Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

A Very Strange Way to Explain the Current Crisis

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

I wrote and thought a lot about Time and Time Travel. My investigations made it clear to me that Time Travel must be possible and is also happening. Most people are not aware of the Cyclic Patterns of Time.

They think Time is a Line extending into Infinity. The Cyclic Patterns are moving With the Clock and Counter the Clock. At this moment The Cycles are Reversing in Time. This explains the current Crisis.

The conclusion of my research in Time was that we are traveling through a Vibrating Static Structure, A Fluent Crystal, which contains a huge amount of possible paths. We have Free Choice to travel the many Paths but the Amount of Possible Choices is fixed.

When we are traveling and return at the same point we started our traveling, we have gone through a Cycle.

When you go to work in the morning and return at home in the evening and repeat this sequence day after day you are moving through a very simple cycle. When you Repeat the Same Mistakes all the Time you are moving through a Cycle. When you are Born and Die you are moving through a Cycle called Life.

Cycles can be very complex. They are sometimes so complex that you are not aware you are repeating the same pattern all the time. You are experiencing the Feeling of Freedom of Choice because you are not Observing Your Path.

When you are Capable of Observing Your Path the Cyclic Behavior Ends. You Watch the Cycle but you are not In the Cycle. You are freed from the Cycle when you don’t make a Choice at all. This is what the Chinese Masters call the Tao.

Cycles basically move in two directions. They move With the Clock and Counter the Clock. Our Clocks move With the Clock so we assume that Time is moving With the Clock. When we move Counter the Clock we are moving Back in Time.

Cycles With the Clock, are Positive, Generating, Cycles.

Cycles Counter the Clock , are Negative, Destructive, Cycles.

The direction of a rotation is called Spin.

If we combine two Cycles that are moving With AND Counter the Clock an interesting structure appears. This Structure is called the Moebius Ring and is often used to represent the Symbol of Infinity, the Lemniscate or Ourobouros (A Snake).

The Moebius Ring is a very interesting structure because it does not have an Above and an Under. When you are traveling the Boundary you are always traveling the Same Surface. The Moebius Ring is easily constructed by connecting the two ends of a strip of twisted paper.

To Change the Direction of a Cycle you have to introduce a Twist.

To Travel Time you to have to Twist Time.

The Twist is an interesting concept. One of the Questions you could ask is if You would experience a Twist when it happened. The answer is Yes and No. Yes, when the Twist is an Up or Down Peak (An Event). No, when the Twist is a smooth path.

The most interesting Peak Experience in Life is Death. At that time the Cycle of Life is closed and another Cycle with a different Spin starts. Many cultures believe the Cycle of Death is real. In Western Society many people believe the Cycle of Death is non existent. Scientists are spending a lot of time to prove that the moment of Death is the End of Everything.

History is moving through Cycles. At some point in time many people feel History is Repeating Itself. Most of the time people believe the Cycles are moving into a certain direction. They are moving UP and DOWN. When you look at the Economic Cycles the data show that the Economic Cycles are Moving UP.

In reality the UP Cycle behind the Economic Cycle is another Cycle that is in its UP-state. Behind this Cycle is another (Long-Term) Cycle and another Cycle and …but somewhere the Cycle of Cycles (A Spiral) is Closed in Itself (A Spiraling Spiral). Just like the Moebius Ring there is no Above and Under. We are (Time-)traveling a Boundary that is closed in itself.

I don’t think many people will disagree with the concept of Cycles in History. The Theory of Economic Cycles has proven itself without any Doubt.

I don’t think many people understand that Cycles are moving in two directions. They believe the Cycles are moving With the Clock. If you believe Cycles move With the Clock it is easy to see that the Seasons are a beautiful Metaphor to understand Cyclic Behavior.

But what will happen when the Cycles of History move Counter the Clock???

If we would move through time Counter the Clock History would repeat itself just like History is Repeating Itself when we move With the Clock but the Stages of the Cycle (The Seasons) would show themselves in a Different Order.

If the Cycle With the Clock is an UP Cycle, the Cycle Counter the Clock would be a Down Cycle.

If you read the references in this Blog you will see that Western Culture is (or was) moving Counter The Clock, a CYCLE of DESTRUCTION.

The Cycle of Destruction (Capitalism, Materialism) was seen as a positive Cycle by many People but now they are becoming Aware of Reality. Western Culture is destructing Nature. It is not only destructing Nature but it is also destructing Human Culture.

At a certain point in time the Cycle HAS TO REVERSE. This TWIST is a Peak Experience, a Major Crisis. I hope You now See what is really Happening. We are Reversing the Cycle and the new Cycle is a GENERATING CYCLE. We are really Moving UP into a new state of Consciousnesa. This new state is not the state people who love materialism and capitalism (and War and Destruction and Greed and Control and Desire and …) will like.

LINKS

About The Twist in History

 About the Twist in Literature

About Cyclic Behavior in History

About Cyclic Behavior in History

Using the Seasons to Understand Cycles

 

What is Happening in the Financial System

Friday, September 19th, 2008

The current Foundation of the World Financial System, the US Economy based on the Dollar, is in a Fatal Crisis. The Solution to the Current Crisis, Bailing Out, will finally Speed Up the Crisis. The real problem is moved to the Near Future, to another Level of Society (MiddleClass, the Poor) and to another part of the World. In the End it will fireback on the US itself and deepen the Recession that is already taking place.

Money represents a Value of Something. For a very long time money was based on the value of Gold. This foundation failed. The failure of the Gold Based Money system created the Great Depression and finally the Second World War. At this moment the Financial System is without any Foundation.

To prevent a Third World War the Bretton Woods Agreement was created in 1947. The foundation of the International Money System was based on the Dollar. In 1971 the US broke up the Agreement because it was unable to stabilize the International System. At that time the US was spending too much money to fight the war in Vietnam. It became a Debtor and remained a Debtor until today.

From that Time on the International Money System is Floating but the Foundation, the Dollar, is still used. The Euro is an alternative but it is almost impossible to move to the Euro without destroying the US Economy and the World Economy. Europe, China and even Russia are Forced to help the Biggest Debtor in the World to avoid the destruction of their own Financial System. In the mean time the Biggest Debtor in the World keeps on Spending. It is even Increasing its Spending Behavior.

Many people believe that the reason behind the Financial Crisis is the Credit Crunch. They believe  poor mortgages are the cause of everything but there are mortgage lenders who help you buy your house without any hassle. Buying a  house during this financial crisis can be quite difficult, you can check us out here if your applying for a home loan.

The main reason are financial derivatives. Derivatives are very complicated ways to gamble with money. They are so complicated that almost nobody is able to calculate the value of these financial instruments. They are so complicated that almost nobody is able to keep the books. The controllers of the banks lost the control a very long time ago.

Derivatives are the playingfield of dealers and the dealers are able to confuse almost everybody when they want to play their game. The effect of playing dealers has shown itself in many cases like the falldown of Barings. The Derivatives have transformed The Banking Industry into a Casino.

The US Government and its Allies are trying to avoid a new Great Depression by bailing out or protecting every US Bank, Insurance Company and other Company (Farmers, Chrysler, Boeing, Ford, ..) that is unable to pay its debts. The US Government is moving the huge and uncertain debt from the Market to the Government hoping the Market will Restore itself. They believe the Market is going Up and Down. Someday they will be able to Sell the current Debt with a Profit back to the Market.

The strange thing is that other countries are helping the US to protect their vital companies from a certain disaster. The US, the Protector of the Free Market, is protecting its Own market and the only reason why others are helping the US is to avoid a certain disaster on the level of the World. Strangely enough they are disturbing their own market to avoid the destruction of the market of their biggest competitor.

In the background investors, Countries and Companies are slowly moving out of the US Economy. The are investing in Europa (Warren Buffett) or are creating their own financial market and currency (China, Russia, India).Nobody believes the US will recover but they have to prevent a total meltdown.

China is even taking over control of the US Economy. With their enormouss funds they will be alble to “blackmail” the US. They are already doing this. The Chinese are in contrary to the US fighting the war with the Wapens of their Opponent. They know how to win without fighting.

What many peopl don’t realize is that the long term Economic Cycle (The Kondratiev) is going Down for about 26 years. We have entered a State of Compression in 2000. The Expansion of the World Economy during the last 26 years has stopped. We are just in the beginning of the Phase of Compression.

During the phase of compression the Baby Boomers will stop working. They have invested a lot of money to buy a pension. During the compression their pensions will evaporate. During the phase of compression many people will get old and ill. The Social System will be without any money to help them. Many people will move into a very angry state when they realize what really has happened.

During the Downfall The Debts will increase tremendously. The move from the Market to the Government (and the Tax Payer) is a temporary solution. Someday the Debts have to be repayed and the only thing US Govenment can do is to accept the fact that the US and the strongly related Western Economy will enter a state of Recession.

The Economic Activity will go Down but Social Activities will Move Up. When you are losing money somebody (Your Friends, Your Family, Your Community) has to help you.

What many people also don’t realize is that the very long time cycles are supporting the DownFall of the Economic System. The very long time cycles and especially the Cycle of the Precession is Jumping to a new Level. It is jumping to a higher level of Consciousness.

The current instability of the World System is not only visible in the Financial System. It shows itself in every System of the World. It shows itself in the Psychological System, the Cultural System, The Religiouss System, the Political System, the Ecological System, the Weather System and the Planetary System.

These Systems are highly interconnected. A Disaster in one of the Systems has an impact on all of the other Systems. When the Financial System is fixed, a Political Conflict (Russia) starts and the Financial System is unbalanced. When the Political System is stabilized a huge Earthquake or a giant Tornado will move the total System into unbalance. This will go on and on until everybody realizes that we are living in a Highly Interconnected Reality.

The only thing we can do is to act on the Level of Earth and Face Reality. We have to realize that all the Isolated Systems are One and the only thing we can do is to find Balance on Every Level.

We could start to Find Balance on the Level of the Human.

We could start to Reduce the Power of the Ego, Desire, by reducing our Needs.

We could start to Reduce the Power of our Expectation, our Thinking, and start to Trust the Other.

We could start to Empower our Imagination, Spirit, and Imagine a Shared Future.

We could start to Empower our Soul, Empathy, and start to Take Care of Others.

We could start to use our Consciousness and become Aware of what is really Happening.

Many people believe the current crisis will be a Fatal Crisis, a (Financial) Apocalyps. I don’t believe this will be the case.

Imagine a world were you are not Working all the time. Imagine a Life without Stress.

Imagine a World where You don’t have to Play Political Games to Survive.

Imagine a world where You could enjoy Nature.

Imagine a World were You are able to Help without Being Payd.

Imagine a World were you are able to Create when You want to do this. Imagine a World without War and Violence. The only thing You have to do is Leave a Little Bit of Your Current Luxury behind.

If this happens the Downfall of the Bad Buck would be replaced by a tremendous Rise of Good Luck.

LINKS

How the Great Depression was created

About Derivatives, Accountants, Greed and other terrible problems in the Banking Industry

How the Proof of the Pudding is Really in the Eating

Monday, August 25th, 2008

When you want to know the truth you are looking for facts. This seems very evident but Philosophy and especially the field of Epistemology has spend a lot of time to find out if this Statement about Truth is really True.

The first step is to look up the definition of the word “fact“. We use Wordnet to do this. WordNet is a semantic lexicon for the English Language. The database contains about 150,000 words.

Fact: A piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred.
Fact: A statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened.
Fact: An event known to have happened or something known to have existed.
Fact: A concept whose truth can be proved.

The meaning of words changes in history. If you want to know how the meaning is changed you have to look up the Etymology of the word.

Fact: 1539, “action” especially “evil deed,” from L. factum “event, occurrence,” lit. “thing done,” from neut. pp. of facere “to do”. Usual modern sense of “thing known to be true” appeared 1632, from notion of “something that has actually occurred.”

When we combine the result of both dictionaries we see that the original meaning of the word “Fact” is-related to the word “Event”. Later around 1632 it changed into a concept “whose truth can be proved”.

To find more about the meaning of the word Event we can look for all the occurrences of this word in the sentences of English language. One of the scientists who spend a lot of time researching the meaning of the word “Event” is George Lakoff. He defined The Event Structure Metaphor.

A Metaphor Is-A Mapping. A Mapping Is-A Relation between two Domains, the Source and the Target.

The Event Structure Metaphor is one of the most widespread of all the conceptual metaphors in the world. It maps from the source domain of Space to the target domain of Events, and leads to the following concepts:

A State Is-A Location (a bounded region in space).
A Change Is-A Movement (into or out of bounded region).
A Cause Is-A Force.
An Action Is-A Self-Propelled Movement.
A Purpose Is-A Destination.
A Mean Is-A Path to destinations.
A Difficulty Is-A Blockage.
Expected Progress Is-A Travel Schedule.
A Schedule Is-A Virtual Traveler, who reaches pre-arranged destinations at pre-arranged times.
An External Event Is-A Large Moving Object.
A Long-term, purposeful activity Is-A Journey
.

An Event Is-A Blockage that prevents us to Move from One Destination to an other Destination in the Journey called Life. To Move from one Destination to an other Destination we are Propelling our Self. Sometimes we are propelled By something else, An External Event. If this Happens it feels like we are hit by a Large Moving Object.

When we are Hit by an External Event “things get out of hand” or “we are not able to keep a tight rein on the situation” or “we are not going with the flow” or “things take a turn for the worse“.

A Fact is an Event that Causes the Emotion of Frustration (Anger, Irritation, Sadness, Worry,..). An Event Forces us to Move Away from our Original Route, the Path that leads us to the Destination that we wanted to Reach in Life. We have to take a Detour.

What happened around 1632?

Around 1632 Francis Bacon advocated a new method for achieving knowledge, based on careful observation and eliminative induction. Bacon warned that effective reasoning must be freed from the “idolatrous” influence of human nature (Emotions & Imagination).

Francis Bacon started The Age of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment advocated reason as a means to establishing an authoritative philosophical system which would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the whole of reality. Much later Emmual Kant dedicated his Critique of Pure Reason to Francis Bacon.

What happened?

Facts were moved from the Emotions (Judgement, Opinion) to the Level of the Mind (Truth). With the help of Logic it would be possible to Prove Everything.

According to Aristotle there are four types of truth: universal affirmatives take the form: All S are P, universal negations take the form: No S are P, particular affirmatives take the form: Some S are P, particular negations take the form: Some S are not P. Later so called contingent truths were added. They are dependent on the situation/context.

The Quest for the Eternal Logical Truth is still going on. Many very bright minds have tried to find a solution but the terrible thing is that the Truth of a logical proposition is entirely dependent on the Truth of the Facts that are put into the Proposition. We are again in a State of Infinite Regress.

One of these bright minds was Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-1930). Ramsey lived and worked in Cambridge and was befriended with Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, J. M. Keynes and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ramsey created a theory called Pragmatism.

In his paper ‘Truth and Probability’, written in 1926, Ramsey shows that if people in their behaviour obey a set of axioms or rules, the measure of our ‘degrees of belief’ will satisfy the laws of probability. The Truth is highly related to Judgment and “if we have analysed judgment we have solved the problem of truth“.

“..it is, for instance, possible to say that a chicken believes a certain sort of caterpillar to be poisonous, and mean by that merely that it abstains from eating such caterpillars on account of unpleasant experiences connected with them. … An exact analysis of this relation would be very difficult, but it might well be held that in regard to this kind of belief the pragmatist view was correct, i.e. that the relation between the chicken’s behaviour and the objective factors was that the actions were such as to be useful if, and only if, the caterpillars were actually poisonous. Thus any set of actions for whose utility p is a necessary and sufficient condition might be called a belief that p, and so would be true if p, i.e., if they are useful“.

What Ramsey is telling is that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating“.

What happened?

We are finally back to square one! After about 400 years of Enlightment we have to admit that the only way to find the Truth is to find out if what we Think is true is really True. We don’t have to use very complicated reasoning to prove what we are already experiencing in the Real World.

LINKS

About the Age of Reason

About Pragmatism and Ramsay

About Truth

About The End of the Dollar

Monday, July 21st, 2008

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

The Financial System of the World is a special version of “Turtles all the way down“. At this moment one of the pillars of the US Financial System (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) is falling and many people hope it will be supported by a financial pillar, the US Government. The two pillars have financed 5.2 trillion dollars of mortgages (5.200.000.000.000).

Since 1970, the US Federal Government has run deficits for all but four years (1998-2001) adding to a total debt of 9.5 trillion of dollars (9.500.000.000.000). If you include entitlements such as Social Securityand Medicare the debt is $53 trillion—or $175,000 for every American—andrising.

A huge part of the debt is held by two pillars, the central banks of Japan and China. The Central Banks of China and Japan are slowly moving out of the Dollar. This pillar is falling also.

The Citizens of the US are the only turtles that are left. The US Government could raise taxes, reduce its spending or raise the interest rate. In all the cases the US Economy would fall into a recession. They are unable to do this. The US voters will never elect an American President who is raising taxes or will move its country into a recession. They will always vote for the Big Spender.

Below the last pillar is Emptyness, the Abyss, The Underworld, Hell. The Universe is floating in Nothingness. The Universe is floating because it is moving. Movement is the essence of the Universe.

The problem of Turtles all the Way Down (Infinite Regress) can be solved in a Circular, Rotating, Cyclic model. In a Circular model there is No cause and there is no End. Every point is a Beginning and an End. Every Cause comes back on Itself. In the End the US has to solve its own problems and the only way to solve its problems is to accept a Recession.

The US Financial System has generated a debt for more than 30 years. They were supported by other countries to expand their economy. These countries needed the US as a buyer of their products. They also needed the US to copy their Technology and their Science.

At this moment the Economic Activity in the World is moving to the East. The countries that supported the US the most, Japan and China, are now creating their own Cycle and their own market. This cycle is completed by the addition of India and Russia. In due time they don’t need the US Market, the US Technology and US Science anymore. The US has given them all the opportunities by Outsourcing many of their activities.

Japan and China are becoming friends again and they have their finger on the trigger of the financial gun. When they move into another currency or create their own currency the US financial system dies immedeatly. They don’t need a war to win the war.

Why We Need a Recession to Move to a Social Society

Friday, June 27th, 2008

In the Netherlands there is a discussion going on about a possible shortage of working power. In the near future there will be an abundance of old people (the baby-boomers) and a shortage of young people. The strange thing is that there are really enough people available to do what is needed but they are not qualified to do the job.

Everybody has to work. Parents with young children need external help to take care of their children. To make this possible the government is giving parents a tax benefit. To get this benefit the parents have to use an accredited childcare institution. The tax benefit created a huge demand for accredited child care. The huge demand created a shortage in certified experts. The booming childcare business has created a budget problem.

When I was young life was simple. Mothers took care of the children. Fathers went to work. Mothers were not paid to take care of the children.

When you move childcare from the “for free” to the “paid” zone of society you have to determine what an expert needs to know and what she or he has to do. You are formalizing childcare. Most of the people that are out of work are unable to acquire a certificate to work in the child-care business. The norms are too high.

You also need buildings, transport, managers, warehouse management systems, laws, law-enforcers, advisors, quality management systems, controllers, bookkeepers and many others things to create an institution. We are generating a higher level of activity in society than before.

When childcare was not formalized everybody was qualified to raise children. When the norms are formulated it becomes very clear that the people who were doing the task (the parents) can be divided into two groups the not-educated people and the educated people.

This starts a discussion about childcare in general. The end of the discussion is a new institution that is taking care of parents that are unable to raise children and the parents themselves. Again we are generating a higher level of activity in society than before.

What is really happening is a formalization of society. Society is moving from a stage where people were helping each other to a stage where you have to be paid to get help. Every interpersonal activity is changed into a transaction. When interpersonal activities are changed into a transaction people lose the feeling of responsibilty for the whole.

Transactional relationships are aimed at the short term. When you pay a person directly you don’t have to pay back in the future. Transactions destroy long-term reciprocity.

When you are rich you are able to pay for every thing. When you are poor you are unable to do this unless you are helped by others or by government. Government has to create laws and the laws contain conditions. When Government is paying you, you have to do something in return.

When you are out of work you have to do the work government is telling you to do. To work you always have to leave your house and go to another place. When you have to work you are unable to take care of your children.

The real problem is that we are too active in the formalized area of society. We are doing things that could be done in a more natural way. Taking care of others is a natural tendency of the human being. To do this we simply need more time.

To generate work we have created an immense not productive workforce in society, called the social services sector. A social service is really not social at all. It is a formalization of social activities. Social activities are managed by the emotions.

Formalized Emotions are very different from the Emotional Emotions. A formalized relationship is managed by a contract, procedures and norms. A social relationship is for free and is based on friendship and reciprocity.

When I was young life was simple. Children took care of their parents when they were old. The children were not paid to take care of their parents. Now their children are unable to help their parents and their parents are unable to help their children. Both are too busy or unable to help. Some of them are even not allowed to help because they have to stay busy in the formalized part of society.

The people who are unable to get a qualification are constantly trained by government. Many of them are unable to get a “usefull certificate“. Because they have to “work” they are not allowed to take care of their children. The care for their children is taken over by professionals paid by government.

The experts are getting a salary that is much higher than the unemployed ever could get. Perhaps the government could pay parents to take care of their own children and pay children to help their own parents.

I hope you see we are creating a spiralling loop and the end of the line is an imaginary disaster. It is an imaginary disaster because the problem is easily solved by reducing the amount of activities in society until people are able to help other people without being paid.

I hope you now understand why we need a recession. We need a recession to move to a more social society.

LINKS

About Vocation

About Calvinism

How the Hedge Funds are Starving a 100 Million People

Friday, April 25th, 2008

The Banking Business has created the Credit-Crunch. The Banking Business has created the Great Depression. The Banking Business has created many Bubbles. The Banking Business has advised people to buy shares while they knew the shares were highly overvalued. Now the Banking Business is stimulating the Food Crisis in the World.

 Analysis being carried out by World Food Program (WFP) estimates that about 100 million people have been pushed deeper into poverty by the high food prices.

The “Silent Tsunami” will affect more people on every continent than the real Tsunami in 2004. It will destroy more livelihoods and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime.

Everybody believes that Prices Rise when there is a Shortage of Something. The highest bidder takes all.

The main cause of the World Wide Food Shortage is Western Way of Producing, Selling and Wasting Food. We are Manipulating the Market and The Consumer but we are also destroying nature by fertilizers and genetical manipulated seeds. We are also throwing away a enormouss amount of food.

The Multi-Natioals produce genetic manipulated seeds, artificial fertilizers and artificial food. They control the Transportation, the Media, The Financial streams and the Governments (The World Bank). The multi-national food companies are making record profits.
 
The profit of Monsanto has doubled. Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertiliser companies, saw its income rise more than 12-fold. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

The Farmers at the beginning of the production lines are mostly poor. They will not profit from the rise of the prices of their products. This is not something new. The Poor get poorer and the Rich get richer. They are blocked to enter the Market. They are also blocked to produce their own natural fertilizers and their own natural seeds. Most of them are now unable to be self-sufficient. They have to buy food and y are unable to pay for it.

When you are very rich you can play with “the Fundamental Law of the Market“. You can buy a lot of goods, store them and create an artificial shortage. This game is called Speculation. The Multi-Nationals are creating an artificial shortage.

A very advanced Speculation Game is called Hedging.

When you are Hedging you use the Power of Money to Move the market UP to a certain point you want it to reach. If your hedge works out fine you leave the market when it Moves DOWN. At that time you let the “Bigger Fools” pay for the Downfall. At this moment the Tax-Payers are paying for the Downfall of the Speculators in the Housing Business. The Hedge Funds have already found a new Target, Hunger.

At this moment Hedge funds are Moving into the Food-business and they are making Big Money.

Commodity speculation spread long ago from standard products like oil and gold to anything edible and available for trade on the Chicago Futures Exchange. These days there are futures contracts for everything from wheat to oranges to pork bellies.

The futures market is a traditional tool for farmers to sell their harvests ahead of time. In a futures contract, quantities, prices and delivery dates are fixed, sometimes even before crops have been planted. Futures contracts allow farmers and grain wholesalers a measure of protection against adverse weather conditions and excessive price fluctuations. They can also help a farmer plan how much to plant for a given year.

But now speculators are taking advantage of this mechanism. They can buy futures contracts for wheat, for example, at a low price, betting that the price will go up. If the price of the grain rises by the agreed delivery date, they profit.

Some experts now believe these investors have taken over the market, buying futures at unprecedented levels and driving up short-term prices. Since last August, this mechanism has led to a doubling in the price of rice-including the 500,000 tons that the Philippine government plans to buy in early May to address its own shortage.

Experts are already discussing what they call a “Super Cycle,” set off by constantly growing demand in China, and by farmers unable, in the long term, to keep up with that demand as they sow their seed and harvest their crops. The planet has only a finite amount of land for farming.

Greg Warner has worked in the grain wholesaling business for more than two decades. His office sits a block away from the Chicago Futures Exchange. He’s an analyst with the firm AgResource, and he says what is happening now in the wheat market is unprecedented.

“What we normally have is a predictable group of sellers and buyers-mainly farmers and silo operators,” he says. But the landscape has changed since the influx of large index funds. Fund managers seek to maximize their profits using futures contracts, and prices, says Warner, “keep climbing up and up.”

He’s calculated that financial investors now hold the rights to two complete annual harvests of a type of grain traded in Chicago called “soft red winter wheat.”

Wagner is stunned by such developments. He sees them as evidence that capitalism is literally consuming itself.

One of the major players in this business is ABN AMRO. When somebody asked the manager of this business about ethics he answered that he was not interested in a discussion about this subject. “We are aware of the current discussions relating to agricultural commodities but we make the drills, but others have to do the drilling”.

The World Food Program is asking everybody to donate money. They need more money (775 million!) than the “real” Tsunami to solve the problems of the 100 million. The sad thing is that donating is helping the Hungry but is also helping the Rich. It helps them to sustain their Gamble.

In the end your donation will be payd to a very Rich Person who has enough money to buy an enormous amount of Food.

This also happens when Governement is “helping” the WFP. It is a very intelligent trick to move money from the Public Domain to the Private Domain. In the end You pay More and They Increase their Wealth. IT happened with the Credit Crunch. It happened with the Great Depression. It happens all the time.

Just like every Bubble the Food Bubble will also burst at a certain moment. It is not difficult to imagine when this will happen. It will happen when a very small part of the world is able to pay for the food.

The Bubble is already infecting the Economy of the Rich Countries. When a Very amount of people is able to buy Food the End State will be reached and the Prices will drop. At that moment The Hedge Funds will move into another area of (artificial) Shortage.

The poor people in the West are already unable to pay for the food. At a certain moment the Middle Class will feel the effects. When the Poor People in the Rich Countries will experience a Food Shortage they will Riot.

Just like the poor people in the Underdeveloped Countries are Rioting. When the Riots start in the Getto’s of the Big Cities the Rich will become Afraid. They will Ask for Protection of the Police or the Military. In the end they have to surround there homes with walls and create there own food supplies.

The rising prices not only affect the Poor. They also affect the Policy of the FED to stop the Credit Crunch. Higher prices stimulate Inflation and Inflation can only be stopped by an Increase of the Interest Rates. Higher Interest Rates will deepen the state of Depression.

Is this what the Investors really want?

The Ethics are not of My Concern. They are the Business of Somebody Else.

We Produce Weapons but we are not responsible for the Use of the Weapons.

We Fight a War but we are not responsible for the Killing of Innocent people.

We Advice people but we are not responsible for What we are Advicing them.

We Pollute the World but somebody else has to Clean Up.

We Use all the Resources of the Earth but somebody else has to Take Care of our Children.

In the advanced Western Civilization we just look at the Profit. Investors are playing their hedge in the Global Casino and just don’t realize that they are gambling away the daily food supply of the world’s poorest people.

In the old, “Savage”, civilizations the Decision Makers had to Evaluate their Decisions on the effect of Seven Generations. They Knew they needed Nature, their Neighbours and their Offspring to Survive.

Funny.

Every Company has turned itself into a Green Company. They want to “Save the Earth”.

Are the Poor People on this Earth not Included in their Policy?

I know Why. You Know Why. Money makes the World go Round?

My Advice:

Always Take Responsibility for Every Action.

We are all Part of an Ecology and someday the Ecology will React and You will encounter the same things Others are Experiencing.

Do You want to Live in an Environment where You are deprived of Food? I don’t think so. Nobody Wants that.

REFLECT BEFORE YOU ACT.

LINKS

About Ethics in Banking

Are we Heading at a Total Collapse of all Systems?

Monday, December 17th, 2007
When I finished my blog about the Great Depression in 1929 I wanted to write about the Great Depression of 2008. I was convinced this would happen again. I am not the only one. Many known and unknown people are warning about a worldwide economic disaster (a deep recession).

The Central Banks are pumping money into the market to prevent this to happen but to their big surprise the market is not able to use this money because the banks are afraid to lend money to other banks because there is no trust at all.

They want to revive the system but the system is in a very special and dangerous state called StagFlation. It is slowing down AND speeding up in terms of prices and the creation of money. Stagflation is something the Economist cannot handle. It is a Catch 22-situation. What you do, it always works against you.

Another problem is caused by the collective believe that things are going wrong. People stop to invest and to buy which generates a downward spiral. You can lower the interest rates to zero but when many people are afraid to buy they don’t need a credit.

The collective believe-system is the most important factor. When the Central Bank is lowering the rates it is telling two stories at the same time. The first story is that it is doing something to help but it also confirms the believe that something is really wrong.

The second story is more powerful than the first story. People don’t believe in the financial system anymore. It has destroyed itself. What the people need is self-confidence and a way to solve their own problems but The System that is there to help them is in trouble itself.

The only way out is that people start to cooperate without the “interference” of the big complex dying systems. The Rich could simply lend their money directly to the “poor” entrepreneurs. There are enough people available to create new businesses but they are simply stopped by the incomprehensible System that has lost its own Entrepreneurship long ago.

The Rich, the Investors, don’t want do this because they don’t know how to trust an Entrepreneur. They want to be helped by experts who really don’t know what they are talking about because they are way beyond the practices of real life. The experts live in a highly abstract world that is dominated by Models and Models have nothing to do with Reality. They are a product of the Imagination. To solve our problems we have to move back to Earth and become Practical again.

In a blog I explained to so called Domino-effect. When one domino falls all the domino’s fall. At this moment all the banking-domino’s are preventing the domino-effect to take place. They are afraid they will lend something to another bank that will fall.

The banks are unable to show their credibility because they are unaware of their own risks. The financial structure of a bank has become incomprehensible because of the very complex products based on expectations and the failing IT-Systems that are unable to show what is really happening. Everything is connected to everything. The financial community is a highly complicated knot.

Many people are trying to comprehend the current situation but they are missing the right theory. Suddenly I remembered the Resilience Alliance (RA). They have created a beautiful theory to explain ecologies. It is not difficult to see that the financial system is an ecology.

RA has defined an adaptive cycle with four distinct phases: growth, conservation, collapse and reorganization. The cycle contains two major phases, the fore-loop (growth and conservation) and the back-loop (collapse and reorganization).
At that time an Innovation in Religion came into the World. This innovation can be summarized by the famous statement of Socrate Know Thyself. When we Know Our Selves we will be inspired by our Inner Light. Know Thyself has been translated into many practical approaches like Socratic Learning, Socratic Decision Making (Sociocracy) and of course the Cooperation.

The most important point is not to believe in the Apocalyps but to understand that a collapse is always followed by growth and conservation but on a new level. Believing in the End will generate the End. Our collective imagination is one of the strongest forces on Earth. Look for the signs of the new structure that will enfold out of the old one. Join people that are driven by Spirit and Soul. They are everywhere.

The back-loop is a rapid phase. During the fore-loop wealth is slowly accumulated and competitive processes lead to a few dominant species. The fore-loop destroys diversity. This is what happening in nature and it looks like the same thing is happening in other human ecologies. When most of the diversity is gone the ecology is highly connected and vulnerable to external influences. When something unexpected happens the total ecology collapses.

My feeling is that we are now in a state were many ecologies are collapsing at the same moment. They are collapsing because Nature is collapsing at an impressive speed. We are not heading for a Great Depression but we are heading for the Big Collapse.

The back-loop is a rapid phase. Suddenly the Weather changes with an incredible speed. Suddenly the Financial Market is evaporating and we are unable to do anything. Suddenly major conflicts start and we are unable to manage them with the current systems.

According to RA after the collapse the ecology reorganizes itself by jumping back to a “hidden” state that was stored in its memory a very long time ago.

How far back do we have to go in history to find our rescue? In another blog I wrote about the destructing cycle that was caused by a new insight that was given to the world by Socrate and the Buddha.

The House of Morgan or How the Great Depression was Created

Monday, December 10th, 2007
Black Tuesday

Black Tuesday

Black Tuesday, October 29 1929 a giant economic implosion took place.

This implosion was the official start of the Great Depression.

The  implosion took place because Something or Somebody was pushing the economy UP while it wanted to go down. An artificial Up-movement of the Economy is called a Bubble.

J.P. Morgan was highly involved with the introduction of Fascism in Europe and the US.

He believed that the major enemy in the World were the Communists.

He was befriended with Mussolini and Hitler and organized a fascists putsch in the US by his own private army, the American Legion.

The putsch failed. The legion was used as a recruiting base for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.

Morgan organized the US Communist Party to create an internal external enemy. Morgan used many other dirty tricks to accomplish his goals.

The British Empire was the largest empire in human history. At the time of the Great Depression it controlled a quarter of the world’s population (458 million) and total land area.

The ruling class of the Empire came out of old families and was trained in special institutions like Eton and Cambridge.

The British Empire was based on the ideology of “Free trade”. “Free trade” was necessary to expand the markets of the British Factories. The factories needed raw materials, logistics and markets.

When a country or a person blocked the free trade the British Army removed the obstacles.

Free trade was organized in Trading Companies. They created strategic outposts. When the outposts controlled the region the British Management System (Law, Education) was implemented.

The main goal of the System was to keep the natives under control, and to develop them slowly, and along their own lines.

The British Elite was very practical. They were conservative men with relativistic notions about what forms of government suited peoples (or ‘races’) best. They didn’t go in for ideal systems.

They also knew they did not have the numbers of personnel to try to revolutionize her subjects so they always used local collaborators. They practiced the method of “indirect rule”.

The American Friends of the British Elite shared the commercial attitude of their British friends. They opened up new markets and protected their trade.

They even invented a new tool, Financial Manipulation. In every other aspect they were very different. They were highly ideological and therefore not practical.

They were convinced they were the carriers of the Best Ideology on Earth, Capitalism.Their first priority was to Destroy the Evil Empire and the friends of the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union.

In contrary to their British friends they were not interested in indirect rule. When an enemy was destroyed they left the country and were convinced everybody would embrace their System.

The Power of the House of Morgan was lessened by the New Deal of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt organized a Social Contract that gave more influencers the possibility to take part in the US Government.

The Financial Power of Morgan never disappeared. His group is still behind many influential financial companies (Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase) and institutions like the World Bank.

JPMorgan is reincarnated in the person of Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase). He is playing the same game as his predecessor and is behind many of the intelligent tricks that are now performed behind the scenes in Washington.

Is History Repeating Itself??

The Economy was bubbling because the Government was “pumping” a huge amount of money into the economy. Therefore it was very easy to lend, to spend and to gamble with money on the stock-exchange.

Many people gambled enormous amounts of money on the Stock-Market but on Black Tuesday they lost their bet. They lost their bet because suddenly nobody believed the Up-state would continue.

Why was the US Government pumping so much money into the Economy?

The strange thing happened that the major money pumping engine (the FRS) was controlled by the Government of the British Empire. The US Government was not involved. It was totally powerlesss.The British Empire needed money to maintain the backing of the British Pound (The Golden Standard) and the “old boys” network in the Financial Business just made a deal.

The Government of the British Empire was controlled by an Elite. Lord Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank were of the same club. They arranged the Bubble.

Behind the Elite was one Very Important Person, J.P. Morgan. He was the sole owner of a small company called the House of Morgan. The House of Morgan held effective control of the American government for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Morgan used the US central banking system to increase the ability to lend more money than he possessed. US Citizens paid taxes and their money was used to realize the plans of Morgan and his friends.

Morgan helped his friends (including the Bush family(!)) to get rid of their huge debts and to “buy” many important US companies (AT&T, US Steel).

After Black Tuesday the “friends of Morgan” held directorships in 167 industrial concerns, banks, railroads, and utilities. They controlled the most important media in the United States, including the New York Times.
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