Opinion (O. Poddymnikov, director of Investment Management, Lanta-Bank, from finam.ru): “The Americans are persistently trying to solve new problems by using old methods: increasing infrastructure spending and open market operations. The former helped Roosevelt take the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The latter …would have let the country avoid it altogether. But will these methods help this time?

“Globalization has led to cardinal changes in the economic structure of the the U.S. Since the beginning of 2008 too many individuals and corporations have lost too much money. There are negative expectations concerning short- and mid-term perspective and absence of faith that the government can deal with this. Because of this, the money that is made is either used towards compensation for losses, or as savings. The rate of maximum tendency towards savings is rising, and it is inversely proportional to the government spending multiplier, which is what the U.S. government is hoping for. Consequentially, the return from investment into the economy is low.”

My Comment: The only thing that can help the U.S. is to stop violating anyone in the world, stop trying to shift their problems onto others, threatening others, putting pressure on the EU, and disturbing the Middle East. The change in their attitude towards Israel opens up problems which they won’t be able to overcome. The U.S. has to look two steps ahead. It shouldn’t go against nature, but rather study the tendency of its development and follow it. Humankind has reached the homestretch to the purpose of creation.
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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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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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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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We have to give people an explanation of what the solution to the modern problems is. Even if it won’t be possible to avoid the troubles, people will nevertheless hear us eventually. They won’t have any other choice left.

When the crisis worsens, when factories close down and banks become empty, mass turmoil will begin. The people will rise up with demands, not caring how realistic they are. The government might be able to reasonably justify itself, but the people don’t care about that, and will say, “You’re in power so you’re responsible!”

Moments like that or the breaks between them is precisely when people will hear us. And it will be both the regular people and the powerful ones who will hear. The tycoons will want to build the system of upbringing we are talking about of their own accord in order to pacify the people and raise them above the poverty line. Otherwise people will take away everything from them, as this has already happened in history on several occasions. The danger will force them to take care of the agitations and explanations and to aim people toward mutual unification, to a global, integral system, which nature requires us to create.

After all, this is not someone’s whim, but precisely nature’s call, which we cannot run away from. The more we do in this direction, the less troubles and problems we will have.

Obviously, we won’t start talking about fair distribution right away. The first task is to provide people with whatever amount of money they need to survive. And in response they will be required to make efforts in studying.

When unemployment increases, masses of people will be left with nothing to do. People will have to distribute their time so they will work for half or a third of the work day, and devote the rest of the time to compulsory study. In essence, this will become the real work: A person will work on himself. In order to make bread from wheat, it is necessary to awaken a force that will raise wheat.

This year we will already see how uneasy it is to produce bread in conditions of economic and ecological crisis. And studying, together with efforts to create an environment, is part of our work in this world. We thereby awaken the force in the world that is necessary for our material existence.

A person will study in order to bestow to others, in order to provide their daily bread for them. As Baal HaSulam writes, bestowal to the neighbor and bestowal to the Creator are the same thing. That is how people will reach spirituality—without suffering and without studying the science of Kabbalah.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/11, “Peace in the World”

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In the News (From CNN): “A spirited and leaderless protest in the Wall Street section of New York has entered its third week, helping to inspire a growing number of demonstrations united in their passion if not necessarily their reasons for hitting the streets.

“The hub of the movement, in Lower Manhattan, was abuzz with activity on Sunday as activists continued to vent their frustrations with everything from ‘corporate greed’ to high gas prices to insufficient health insurance.

“No single group or person heads the effort, which has adopted the name ‘Occupy Wall Street.’ While a ‘general assembly’ is held daily for those gathered — be it for a few short hours or by camping out long-term — to discuss the goings-on and work toward a common mission, the stances being touted currently are diverse.

“The lack of coherent message has not stopped similar efforts from popping up elsewhere in the United States.

“’Occupy Chicago,’ for instance, entered its 10th day on Sunday, a day after an associated website touted ‘a huge afternoon march.’

“The motto atop a website for ‘Occupy Los Angeles,’ which kicked off Saturday with a march from Pershing Square to City Hall, reads: ‘The revolution is happening … It’s just not in the news.’

“There are 34 organizations — from unions to ethnic organizations to activist groups focused on everything from foreclosure prevention to climate change to justice-related issues — listed as being involved in a like-minded activist coalition in Boston. This group, which held a festival and march Friday and Saturday and has explicitly targeted Bank of America in recent weeks, states on its website that its aim is to ‘stop their greed,’ ‘fight for an economy that works for all of us,’ and ‘build cities that are democratic, just and sustainable.’

“Most demonstrations thus far have been peaceful and uneventful, though in a few cases they have led to numerous arrests.

“The most high-profile such incident came Saturday, when New York police arrested more than 700 protesters who had occupied the iconic Brooklyn Bridge.

“Demonstrators have said they take their inspiration from the Arab Spring protests that swept through Africa and the Middle East this year.

“The protest campaign — which uses the hashtag #occupywallstreet on the microblogging site Twitter — began in July with the launch of a simple campaign website calling for a march and a sit-in at the New York Stock Exchange.

“It has gained steam since early September, with crowds taking up residence in a park in New York’s financial district and calling for 20,000 people to flood the area for a ‘few months.’ In recent weeks, the New York demonstrators have addressed various issues, including police brutality, union busting, and the economy.”

My Comment: The problems are just beginning because the crisis itself is still not felt as a systematic crisis, when life “freezes,” and all the social, political, economic, and other connections no longer work smoothly. That is when people, not understanding the reasons for what’s happening, start blaming the authorities and “establish their own order.”

Only education and the explanation of the new laws and connections that manifest in society will be able to calm people and give them the correct guidance, to gather the masses together and jointly create new connections in society, new relationships between themselves and with the world. This problem will manifest itself as a single issue of the Old and New World on both sides of the Atlantic. Other parts of the world will accompany it, and turmoil and unrest, helplessness and lack of control will force governments to turn to the masses and make joint decisions at the “round table.”
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Opinion: (George Soros, billionaire investor): “Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation. They need to regain control and they need to do so now.

“Three bold steps are needed. First, the governments of the eurozone must agree in principle on a new treaty creating a common treasury for the eurozone. In the meantime, the major banks must be put under European Central Bank direction …Third, the ECB would enable countries such as Italy and Spain to temporarily refinance their debt at a very low cost. These steps would calm the markets and give Europe time to develop a growth strategy, without which the debt problem cannot be solved.

“The course of action outlined here …is more radical because it puts the banks under European control. That is liable to arouse the opposition of both the banks and the national authorities. Only public pressure can make it happen.”

My Comment: Didn’t the great financiers say that the crisis was over? These measures, like patches, will not help either; a patch will merely tear as well. It’s necessary to change the system of our attitude to the world: The globally connected world has to be governed by people who feel a genuine responsibility for the entire world, for the unified system, and are connected by mutual guarantee.
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Question: Our New York group went to Wall Street today to feel the mood and the desires of the demonstrators. What we heard from them was very similar to our message. We sang together our song “Who Wants Change?” How can we convey the idea of mutual guarantee to them?

Answer: There is a lot of work before you now. First you have to build a website and give its address to the protesters. It should be on this site and not on the street that you start a big, true debate about the relevant issues. You should lead people to the virtual court, in which they will discuss the issues related to our message.

The processes in the U.S. are accelerating, and we have to organize the preliminary stages of our work as soon as possible. There is no doubt that we are actually starting to work globally now. Each group will operate at its own pace, according to the local conditions, but in the next few months, we will eventually all be part of this.

As a result, we will understand, feel, and connect to the internal, spiritual system. We already begin to see it as the end result of the process: the ascent to the last degree, the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, the revelation of the attribute of bestowal, the system of bestowal in which we participate in practice. The people perform external actions in it, and we join them with internal actions. It is all before us.
[56232]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, “Peace in the World”

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In the News (From Associated Press): “Tens of thousands of French teachers and their supporters took to the streets Tuesday for a national strike and protests over education job cuts under President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government.

“In a first, private school teachers joined the walkout with their public-sector colleagues who are angry about job cuts.

“Labor unions want to ratchet up the pressure on Sarkozy’s conservatives, who have cut public-sector jobs as a way to help reduce France’s bloated budget deficit.”

My Comment: Schools have to educate, to make a Human out of a child, and not just provide him or her with knowledge and a profession. Today, a connection with people is most important; it determines success in everything.
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