Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

The Financial Crisis Is For Our Own Good


Globalization is the revelation of the law of connection among people. However, instead of being beneficial, it is causing problems in our society because every person desires to use the global system of people’s connection into one organism, for his personal gain, instead of the way the system is designed to be used: for everyone to use it together for the well-being of us all.

Today we are interconnected with each other like organs in one body, and the life of the collective depends on everyone. Under these conditions it is useless to be egoistically honest – to create a global government, a world bank, or a common regulator. This will not help us stop being opposite to Nature and its law of universal interconnection. Instead, we must change our relationships from commercial to integral, to be based on the consideration of others as yourself. Even the most honest relationships of “what’s mine is mine and what’s your is yours” and the politics of non-violence will continue evoking crises until we realize what we have to do.

Kabbalah proposes that we start seeing humanity as a single organism and learn about how to behave correctly in our new state. Even if we don’t change anything about our relationships in the beginning, by just studying the laws of communication and distribution in a single organism, we already stop being opposite to nature – and then we will immediately feel a reduction in the suffering.

The most practical solution to the crisis is to study its true cause. Or in other words, to learn to live in an integral society, where the benefit of every individual depends on every other individual. Moreover, we must teach this law of nature to our children.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What’s the Right Way to Create Contracts In the Age of Globalization?
Laitman.com Post: Reflections on the Crisis
Laitman.com Post: Laws of the Future Society

What Will It Now Take For A Business Venture To Be Successful?


A question I received: Suppose you’re right about the financial crisis, but I still don’t understand what specific, practical measures you propose to take.

My Answer: I’ll give you a brief answer: I’m not an economist, but the only projects that will be successful are those that aim for a greater connection between people than before they were implemented! Therefore cost, money and human trust must be joined together into one whole and governed by one center. Ultimately, the banking system must become unified, global, international, and free of any national or governmental control.

The earth must belong to those who reside on it, rather than be a business venture.

The municipal authorities should make the decisions about the utilization of funds and resources.

The government should handle the social problems of the population.

The poor countries shouldn’t be given aid, but they must be commissioned to implement developmental programs and forced to lead profitable ventures.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Analysis of the Declaration of the G-20 Summit In Washington DC
Laitman.com Post: Does Charity Really Help Anyone?
Laitman.com Post: The Difference Between the “Letter of the Law” and the “Spirit of the Law”
Kabbalah Today Article: The Consumer Effect

I Am For The State Of Kabbalah


Two questions I received on the present state of the world:

Question: Shlama Ilelochum, Rabu Michael. Do you believe in the revival of the Assyrian State? Are you FOR or AGAINST?

My Answer: I am for only one state in the world – the State of Kabbalah, whose law will be “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Then all the nations will be as one family. This is what we are obligated to do by the Creator or Nature. We must live in accordance with the global connection in which we exist. The emergence of separate states contradicts world unity. See Baal HaSulam’s articles “The Peace” and “Peace in the World.”

Question: Many people who post comments seem to think that economic prosperity acquired via free markets is egoistic and evil. The only thing that can be evil is the intention. As humans we need access to resources to survive – i.e., food, shelter and education. Surely the problem isn’t in acquiring prosperity and knowledge via the economic market, but in the distribution among those who need it. This distribution is best done in one’s own community. The meek will inherit the world only when those who amassed resources will find a way to distribute it to those in need. Please comment.

My Answer: I would advise you to look at the materials on the crisis and its solution, as well as Baal HaSulam’s articles on it – “The Peace,” “Peace in the World,” and “The Freedom.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: How Will We Live In the Last Generation?
Laitman.com Post: A Spiritual Revolution Is Inevitable
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like To Live in a Perfect World?

The Creator Will Get Everyone


News Report (from Gold-Eagle): “Some Straight Talk On the Stock Market” …lots of bankruptcies in inefficient businesses are going to occur over the next year. … Businesses that do not or are unable to cut costs will simply go out of businesses. …there can be a huge wave of bankruptcies next year – especially when it comes to small businesses. The downturn is already wiping out people who don’t cut expenses.

News Report: (from SCORE.org): “Small Business Effects on the Economy” The estimated 25.8 million small businesses in the United States have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade, employ 50.6 percent of the country’s private sector workforce, represent 97 percent of all the exporters of goods, represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.

My Comment: The Creator will “get” everyone and will force all of us to understand what He wants from us! And what He wants is for us to desire to become like Him. All we need to do is just desire it, and He will make all the changes to us!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Financial Crisis Is Helping Us to Understand Our Reality
Laitman.com Post: Specific, Practical Measures to Combat the Crisis

Analysis Of The Declaration Of The G-20 Summit In Washington DC

RussiaBelow are excerpts from the “Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy.” My comments appear in italics:

From item 1. …cooperation… to restore global growth and achieve needed reforms in the world’s financial systems.
Cooperation is possible only when it is absolute, like in one family.

From item 2. …reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again.
It’s unclear what kind of reform they are thinking of, because they still haven’t pinpointed the real cause of the crisis – egoism.

From item 2. …market principles… and effectively regulated financial markets…
Forced regulation will only push the system deeper into crisis (as it happened under the Soviet regime). This measure is incomplete.

From item 5. …actions… to stimulate our economies, provide liquidity, strengthen the… financial institutions … unfreeze credit markets
This does not correct the mistakes – it doesn’t even attempt to correct the mistakes, since this kind of stimulation only further develops the causes that led to the crisis.

From items 6 and 7. …Economic momentum is slowing substantially in major economies… Many emerging market economies … are still experiencing good growth … a broader policy response is needed … to restore growth … and support emerging market economies and developing countries.
Sounds great, but who thinks of others!?

From item 7, bullet point 1. …stabilize the financial system…
Or in other words – keep pumping it with money, which will lead to inflation.

From item 7, bullet point 3. …Use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand…
But whatever benefits the people, hurts the state.

From items 7 and 8. Ensure that the IMF, World Bank and other MDBs have sufficient resources to continue playing their role in overcoming the crisis …strengthen financial markets and regulatory regimes… Regulation is first and foremost the responsibility of national regulators…
It’s a refusal to create a common financial regulator! They aren’t discussing the creation of a single financial institution, common financial instruments, market transparency, and a change in the management of IMF.

From items 8 and 12. …support market discipline … commitment to free market principles…
Stated simply – they’ve gone bankrupt!

From item 13. …within the next 12 months, we will refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade…
In other words, they won’t limit the outflow of capital. (in the month of October, $50 billion were taken out of Russia alone!)

From item 11. …we will meet again by April 30, 2009…

Additional Comment: Obviously, I’m not a banker, and these are my impressions. Regrettably, the declaration that was agreed on, lacks understanding of the true cause of the crisis, and hence it lacks the correct solution to it. Nevertheless, it reveals an underlying feeling of not understanding what is going on, of being interdependent, and of needing to search for the answers together. This feeling will continue to grow as the problems will keep increasing. The world really lacks knowledge of how global and integral it is, and of the law of absolute interaction!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Another Unfortunate Meeting of the G-20
Laitman.com Post: What Can We Expect from the G-20 Summit in Washington?
Laitman.com Post: The Financial Crisis Is Helping Us to Understand Our Reality

The Financial Crisis Is Helping Us To Understand Our Reality


News Report (from Private Sector Development Blog): Martin Wolf, a columnist for the Financial Times and former chief economist of the World Bank stated: “Among the most important tasks ahead is to create a system of global finance that allows a more balanced world economy, with excess savings being turned into either high-return investment or consumption by the world’s poor.”

News Report (from UK in the USA): Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, believes that the world financial crisis can become the accelerator for the creation of a new kind of society, unique in its aspirations, and he encourages the leaders of the world to lay the foundation for the new global order, internationalism, and the rejection of protectionism.

My Comment: This way, we will gradually reach the awareness of our global system, and from there – the understanding of the quality of the Creator: love and bestowal. Life (Nature or the Creator) will force us to make this decision and implement it.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Can We Expect from the G-20 Summit in Washington?
Laitman.com Post: Specific, Practical Measures to Combat the Crisis

What Can We Expect from the G-20 Summit In Washington?


Editorial News Report (from Executive Intelligence Review): If the participants of the G-20 meeting won’t reach an agreement, the world economy will rapidly collapse, billions of people will die from hunger, and social chaos will begin in the G-7 countries.

My Comment: The participants of the G-20 meeting should at least reach a certain level of mutual trust in order to coordinate their actions in the economic (and perhaps military) spheres. The world needs to see a connection between different countries. It won’t help to simply exercise control over fiscal operations (banks, companies, equalization of different currencies, cancellation of offshore accounts, annihilation of monopolies) and to reach a consensus to refrain from military attacks. This won’t help because Nature is forcing us to become integrated!

Even if they won’t reach an agreement, they should at least agree to meet together in order to solve the problems of global reconstruction, according to the laws of the single system.

A Kabbalistic text says:
“The hearts of the kings and their ministers are in the hands of the Creator.” And the Creator is governed by people’s desires to the degree they are similar to the Creator – to the quality of love for one’s neighbor. Therefore, everything depends on the dissemination of the knowledge about the world’s globality and our connection within one family. When we realize this, we won’t feel hatred for others, but for our own egoism, which is the only evil in the world. And after that we will also feel an aspiration for love of others.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Another Unfortunate Meeting of the G20

Specific, Practical Measures to Combat the Crisis


A question I received: What specific, practical measures would you advise the governments to take to combat the crisis?

My Answer: Kabbalah says that the world’s integrality requires that each person receive what is necessary for him to exist, and give the rest for the benefit of the society as a whole. This shouldn’t be done forcefully, like in the Soviet regime, but should come from people’s understanding that it’s necessary to carry out the law of nature that states: “All people are one family.” Every person will be rewarded for this with the sensation of eternal and perfect existence (outside of one’s egoism), just like all of Nature.

The needed actions: In addition to establishing an educational organization, every person must be given whatever amount of money he needs to lead a normal existence. No one should be allowed to have more than this amount in his bank account. Everything else should go into the “common account.”

The result: It makes no difference how much funds or resources there are for this. What’s important is the action itself, because it is integral, global, and harmonious with Nature (the Creator). Hence, it will evoke a positive reaction from Nature upon the society.

Comment:
1. These actions must be carried out together with distributing powerful educational, explanatory material through all mass media channels (see my “Lecture in Arosa“). Bnei Baruch already has the material!

2. If humanity won’t act as described above, with understanding, willingly and voluntarily – through the study of Kabbalah, then nature will force us to do the same thing, but through a long and bitter path of suffering. The situation will be like a stubborn child who doesn’t want to do what his parents tell him to, and who’s only swayed by punishment into understanding that he needs to listen and do as they say. Only later will he come to realize how correct and good his parents were.

Related Material:
Transcript of my Lecture at the 3rd World Spirit Forum in Arosa, Swtizerland

The Great Naivety of a Great Economist


News Report (from Times Online): The maverick economist John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas helped to navigate Britain out of the mass unemployment of the 1930s, imagined a completely different future for us. He predicted that in three generations’ time (the era we are entering), everyone would have enough to satisfy their needs and basic desires. We would then be liberated to explore the greater potential of humankind.

Keynes rejected the possibility that once we had solved the economic problem we would shackle ourselves by constantly chasing ever more stuff – possessions, debt, celebrity, Brand’n’Woss-style infotainment, rather than learning to be satisfied with material contentment and evolving from there.

My Comment: The source of all our mistakes is our ignorance of the fact that human nature is absolutely egoistic. Kabbalah warns that in our time of global interdependence between all human systems, ignorance of these laws will lead to a catastrophe. So stop trusting all the sociologists and economists, because we’ve entered a period of new social laws!

“Mom, who is Karl Marx?” – “Karl Marx was an economist.”

“Like our aunt Dalia?” –“No, aunt Dalia is a senior economist!”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like to Live In a Perfect World?

A Divine Whim In the Stock Market?


News Report (translated from gazeta. ru): Does the stock market have rules or is it governed by a divine whim? A great deal of research has been done on this question. A “divine whim” is defined as the difference between real prices and those set by the rate of return and liquidity. In other words: the stock market operates at a low return, but prices keep growing or dropping according to the prevalent opinion at the moment: “everything will get back to the good old times” or “this is the end of the Western civilization.” This would mean that the process we are dealing with, which is turning the world around, is accidental.

My Comment: There is no going back! Our egoism has grown and we have risen to the level of global interconnection. This is happening for the first time in human history, just as Kabbalah predicted thousands of years ago. I invite you to verify this by going into our old lesson archive and listening to our lessons from many years ago.

Nothing will return to the good old times. Everything taking place marks the end of Western civilization. Ahead of us lies a global, single, common world. We are all one family; we can’t run away from it and we depend on it completely. Even dying won’t help, because you will have to come back to complete the correction!

We need to create a stock market that will be based on the rules of the world’s global system. Everything has already been described. Study Kabbalah!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Present Crisis Is a Crisis of People’s Trust in the Egoistic System of Relationships
Laitman.com Post: My Article on Ynetnews – A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis