Opinion: (Timothy Geithner, the U.S. Treasury Secretary): “Geithner said the United States must strengthen employment, Europe must act more forcefully to quell its debt crisis and China and other emerging markets should strengthen domestic demand and allow their currencies to rise more rapidly.

“‘The imperative remains to strengthen economic growth. Fiscal policy everywhere has to be guided by the imperatives of growth.’…

“‘In early 2009, the world showed remarkable unity and deployed remarkable financial force in rescuing the global economy,’ Geithner wrote. ‘The challenges now are different and cannot realistically be confronted by a repeat of that coordinated global response of financial stabilization and fiscal and monetary stimulus.’”

My Comment: Unfortunately, he is dead serious about this! Meanwhile, we feel the crisis namely because we are applying these old methods of our connections to the new mutual ties that manifest now. The old economy did not take into account reciprocity, but only personal gain, and that is why it does not work in the new network of connections.

To put efforts into the application of old methods means to accelerate the crisis. Possibly, this is good since it helps to hit bottom sooner, analyze the reasons, and find the way out, but it is the path of suffering rather than correction.
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Opinion: (Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Berggruen, from The Guardian): “The eurozone’s crisis is dragging down the entire global economy – real economic and political union is now urgent.

“After many months of muddling through – but not getting at the systemic roots of the economic, fiscal and financial crisis – Europe is at the tipping point. If it continues any longer with the status quo of dithering instead of decisiveness, the eurozone will break up and its national economies will weaken. Only by moving forward towards full integration – now – can Europe save itself.

“Along with persistent partisan gridlock and the clear slippage of the recovery in the US, Europe’s crisis of governance is dragging down the entire global economy.

“Action to restore credibility is necessary.

“Additionally, in pursuing the necessary fiscal austerity and structural reforms, we must be careful not to undermine any fragile recovery in the short run.

“To compete in the globalised world, Europe needs to implement an ambitious agenda for growth and employment to boost competitiveness and long-term productivity. …Without growth, the temptation for economic nationalism will arise.

“Further political integration and union can only be built hand in hand, step by step, through a broad and deep engagement of the public.

“That is why more European integration, not less, is the only solution.”

My Comment: We won’t be able to develop further; everything will be reduced until it reaches the condition of reasonable production and consumption, rather than overproduction and overconsumption for the sake of overaccumulation. Nature will force us to become its integral part, meaning to receive and give in a reasonable way.

We will come to this economy, and namely integration, trust, and unity will let us create this harmonious union. There will be neither rich nor poor—nature will not allow it. A person will be rewarded for his or her investment in development in the form of respect, recognition, creativity, and the feeling of the next level of harmony, higher than this life….
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Opinion: (Alessio Rastani, trader): “Goldman Sachs rules the world, and the Euro zone is poised to crash, according to trader Alessio Rastani.

“‘This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out,’ Rastani said on an interview with BBC on Monday morning. ‘The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.’

“‘The savings of millions of people are going to vanish’ in less than a year, he said.

“‘This economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait thinking this will go away, just like a cancer it’s going to grow and it’s going to be too late,’ he continued.

“Fear over the fragility of the European economy has become pronounced in recent weeks.

“But the crash will be good news for traders, Rastani told the stunned BBC anchors.

“‘For most traders we don’t really care about having a fixed economy, having a fixed situation, our job is to make money from it,’ he said. ‘Personally, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for three years. I go to bed every night and I dream of another recession.’

“Rastani said traders aren’t the only ones who can benefit from the crisis.

“‘When the market crashes… if you know what to do, if you have the right plan set up, you can make a lot of money from this.'”
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In the News (from The New York Times): “Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries.

“Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

“They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

“‘Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,’ said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. ‘We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.’

“Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with boycotts and strikes that, in London and Athens, erupted into violence.

“Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.

“Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite.

“In many European countries the disappointment is twofold: in heavily indebted federal governments pulling back from social spending and in a European Union viewed as distant and undemocratic. Europeans leaders have dictated harsh austerity measures in the name of stability for the euro, the region’s common currency, rubber-stamped by captive and corrupt national politicians, protesters say.”

My Comment: The disappointment with the elite should give way to the disappointment with our nature—egoism, so that we begin to transcend it. Redistribution of wealth without a moral awakening of the masses will yield no positive results. All the solutions are partial, that is, no one has the real solution to the problem, and what Kabbalah proposes is not considered because it is perceived as new communism, which has completely “exhausted” itself.

Economists are reluctant to acknowledge that nature puts before us the condition of complete unification into a single mechanism. It is time to create an economic model of reasonable consumption, mutual altruistic relations, and the benefit of bestowal. Having this vision of the near inevitable future that awaits us as the result of our development (evolution), we must educate everybody about the entrance into a new world.
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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: Four properties are provided for that purpose: mercy, truth, justice, and peace. Those attributes have been used by all world reformers thus far. It is more correct to say that it is with those four attributes that human development has advanced thus far…

It is only by these four attributes that we manage ourselves in order to bring ourselves to the end of correction. So how do we discern them? Many can speak about mercy, truth, justice, and peace for hours, but can we agree on what these attributes are?

It isn’t simple, but Baal HaSulam, knowing the spiritual nature, wrote that this is what we have to clarify in order to manage ourselves and the world. We don’t know what a corrected world is. We are all corrupt and so it seems to us that any egoistic improvement is already correction. However, for Baal HaSulam, the corrected world is a world in which all the possible deficiencies are totally filled. How is that possible? We will have to find that out.

First, we have to understand that we will never be able to fill ourselves egotistically, but only in bestowal because while there is no restriction on bestowal, there is on reception. So how can we desire to receive in such a way that receiving itself will make us understand that it is worthwhile to bestow?

We can develop in this direction by blows: Every time that I want to receive something, I receive more and more blows, until I finally come to the conclusion that it is better not to want to receive egoistically. Then I begin to hate my desire to receive, and I don’t know what to do with it anymore. “So, perhaps I will enjoy bestowal?”

And so different flaws bring me to a point where I ask for the desire to bestow, for the power to bestow, the power to connect to others. This is the road of suffering and asceticism about which it says: “Eat bread with water sparingly and sleep on the ground.” In the past people used accept this and thus advance to bestowal.

It is the same today, if people don’t accept the wisdom of Kabbalah and the explanation about the development of the world, they too will advance in the same way. They will want more and more, but will get less and less, and as a result of suffering, people will begin to feel that it is worthwhile to be together, to bestow upon each other, to connect, to restrict our ego, and even to totally erase it.

We see that in wartime, when the troubles descend upon everyone, people begin to connect. Even animals are not afraid of one another when there is a fire in a forest or an earthquake, and they all escape the danger together. The common problem unites them because the fear of death is greater than the fear of hunger. Clearly, they don’t become “righteous,” but the desire to satisfy their hunger is pushed aside by a greater desire to survive.

We are the same. Of course, we can advance towards correction by suffering. It will compel us to aspire to bestow and to destroy our ego, the source of all the evil in our world. But this is a long and painful way.

This is why we were given an alternative—the way of the Torah. Why? Why do we need this other way? It is because we don’t reach free will by suffering. We only run away from it, like animals. Out of despair, we are even ready to bestow, but it is only because we feel bad when we receive. We don’t choose bestowal by our own free will, but as a result of our suffering as we have no choice. This is the degree of a beast, not man.

In order to bring us to the human level, we need two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of reception, with free will lying between the two. This is the path of people who have the point in the heart.

People who don’t have the point in the heart will also have free will: They can choose to follow those who can lead them forward.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Today the crisis has reached all corners of the world and no one sees a solution to it. Why don’t we examine the economic system analogously to our system of upbringing, and offer it to the world?

Answer: We can provide a wonderful description of the economy in the period of the final correction: a balanced society, consumption within the boundaries of reasonable necessity, conservation of nature and man, the sole development of projects that save time and energy and benefit people’s health…. All of this is logical and is easy to put in writing if you are not writing about egoistic gratification, but basic necessity, the harmony between us and nature.

But how can we transition to this stage? How can we explain it to the modern tycoons who are essentially the ones to decide the fate of the world? They manipulate governments which in turn manipulate people. So how can we present this final goal to them? How can we tell them about the phases on the path to it? They will ask: “What will be left for us?” And what will we tell them in response?

“You will receive exactly the same amount as a regular housewife, and your billions will be returned to nature’s needs in order to fix the mess you have made by proliferating excessive consumption in the world. And beyond that you will enjoy internally, spiritually. You will no longer be ‘the top roosters in the pen,’ proudly parading around the perches. You will mature and this will cease giving you pleasure.” You will be fulfilled by the attainment of a higher level.” On the contrary, it will evoke scorn.

Will you be able to explain all of that to a tycoon so he will be enticed by the idea of eternal, perfect life, so he will want to enter the eternity of nature itself, join it, and reveal a higher level of existence in it?… “You will live there like a respectable tycoon. Even when your animate body dies, it is not really you at all. After all, you will become Human in the true, spiritual sense….”

This works only for refined individuals, yet others just might understand it right away. That is why today we are disseminating the force of mutual guarantee to the whole world, and we are not addressing the tycoons, but the people. “It’s worthwhile for us to get closer to one another so life gets better.” And in the meantime, with a view to the future, we inject Light into people, the force of unity. Once they are filled by this force, they begin to understand more and to agree with us, seeing real benefit in the mutual guarantee. That is how they advance.

The path to the heart is not through the mind. You can’t get your mind around this because the mind’s level corresponds to the level of the desire it serves. The mind can never rise above the desire. Deceived by illusions, we might look down on our animate being, but the mind seems like the pinnacle of creation to us. Yet in reality our mind is even lower than the animate desire, being a mere servant of it.

Therefore, the only opportunity we have is to change people’s desires, which can change only under the influence of the Light. This is what we have to provide for them. Your logical conclusions alone won’t help. People will not understand you and will think that you are simply an idiot or a mystic, or in the best case, a great guy dreaming about peace and love on the planet.

There is only one solution: to unite among ourselves and to give people the force of unity. Only this will raise them to a new level of understanding, perception, and agreement with us. Moreover, later, once they agree, they will see that it’s worthwhile for them to follow us because they can’t understand our message fully. By acquiring the force of unity, they will rise to a level where it will become clear that they have to hold on to us, as it is written in the Torah: They will “grab onto your clothes,” meaning the garment, the external vessels, and will say, “Take us there!”

Obviously, you are right in that we do have to talk a little about the economy, upbringing, and the world of the future so as not to push people away at the initial stage. But the most important thing is to transmit the force of unity to them. This is dissemination. In the Introduction to Panim Meirot UMasbirot, Baal HaSulam writes that when the sons of Israel become filled with this force of unity, it will spill from them to everyone else. We have to be ready to receive this force and then it really will spill over to people, who will be receptive to the influence of the Light of Hassadim, giving themselves over to it wholeheartedly.
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From the lesson on 10/24/11

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In the News (From The Financial Times): “The European Union should appoint a new budget tsar with powers to dictate taxes and spending in eurozone countries and who could ultimately adjudicate whether countries should be kicked out of the euro.

“Writing in the Financial Times, Mark Rutte and his government’s finance minister, Jan Kees de Jager, said the new ‘commissioner for budgetary discipline’ should be given the authority to impose a gradually more painful series of penalties on profligate eurozone countries, including the withholding of EU development funds.

“But if a country continues to flout EU demands for spending restraint, Mr. Rutte’s plan would force eurozone countries to submit their budgets to the commissioner, who could veto it before it is presented to parliament.

“‘Countries that do not want to submit to this regime can choose to leave the eurozone,’ Mr. Rutte and Mr. de Jager write. ‘In the future, the ultimate sanction can be to force countries to leave the euro.’”

My Comment: Is not it better to choose the Creator—Nature as the Tsar, to study it and observe its laws?
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Opinion: (Charles Plosser, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia): “Monetary policy has little ability to help the U.S. jobs market in current economic circumstances, a top Federal Reserve official said Thursday.

“‘I am really doubtful that monetary policy is a tool that is going to help us very much’ to help spur demand and improve hiring in an economy where many households and companies are still looking to cut borrowing levels, rather than to increase them.”

My Comment: Until a person becomes convinced that he cannot solve the problem in any way, he does not admit to others and to himself that he has lost. But if this is the case, isn’t it the role of those next to him to stop him?
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Opinion: (Sergei Martynov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus): “There is a pervasive feeling that chaos is inexorably engulfing the planet. Indeed, one global crisis comes hard on the heels of another. International law is being shamelessly trampled. Inequality and poverty are on the rise, and above all, an ever increasing number of people in the world are exposed to suffering.

“The situation is bound to persist, unless together we arrive at a set of long-term efficient measures. We need a global strategy against chaos.

“International failures over the past twenty years suggest that for such a strategy to become a success, it would have to be built around the following three foundations: strengthening international law, establishing global partnerships, and revitalizing the United Nations.”

My Comment: The leaders already see this from experience, from their lack of control over society, their nations, and the world.
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Opinion: (Ian Pearson, futurist): “[Government’s] responsibilities will remain, but all of them will be subject to change brought about by new technologies.

“Governments have traditionally had sharp teeth to enforce their decisions, but the spread of the Internet and social networking tools has removed some of the significance of geography, and given new power to individual citizens. Governments are discovering everywhere that they are becoming more accountable, whether they like it or not. Their limited jurisdiction is also becoming obvious.

“However, we will still have geographic government, and communication between government and citizen may improve. …But if they genuinely do care what we think other than election time, I believe we could go further to make a more responsive democracy. If we wanted, we could allow each citizen to have their preferences on important issues stored in a database, an electronic shadow, suitably anonymous to everyone else of course. Government would then know all the time what the electorate want. Referenda could be instant… Democracy is very much a compromise kind of government and it wouldn’t be good to take it too far in terms of letting everyone decide everything.

“But it is certain that government will change a lot. We will be forced into more global cooperation for a range of things. …Maybe there won’t be a full world government, but maybe also we will see a jigsaw being built of all of these different pieces, and if we assemble them correctly, there is yet some potential benefit.”

My Comment: Society develops under objective laws of nature, just like any other population, so we don’t have to guess—nature has a precise and specific plan to bring us to a unified global integral system of relationships. The Internet will become one of the decisive tools in this development. Certainly, gradual change of the economy of the transition period to the economy of a new world will form the basis of all changes.
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