled the planet for an entire year or more and caused widespread famine in many places around the globe.’”
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“Is This Really The End?”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Economist): “Unless Germany and the ECB move quickly, the single currency’s collapse is looming …

“A Euro break-up would cause a global bust worse even than the one in 2008-09. The world’s most financially integrated region would be ripped apart by defaults, bank failures and the imposition of capital controls…The euro zone could shatter into different pieces, or a large block in the north and a fragmented south. Amid the recriminations and broken treaties after the failure of the European Union’s biggest economic project, wild currency swings between those in the core and those in the periphery would almost certainly bring the single market to a shuddering halt. The survival of the EU itself would be in doubt.”

My Comment: There is anxiety and joy. The anxiety is due to the dramatic turn of events, and the joy is due to the fact that they take place. There is a hope that the “patient” will finally listen to the “doctor” and will not accept the “band-aid,” but only the real medication.
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Europe: Together To Unity Or Separately To War

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: On the whole, is our message about mutual guarantee meant for naïve people?

Answer: No. We are offering humanity something that is very concrete: practical changes in society. It isn’t naïve, but very real. According to the law of mutual guarantee, we are all mutually connected. Evolution and progress present this very clearly to us. In the past the connection was weaker, and we lived separately in isolation, but today the system has suddenly become “tight.” The natural condition of our mutual guarantee stems from this: Let’s act according to the new situation. Eventually, our good future depends on this.

What’s naïve about it? On the contrary, here is the key for the correction of human society in every aspect. This is the rescue from all the troubles.

See what’s happening in Europe, and it is only the beginning. What will the Europeans do when winter becomes colder?

The decline is everywhere, including in Germany. A total collapse is expected in Europe if people there don’t accept the fact that we are all connected.

Here they have to act against the old familiar common sense. Everyone thinks that he will manage to isolate himself, to equip himself with the necessary resources, to provide his own energy, food, medicine, and to sit on the sidelines. It won’t work.

On the contrary, everything should be wide open and one whole. If you go against your will and start connecting with others despite all the fears, if you try to connect with everyone else, you will attain the upper force that is concealed in the connection. You will not be able to overcome the crisis if you don’t bring it down to your level.

The current crisis is very different from what we’ve known so far. Today the general European “pie” is divided into different colorful parts, and if every country, despite the external union, continues to isolate itself, the results will be horrible. Members of the EU seem to be considering the option of separating and surviving separately. “If there is pressure, then I will get rid of the collective problem, and return to my currency and manage somehow.” But here they are doomed to fail.

Today Europe must unite into one nation and cancel the boundaries in every area: education, economy, industry, etc. There must be one government responsible for everything. If the Europeans do that, they will receive the upper force form Above that will influence them.

However, without this force, they will not succeed. Even if every nation is strong, problems will come up that will not allow individual countries to provide their own needs. If Germany, for example, cuts itself off from all the others and counts on its own natural resources, it will collapse.

What the Europeans are missing today is the power of unity, the Creator that will descend into them and fill them. This is impossible, as long as they don’t connect. If they want to be smart separately, they will only be smart alecks.

All the problems we see today indicate what is missing. A desire is missing, power, a decision, one “head.” If the EU wants to operate with thirty “heads,” things will be bad. Even if there are several years of prosperity, it will be like in Hitler’s days, from the mid 1930’s onwards, towards the war and the collapse that followed. Today it will happen much faster than in the 30’s. If Europe doesn’t choose connection, it will find itself very close to a world war.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen they established the EU, representatives of the European countries signed endless agreements. The preparations for the union took many years. So what can they do now when the European dream is shattered?

They need to take into account that there are new problems nowadays, and that everyone should agree to correct them. The current events require corrections and updates. The previous measures that were taken are not enough. The world is developing and great changes take place and are reflected in the countries and the economies.

The crisis we see everywhere is reflected on everyone. They want to believe that they can “disperse” and ease the situation, but it isn’t so. They must yearn for connection, and to increasing it.

Eventually, the Europeans will understand this even if it hurts.

Practically, they must cancel all the boundaries in every aspect. Europe must become one sate, in which several peoples live together. They must “cover up” all the differences and become one people.

Nature obliges us to do that. At our current phase of development, we’ve all become mutually connected and there is nowhere to run. It isn’t something someone made up, or some nice idea, but an order from nature and time.

The Europeans will reach that, but we, who have the method for correction, do not participate in this process enough. We must bring our ideas to people, to give out materials and to build sites on the Internet that will provide our materials and explanations. There are going to be uprisings throughout the continent, so are we going to wait until everything is destroyed? Now is the time to wake up and to act.

Even the Arava convention is eventually intended to influence the world. We are only the link, the service staff; we serve the world and the Creator.

Therefore, we have no complaints. The Creator has put the Europeans in the state they are. He is doing His work, but we too have to do ours. This is the only way the desired change will come. But if we fail, they will blame us for all their troubles and they will be right because we are not bringing them the method of correction. Even if they don’t understand that, they feel that we can save them.

Therefore, it is first of all about our inaction. You can hate the rising fascism as much as you want, but the balance of powers depends on us. It also refers to our close neighbors, who have no free will. Ahmadinejad and the Hamas movement are also helpmates. It is time to see things realistically. We mustn’t let go.

In our world and in all the worlds, the Creator gave the Godly part from Above only to Israel, and so we can change the situation and fulfill the correction. It is the Light, of course that performs the action, but Israel evokes it and opens the way for it.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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The Three Experts: Be Prepared For A Crash

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Gerald Celente, Harry Dent, and Robert Prechter): “‘The economic recovery has been weak, so the next downturn should generate bad news in a big way,’ Mr Prechter told USA Today, saying the markets look ‘very bearish’ for the third time in 12 years.

“Mr Prechter told USA Today both markets will crash back below their lows hit at the height of the financial crisis in March 2009. Unemployment fell last month to 8.3 per cent, a three-year low, and weekly jobless claims are at a four-year-low.

“But Mr Dent believes that people will be left out of work again in 2013 or 2014 and U.S. markets will crash because central banks have been pumping so much money into markets that they are unrealistically strong.

“Mr Celente told USA Today that a higher unemployment rate will cause social unrest and there will be a growing rich-poor divide. This would no doubt help fuel movements such as Occupy Wall Street.”

My Comment: No comment—people’s mentality will change only under the threat of bankruptcy and destruction. Meanwhile, we can only prepare materials and disseminate as much as possible, the method of improving the quality of life.
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Curb Your Appetite!

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Ashok Khosla is one of world’s leading experts on the environment and sustainable development, a former director of the United Nations Environment Programme): “The Earth has entered into another period of extinction of the biosphere, which resulted in thousands of species disappear, President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Ashok Khosla. ‘We are witnessing the 6th mass extinction, which takes place on the planet Earth from the moment of her life. Last – the fifth – led to the extinction of the dinosaurs,’ – said Khosla in a meeting with reporters in Moscow. In particular, the human race be without risk of fishery resources by 2050. Every day the world is cut down and burnt about 50 hectares of forests every day about 20 thousand hectares of farmland turning into desert, and broken by ravines. Every day in the atmosphere 60 million tons of carbon dioxide, which is reflected in all corners of the earth.

“For example, some island nations may be flooded in the next century due to rising waters in the oceans. Currently, scientists recognize five major mass extinctions. The latter led to the disappearance of dinosaurs  65 million years ago . His reasons still not fully understood. The death of the dinosaurs could have caused the fall of the meteorite, a supernova explosion, powerful volcanic eruptions, or climate change. Now on the brink of extinction are 19.6 thousand species of animals and plants – a third of all species that exist on Earth. Over the past two decades, the number of species threatened with extinction, has doubled. If the predatory attitude toward nature will continue, then, as some pessimists, 2050 Planet empty.” (Source: Mysteriousall)

“Industrialized countries are suffering from excess consumption. They are encouraged to reduce the level of consumerism and use fewer resources per capita. Business must be socially responsible and care for nature.

“Why would you fill the refrigerator with food if you do not eat everything? In Germany, 17% of produce is thrown away unpacked. In fact, can we not donate it to poor countries? The food there is 100 times cheaper.

“Some of the recommendations are difficult to implement because it requires to change habits: for example, travel to work by public transport, work during daylight hours, which means getting up and going to bed early, do not litter, and slow down child-bearing (one child per family).

“The future must be based on social justice and a green economy. Over-consumption can be stopped only through innovation. New technologies available now are enough to get four times as many products without a corresponding increase in resource spending. There are about 2300 resource and energy saving technologies in the world.” (Source: STRF.ru)

My Comment: The Club of Rome has been talking about these ideas for decades, and who hears them? And this is in spite of the fact that it includes well-known and influential people. We must understand that green technologies, reducing excess production, saving, and caring about cleanliness, all this can be achieved only through prior integral education and upbringing of people. Precisely due to upbringing, people will relate to one another, others, society, nature, and the world differently, and the messages of the Club of Rome and other clubs will be heard.
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The Saving Of The Euro Has Been Postponed

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Associated Press): ” The leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro have delayed a decision on whether to give their bailout funds more firepower until later in March, European officials said Tuesday [February 28, 2012].

“Eurozone leaders were expected to meet Friday afternoon to decide whether the currency union’s bailout funds will be allowed to give more than €500 billion ($669 billion) in loans.

“However, Germany, the eurozone’s largest economy and the biggest contributor to both bailout funds, has so far resisted such a move.

“The delay of the decision on the bailout funds is yet another example of the slow pace of decision-making in the eurozone’s two-year-old debt crisis.”

My Comment: The euro will disappear if the EU doesn’t move on to full integration, which is impossible without compulsory integral education. This necessity was not taken into account by the founders of the EU, and they ignore it to this day. In the meantime, there is the threat of the disintegration of the EU, and if they don’t try to prevent it by implementing further integration measures, the disintegration will take place. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen by an explosion.
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The End Of Capitalism

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Michael Khazin, an economist, from km.ru): “Since the end of the 19th century ‘left’ views have developed under the strong influence of Karl Marx who created a systematic and global description of the whole world, starting from ‘Adam’…. History, philosophy, and political economy, all of it was conveyed in a ‘transparent’ language, which created a very appealing and convincing approach whose authority increased constantly until the 1980’s.

“The capitalist world, however, didn’t have such a ‘transparent,’ unified approach, and so it was decided to create it in the form of ideological resistance, which began but did not succeed, and the current ideological crisis is an example of this.

“Since ideological resistance wasn’t very serious, some of its basic principles were not based on logical philosophic constructs, but were rather a rigid negation of corresponding Marxist ideals. In particular, if Marxism was a result of the end of capitalism, the basis for the Western approach is the assumption that capitalism is infinite.

“[However] …since the process of the expansion of markets is limited by the size of the earth, the scientific-technological process is limited by time and must, therefore, come to an end!

“The crisis of the decline in the effectiveness of capital that has been going on for several years cannot come to an end in the framework that preserves the previous model.

“…similar crises in the past were overcome by destroying the competition, and expansion was possible. But today the markets are global and it is impossible to expand them.

“All the theories included the principle of ‘infinite’ capitalism. And this is the tragedy of the modern ‘Western’ economic thought: The current crisis is the end of the scientific-technological paradigm, which actually cannot be described using its language.”

My Comment: Here comes the realization that it is impossible to describe the new economic system by using the old terminology, and in the meantime our egoistic thinking doesn’t allow us to move on to new concepts. Only the recognition of the bitter end will enable us to accept a new social model: integral, equal, and reasonable production and consumption, as described in “The Future Generation” section of Kabbalah.
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World Bank: China Faces Crisis

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “An exclusive preview of an economic report on China, prepared by the World Bank and government insiders considered to have the ear of the nation’s leaders, offers a surprising prescription: China could face an economic crisis unless it implements deep reforms, including scaling back its vast state-owned enterprises and making them operate more like commercial firms.

“The report warns that China’s growth is in danger of decelerating rapidly and without much warning… A sharp slowdown could deepen problems in the Chinese banking sector and elsewhere, the report warns, and could prompt a crisis, according to those involved with the project.

“It recommends that state-owned firms be overseen by asset-management firms, say those involved in the report. It also urges China to overhaul local government finances and promote competition and entrepreneurship.

“While some reduction in growth is inevitable—China has been growing at an average of 10% a year for 30 years—the rate of decline matters greatly to the world economy. With Europe and Japan fighting recession and the U.S. experiencing a weak recovery, China has become the most reliable source of growth globally.

“But current forecasts by the Conference Board, a U.S. think tank, see the Chinese economy growing 8% in 2012, and slowing to an average annual growth rate of 6.6% from 2013 to 2016. …China’s annual growth rate will begin to ‘downshift’ by at least two percentage points starting around 2015.”

My Comment: The crisis will hit China in any case. The only solution is to restructure the entire society through integral upbringing of the population, and according to this, rebuild the whole country on the principles of reasonable consumption, equal distribution, and protection of the environment.
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