In the News (from Bloomberg): “Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said on Jan. 4 that the EU is on the brink of a recession of unknown scope.

“‘Things are really starting to slow down,’ Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics in London, said by telephone. ‘There’s an underlying economic downturn going on at the same time as the peripheral debt crisis continues. Even the strongest parts of the euro-zone economy are beginning to falter. ‘We see the euro zone beginning to break up, perhaps as soon as this year.’”

My Comment: A fortiori, it’s strange to see the idleness of “decision makers.” But in general, they cannot come up with a solution because they do not view the world as common and integral, as a single whole that is in need of unity and mutual guarantee, which is possible only under conditions of integral education of the masses and the movement in universal bailout when facing a universal disaster.
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Opinion: (Nicolas Barré, Deputy Managing Editor, Les Echos): “Earlier this year, seventeen countries of the euro area were closer than ever before to the abyss. None of the two most urgent problems has been solved. European leaders have long since lost their AAA rating in the financial markets. They are tormented, put conditions, stretch time, in short, show all their inability to bailout Greece, the country that accounts for only about 3% of the total income of the continent.

“One gets the impression that they are powerless, and yet from the beginning of the year we have seen four warning signs that a disaster is imminent.

“And the first of them is the inevitability of a Greek default. The second is the growth of distrust towards all the euro zone countries, except Germany. The third is the freezing of transactions between banks since they no longer trust each other. The fourth is a short-term decline: Credits are declining for both states and businesses.

“A real leap forward is required in order to avoid contamination of the entire European financial system, which may push the entire continent into the abyss. There is little time left.”

My Comment: Perhaps, from the lowest point of a fall, we will begin to realize the need to revise the entire system of social and economic relations and establish them on trust and equality. After all, it is the opposite processes that have led us to ruin.
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In the News (from Activist Post): “A recently published study in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity confirms that the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster reached Europe (Lithuania), and included plutonium, the most deadly manmade element (nanogram for nanogram) in existence.

“According to the study’s authors the radionuclide concentrations measured indicate there was ‘long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modeling.’

“What this means is that every region under the jet stream — which includes half of the planet north of its equator — could have been exposed to some degree of plutonium fallout.

“This fact is all the more disturbing when we consider there is no such thing as a safe level, and that the harm (on the human scale of time) does not dissipate: The half life of plutonium-239 is 24,200 years, and that of uranium-238 is 4,460,000,000 years, which is older than our planet.”

My Comment: Obviously, the future depends on our ability to build a universal good connection above our egoism. Otherwise, we have no chance to survive in the world that we have created for ourselves.
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Opinion (from The Financial Times): “You could say that Europe has crises enough without worrying too much about a Hungarian dissident turned petty tyrant.  To overlook Viktor Orban’s journey from anti-communist progressive to populist xenophobe would, however, be to repeat a mistake made about Greece. The troubles of Europe’s small powers can be a harbinger of bigger dangers around the corner.

“Hungary’s prime minister presents a reminder – should anyone on this continent need one – of the familiar trajectory from economic chaos to political authoritarianism. …Mr Orban sends a powerful message about the perils facing democracy.

“This week saw the introduction of Mr Orban’s new constitution. Suffused with ethnic nationalism, it reeks of an ambition for one-party rule. It promises repression of personal freedoms within Hungary and, through an extension of citizenship to Hungarian minorities elsewhere, threatens instability in ethnically-diverse neighbors.”

My Comment: Kabbalah warns that the Second World War can be repeated in a third, a nuclear one, because if humanity does not follow the path of integration, it inevitably will turn to the path of Nazism and universal hatred.
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We are part of an integral global nature. It has always been this way, but we have never thought about it and didn’t notice it as long as life didn’t oblige us to. Lately life obliges us to do that more and more: We have begun to receive blows in every direction.

In other words, we cannot manage this egoistic life of ours and we don’t succeed in anything: not in the family, not with the children, not with ourselves, not with the world, and not with security. We are not sure whether we have enough stored up for a rainy day and the pension and retirement funds are collapsing.

All the systems that have provided man with comfort, confidence, and security for the future, that helped him and his loved ones with the assurance of support in times of weakness, illness, or old age, are losing their value and disintegrating. Who knows, tomorrow we may find ourselves on the street, penniless with nothing in our bank account.

These problems make people think. Otherwise we would not be thinking about them because we are all an egoistic desire to receive. Here, however, we begin to ask ourselves: “What is actually going on here?”

If we examine things correctly, we will see that we ourselves have built the wrong systems. After all, being part of nature, I can’t do whatever I feel like; I can’t act randomly not taking into account the forces that operate in reality.

According to my level of development, I discover wider and finer things in nature. They were hidden and now they are gradually being revealed, and I discover the strong mutual connection between all parts of nature, and also the mutual connection among people, the mutual bestowal on many levels, and also nature’s bestowal, which in turn influences us.

So it may be that I am not taking into account the data, the laws and relationships that exist in nature, in me, and in human society that are hidden from me? I never took any interest in them because I used anything that came my way indifferently and carelessly, seeking only to profit from them.

There is a problem of how to study these laws? After all, no matter what we study in nature, in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, botany, or astronomy, on the micro and macro and all levels of nature, we always see one law that encompasses all the levels and that reigns between them: the law of equilibrium.

All of nature tends toward equilibrium, toward balance. This includes our little system the planet Earth.

This means that if we want to live in peace, tranquilly, and good connection with other people, with the family, etc., we must maintain a balance. Our formula should be that all the positive and negative actions in receiving and bestowal be balanced so that one will not exceed the other and so that each one will receive filling.

Then each one will have the right to exist and no one will take precedence over another as we all understand that we all must maintain overall balance. This applies to all parties to the forces of nature—to man’s forces, his desires and thoughts, to the well being of the whole system both the small private system and the integral global system—all depends on the internal balance among all its components.

We see this when studying global nature and the functioning of all its systems, including computer systems, cybernetics, sociology, psychology, physiology; even while a system develops, it constantly balances itself dynamically and is sensitive to imbalances that need to be corrected. Therefore its development and actions will always be successful because it is always operating with the law of equivalence between all its forces, the negative and the positive ones. Whether it is an atom in which the protons and electrons have to be balanced, or living cells, or the solar system: Everything abides by this principle.

So, of course, we must check our adaptation to this law in the family, in human society, in education, and in general in all that belongs to the human level.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/13/12, “The Peace”

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Opinion: (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former IMF Chief): “Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn …sharply criticized Europe’s handling of its debt crisis and predicted as many as seven years of subpar European growth unless the Continent’s leaders changed policies.

“Europe’s political shortcomings are ‘bleeding away, day by day, the remaining confidence investors may have in politicians being able to solve the crisis,’ Mr. Strauss-Kahn said. …the IMF is ‘in limbo’ because it requires political approvals that may take months to obtain, he added. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

“Strauss-Kahn, who attended an economic conference organized by NetEase, one of China’s leading internet companies, stressed that European nations make up 25% of global GDP. If their economy stagnates, the whole world will be influenced, including China.

“He proposed that China should offer direct or indirect assistance to soothe the financial crisis in the eurozone via the IMF. At the same time, he said the IMF should raise China’s voting power in the organization.

“Strauss-Kahn said it is impossible for eurozone countries to get out of their predicament by themselves and this presented a great opportunity for China. He said China is a big country but still has to take a full role as a member of the international community. European countries may be reluctant to accept China’s help directly, and the best way is therefore to do so through the IMF.” (Source: Want China Times)

My Comment: China will not help the EU and neither will any aid, which will simply disappear as in the abyss because this crisis is not the crisis of economy, banks, or state competitiveness, but a demonstration of the lack of correct connections between people. And it will not be over until mutual guarantee is established between people, nations, and the EU countries.
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The worsening economic crisis will leave a great number of people unemployed and virtually no one untouched by it; the need has arrived for both learning and education that will assist people in becoming adjusted to the new integral world. Learning is to obtain knowledge about the integral system and education is implementing this knowledge in practice.

The learning component should, first of all, comprise general knowledge which will renew all the foundations in a person: the history of humanity, geography, and such, to bring everyone, more or less, to the same level from which it will be possible to continue. It is possible that there will be a need for preliminary division into groups according to a person’s initial preparation and previous education level.

Those who completed high school, college, or university will have to go through courses at different levels. But first of all, everyone will have to receive some general education in order to refresh their knowledge. Even when one goes to a university, the first year is usually repeating what was already learned in high school.

Let’s say that it is a course in sociology about the new structure of society that helps a person to understand the structure of the new world. The world is divided into three areas: nature, humanity within nature, and man within humanity. We must research man to know a little about his physiology and psychology, to learn about the human society within nature: how the monkey once came down from trees to transform into man and went through several levels of development until its current state today. All of these are the results of the development of the ego. And here we need to provide information that is connected to history, sociology, and the development of society.

And then afterwards, we will approach the study of nature itself, the outcomes of its development from the beginning of the creation of the universe, the condensing of gases, the creation of the stars, the planets, planet Earth, and the development of life on Earth. Even if a person knows all of that, we must arrange this knowledge within one system so that he will understand the world he is living in.

We need to advance everyone so that even the most ignorant or the most educated professors who have become unemployed will have a common denominator, some common scope of information through which they will understand each other. This will include knowledge about man, society, nature, and the world.

We need to give a person broad knowledge of his psychology. This is very important. One must know the psychology of the individual, of the family, of the group as a small society, of the nation, and of the world. In addition to this, more advanced psychology is needed which is above the usual psychology we currently learn. This advanced psychology is called, “faith above reason,” meaning the psychology that is above the physical body. It is studied later on, but will need to follow the same flow.

Along on the way, there is a need for a great number of practical exercises: discussions about the psychology of family relationships, all sorts of situations and family conflicts, and children’s upbringing. We must learn how to understand the child; today we don’t understand the relationship between parents and children. By this we will already calm many problems.

In addition to this, we don’t just teach a person about social psychology, but also about the structure of society. Currently, a person doesn’t know how a government is run and how laws are made. You can’t refuse to study this like a man of the arts who doesn’t need to study mathematics. Here, each one will need to be acquainted, and not just a little bit, with the world in which he lives. We need to teach each child how a bank works and about other such systems in life.

I study human society: how it functions, how it is managed, how it makes decisions, who leads it, and what my place is in this society. All of this belongs to the structure of the system: how it is built today and what are the desired changes for the future.

These are not just courses. We are building the personality of a person. All of these subjects continue from grade to grade like in school. In each class they learn the same thing, only at a higher level. Most importantly is that every time we increasingly connect them together so that all are intertwined so that eventually he views the world as one integral whole.

The main achievement at the end of these courses is to receive a complete view of the world where there is no separate physics, geography, biology, man, government, and society—all are together as one.

Then it is possible to explain how the ego operates here, the desire to receive, and the Light that bestows on me, how I influence it. Man, society, and the world, without special words, turn into being: me, the group, and the Creator. In this manner, we are advancing towards a world view without Kabbalistic concepts and reminders of the wisdom of Kabbalah, but by learning about the real system of life.
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From “Lessons About a New World” 12/1/11

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In the News (from Reuters): “The global economy could withstand widespread disruption from a natural disaster or attack by militants for only a week as governments and businesses are not sufficiently prepared to deal with unexpected events, a report by a respected think-tank said.

“Events such as the 2010 volcanic ash cloud, which grounded flights in Europe, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami and Thailand’s floods last year, have showed that key sectors and businesses can be severely affected if disruption to production or transport goes on for more than a week.

“‘One week seems to be the maximum tolerance of the ‘just-in-time’ global economy,’ said the report by Chatham House, the London-based policy institute for international affairs.

“The current fragile state of the world’s economy leaves it particularly vulnerable to unforeseen shocks. Up to 30 percent of developed countries’ gross domestic product could be directly threatened by crises, especially in the manufacturing and tourism sectors, according to the think-tank.

“It is estimated that the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Asia cost businesses $60 billion, or about 2 percent of east Asian GDP, the report said.

“After the Japanese tsunami and nuclear crisis in March last year, global industrial production declined by 1.1 percent the following month, according to the World Bank.

“The 2010 volcanic ash cloud cost the European Union 5-10 billion euros and pushed some airlines and travel companies to the verge of bankruptcy.

“Costs can escalate quickly when transport or major production hubs are disrupted for more than a few days, which can in turn threaten food and water supplies and energy and communication networks, the report said.

“In the event of prolonged disruption, some businesses would be forced to cut investment and jobs or consider closing down, leading to a permanent reduction in countries’ growth.

“In general, governments and businesses are under-prepared to respond to high-impact, unpredictable events, with worst-case scenarios rarely factored into their contingency plans.

“It particularly highlighted social media networks as a useful ‘one-stop shop’ for information in the event of a crisis. In the London riots last year, social networks such as Twitter proved invaluable for many people to track the rioters’ movements across the UK capital and take precautions.”

My Comment: These examples of universal dependence and fragility in the global interconnection lead us to the need to get close enough to be able to replace each other if necessary.
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Opinion: (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, French historian, professor at College de France, from Le Monde): “In different parts of our planet, the global warming will be accompanied by wars, revolutions, and social unrest. Its signs include:

1. Global temperature in the 21st century has increased more than one degree Celsius;
2. Oceans have been warming up for the past fifty years;
3. All glaciers around the world have been melting;
4. Sea level in the 20th century was rising 1-2 millimeters a year;
5. Animals and birds have been migrating north;
6. The ground is warming up deep down, melting the permafrost.

“Just like during the Little Ice Age in the 17th century (1640s), our current period of warming will cause weather catastrophes, migrations, and civil and international wars. The weather aggression plays the part of the main destabilizing factor of religious, political, military, protest, agrarian, and other nature.”

My Comment: Just like a rocket moves towards its target, constantly deviating from the direct flight trajectory and returning to it so as to sense its position, the governance of our universe, like any other surveillance system, has the same macro and micro processes. They reflect on us, correcting the direction of our development from “right” and “left”—towards balance with nature (adhesion with the Creator).

We can eliminate all the unpleasant influences (the path of suffering) in our necessary (forced) development if we actively participate in correcting the course of our development, that is, direct ourselves towards similarity with the Creator: the quality of bestowal and love.
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In the News (from The Economic Collapse blog): “For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen. Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come. Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement. At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully underfunded, and the Social Security system is on the road to complete and total disaster. A massive wave of humanity is hitting retirement age at a moment in history when the U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams.

“The following are 25 bitter and painful facts about the coming Baby Boomer retirement crisis that will blow your mind….

#1 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#2 According to a recent poll conducted by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about ‘maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement.’ Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.

#3 A study conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research has found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.

#4 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#5 On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers started to retire. For almost the next 20 years, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.

#6 At the moment, only about 13 percent of all Americans are 65 years of age or older. By 2030, that number will soar to 18 percent.

#7 Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens. By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.

#8 Back in 1991, half of all American workers planned to retire before they reached the age of 65. Today, that number has declined to 23 percent.

#9 According to one recent survey, 74 percent of American workers expect to continue working once they are ‘retired.’

#10 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work ‘until they drop.’

#11 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.

#12 A study by a law professor at the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.

#13 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.

#14 What is causing most of these bankruptcies among the elderly? The number one cause is medical bills. According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#15 Public retirement funds all over the United States are woefully underfunded. For example, it has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#16 Most U.S. states have huge pension obligations which threaten to bankrupt them.

#17 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management have calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?

#18 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these ‘Social Security deficits’ are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.

#19 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#20 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#21 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars. In the years ahead expenses related to Social Security and Medicare are projected to skyrocket dramatically.

#22 The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the agency of the federal government that pays monthly retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees that were covered under defined benefit pension plans that failed. The retirement crisis has barely even begun and the PBGC is already dead broke. The PBGC says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a huge bailout from the federal government.

#23 According to a survey by careerbuilder.com, 36 percent of all Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities. So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?

#25 A survey taken earlier this year found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers admitted that they had postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the last 12 months. Back in 2008, that number was only at 14 percent.”

My Comment: The crisis has crept up unnoticed, or rather, since we did not want to pay attention to it, it brought us to the critical point where we cannot keep ignoring it and we have to start paying attention to what is happening. We are like children, and this is because everything that happens occurs at the level higher than our development. So, is it not worth listening to Kabbalists who can foresee the future…?
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