Posts Tagged ‘crisis’

Many Reasons to Believe that the Economy will not Recover in a Short Time

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

The Unemployement and the Stock Market are rising for some time now. A new Stock Market Bubble is building up and will explode in the near future. The biggest Bubble is certainly the US Deficit Bubble.

The Stock Market Bubble and the Deficit Bubble will explode as soon as the major creditors (China, India, …) of the US will move out of the Dollar. This is happening already.

The Customers are the backbone of the Economy and the Leaders understand very well that the Economy is governed by Psychology. So Bad News is hidden en Good News is exaggerated. The Expectations of Analysts are always beaten and the downfall is falling slower than before.

The Economy is still in a terrible state and this state is getting worse every day. The unemployement is still rising and will rise for a very long time because companies are getting broke or are rationalizing everything that is possible.

They replace their employees by IT-Technology and Cheap Labor. The customers are not buying, they are saving more and more money for a rainy day or are paying back their debts.

Saving money will not stimulate the economy. It stimulates unemployment. The rising unemployement results in more foreclosures and problems with credit card debts. The Economic Downturn is just at its beginning.

Economist John Williams says that– if the unemployment rate was calculated as it was during the Great Depression the unemployment figures for July 2009 rose to 20.6%. According to an article summarizing the projections of former International Monetary Fund Chief Economist and Harvard University Economics Professor Kenneth Rogoff and University of Maryland Economics Professor Carmen Reinhart,… unemployment could rise to 22% within the next 4 years or so.”

The Scenario of the Current Downturn is highly comparable with the Scenario of the Great Depression with one exception. The current Downturn is much deeper than the other. We are approaching the Biggest Global Economic Crisis in Human History.

The current investors base their policy on positive news and ignore the bad news. They believe the economy will rise when the customer-confidence is rising or when the downfall of the economy is “slowing down” or “bottoming”. They don’t see that a slowing down of a downfall is still a downfall.

The investors, the Doves, act just like the behavioral economists predict they will act. They read the headlines, believe the Hawks and are not aware of the (Money) Illusion the Government, the Media and the Banks are creating. The Hawks know better. They buy Silver, Gold and certainly the best investment, Oil.

Nouriel Roubini has a more realistic view on the economy. In his article Ten Risks to Global Growth he analyses the risks that could block the recovery of the economy and his conclusion is highly pessimistic.

According to Roubini the major cause of the crisis is overspending. Overspending is a normal activity when the Kondratiev-Cycle is in the state of Autumn. The debts are always repayed in the next phase, Winter. In the Kondratiev Winter the economy is purged and cleansed. This phase started around 2000 and will be finished around 2013. In the Winter-State you have to stay in cash or invest is Gold and Silver.

At this moment the investors don’t know what currency they have to chose for their cash-reserves. Usually the Dollar was a Save Heaven but the current policy of the FED to expand the amount of Dollars to an almost unbelievable amount is seen as a huge risk.

The Creditors (China, India, ..) of the US are already creating an alternative currency and are secretly and slowly moving out of the Dollar. If the Trust in the Dollar has gone the US Economy will go bankrupt.

The big problem with the current Cycle is that we have moved to the Level of Earth. In the last downfall of the Kondratiev Cycle other parts of the world were decoupled. They moved in a complementary mode. The Down of one part of the Earth was compensated by an Up somewhere else.

At this moment the complementary parts are synchronized and act and react according to the same rhythm. This rhythm is related to a longer term cycle that almost nobody is aware of. This cycle with a periodicity of 250 years is called the Secular Cycle.

The current level of integration of the World Economy is very dangerous. The production-processes of the Earth are highly rationalized and integrated. When one process stops the rest of the processes also has to stop.

The very high level of rationalization causes cascades or avalanches. The fast and slow avalanches generate sudden bursts of unemployment and financial disasters. The Car Industry and the Financial Industry are good examples. At this moment the avalanches start new avalanches in completely different branches of the tree of the World Economy.

The Crisis in the Banking Industry puts a large part of the Corporate Sector under severe financial stress. Firms that in the past would have been able to roll over their loans, bonds and debts now face a liquidity crisis that may lead them into costly debt restructuring.

This will affect the Banking Industry and will also put a high strain on the Bailout capacity of the Governments who are not able to leant money or inflate money until eternity.

The only solution that is left is to Rationalize even more than the Companies were planning to do. Their only solution is to speed up the use of IT (Use the Internet) and fire the employees. It is very clear that the use of IT in Companies is still in its infancy. Many manual activities can be replaced by software. The total effect will be a worsening of the current crisis.

To stop the cascades governments are starting to Protect and Regulate their Economies. The Worldwide Cooperative Institutions are losing their grip and the Free Market Economy is on its return.

Big Companies are splitted according to the old Boundaries of Power. The expansion and integration of the EG is blocked because the member states suddenly have conflicting objectives. The Rich Countries don’t want to help the Poor Countries because the Rich Countries are getting poorer with the minute.

Not only the poor member states of the EG are getting into big trouble. The same applies to the Underdeveloped Countries. The poor Countries of the World are on their own. Everybody is in the Survival mode and The Fittest, The Rich, will as always Survive.

The world is not only hit by a Economic and a Cultural crisis. The world is also hit by a Climate Crisis. Although human activity plays an important (negative) role the Cycle of the Climate related to the activities of our Sun and the Movement of Earth in our System (the Precession Cycle) is much more important.

The current change in Climate is irreversible and will have a major effect on the world economy. Climate change and ecological misuse are the major factor why Societies collapse.

The last factor and perhaps most important factor is the Energy Consumption of the World. This consumption is not only affecting the Climate but it also facilitates a huge highly integrated Transport-System.

This System is the Backbone of the Integrated Value-Chains of the Western World. The Western World is completely dependent on the transport system for its Industrial Production and the Supply of Food.

The Transport System has a devastating effect on the poor countries in the World. To make enough money to survive they have to export their products to the Western Markets ignoring their own needs.

It is certain that the supply of oil and gas is lower than the increasing demand. The resources all over the world are going down. The total effect of this all will be a dramatic rise in price. This will affect the rich countries and in particular the US. They are already the major importer of energy in the World and when you import something you have to export something else to keep the financial balance in order.

As you already know the deficit of the US is spectacular and the only reason the US is not broke is the special role of the Dollar. If the economy recovers the demand and the prices will rise and the US Economy will slow down immediately.

What is Going to Happen?

Every scenario leads to a long term decline of the Economy, our Culture and our Civilization. The theory of the short term and long term cycles is right and it is very stupid to ignore these theories.

According to the Panarchy Model the world is too connected and this leads to an increasing rigidity in its goal to retain its state. The rigidity reduces resilience and the capacity of the system to absorb change, thus increasing the threat of abrupt change. The world is unable to cope with the changes of climate and culture that are happening now. Therefore we will see the collapse of the accumulated connections and the destruction of bound up knowledge and capital.

The highly integrated structures of the Earth (the Cooperative Institutions, the Big Companies, Governments AND the Transport System) are bound to desintegrate. The impact on the local structures is immens. Communities will have to grow their own food, manufacture and repair their own tools, create their own currency etc etc on a local level again.

Most of these structures have outsourced these functions to places far away and don’t have the skills nor the resources to do this. The fittest, the Haws, will survive but it is unclear if the Doves will accept this situation forever. A Rise of the Masses just like the French Revolution in 1789 (almost 250 years ago!) is possible.

The world is moving to a very fast transformation. The only thing that can be said when we use the Panarchy Model is that it will move back to a stable state before the expansion started and start all over again. The Wisdom of the Old Civilizations that survived earlier Collapses is very valuable. These lessons are very easy to comprehend.

Civilizations die because the humans don’t want to Move with the Cycles, don’t Cooperate and don’t Respect Mother Nature. When Civilizations Collaps even the Hawks lose Everything!

LINKS

Peter Schiff, Why the US Economy will Collaps this Year

How the Fed is cheating the citizins. About Deflation.

Why the Labormarket is Much Worse than we Think

Why the Current Crisis is comparable with the Great Depression

About Behavioral Economics, Why Hawks always Win and Doves always Lose

Nouriel Roubini, Ten Risks to Global Growth

About The Kondratiev Winter and the Generations Theory

About the End of the US Dollar

Why the US Defense Budget will Destroy the US Economy

Peter Turchin, About Secular Cycles

The Complete Text of the Book of Turchin

About the Problems the Real Estate Market is Facing

Why Rationalization is the cause of the current Crisis

About Cascades and Avalanches

Jared Diamond, Why Societies Collapse

About the World Food Crisis

Jeff Rubin, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller

About Peak Oil, The Model that Predicts the End of Oil and Gas

Why I have Decided to Leave ABN AMRO

Monday, September 29th, 2008

I am a customer of ABN AMRO for more than 40 years. Last Friday I received a letter from ABN AMRO. They told me that the local branch office of ABN AMRO will be closed and integrated into a local branch office of Fortis.

 One day later negotiations started to save Fortis from bankruptcy. Today I read that ABN AMRO has to be sold to another bank. This will not solve the problem at all. It will speed up the Process of Desintegration of the Banking Industry that has started ten years ago.

 Just one year ago I wrote three blogs about the Merger of Fortis and ABN AMRO. Based on my own experience with the Merger of ABN and AMRO I predicted a possible failure of this merger. I predicted a possible failure because I did not believe the Technical Infrastructure and the Culture of both banks could be easily matched. I was Right. The Credit Crunch was the Cause of the Downfall but the Culture and the IT-Systems were the real reason. The Aim of Management was to make Big Deals (to get Big Bonusses) and the Systems were unable to provide the Right Data.

I have been working in the Money Market for a long time. In my opinion the biggest problem in the Banking Industry is the relationship between the Accountable, Bookkeeping, Systems and the Activities of Dealers. A small part of the Dealers are and were taking Enormous Risks by creating very complicated financial constructions (Derivatives). The Auditors (and the Management) of Banks have lost Oversight a very long time ago. This problem increases in severity when banks are merged.

Every time when a New Technology is implemented the Quality of the ICT-systems deteriorates. This has happened so many times that nobody really understands what the IT-Systems are really doing. Every time when a merger is accomplished the financial data of a bank (or other company) deteriorate. Two of more deteriorated systems are connected creating a bigger mess. Every time when a merger is accomplished the people who have an understanding of the ICT-systems know less about the Systems.

When a Merger takes place the motivated and skillful employees leave the “sinking ship”. The people that remain become “apathic”. They perform their duty in a “nine to five”-mode. Innovation stops. External advisory companies (or worse) outside outsourcing companies take over the maintenance and the development of the software. The quality of the software deteriorates again. The problem increases when packages or software layers are implemented. This happened in every bank around the world.

When I worked with ABN AMRO the biggest mess in IT was always created in the US. The main reason was the “opportunistic” attitude of the Management or the entrepeneurs attitude of the Management. They experimented with everything they could find but never finished anything. The US Financial System was far behind the Dutch Financial System in terms of Products and Supervision. Everybody believed the US was the most innovative in everything but they were certainly not the most advanced in Banking and IT.

 ABN AMRO was one of the bad performers in the Consumer Banking Industry in the Netherlands. The personnel of the Bank were not motivated for a long time. The main reason was the Management. Everything was decided at the top in big Staff Departments. The Branches were forced to implement what they had designed.

 The Management of the Bank loved to do Big Deals with Big Companies. ABN and AMRO were Deal-Making companies and were forced to move into the Consumer Market when the employees of all the companies in the Netherlands were forced to open bank-accounts. The Customer was never priority number one.

The decision structure of the Bank was highly complex and changed all the time. Employees at the branches were not allowed to take initiative. When they had taken initiative it took a long time before the decision was made. Most of the time the answer was negative.

The forced merger with Fortis decreased the motivation of the employees. It increased the complexity of the IT-Systems and the decision structure.

Fortis needed money and many parts were sold to other banks. Every time the Organization and the ICT-systems of the bank had to be divided in many parts. Before this process was even settled a new split was announced. This process was repeated until today.

The Consumer Banking Division of ABN AMRO, the “beautiful pearl” Fortis was after, was carefully protected. The integration of this part with Fortis proceeded. Many people moved to Brussels to create and implement a plan. Many outside advisors earned a lot of money again. Nobody had any oversight. A few weeks ago somebody finally decided to merge the branch-offices. They created new organization structures, appointed new managers, talked with the employees and send an announcement to their customers. This announcement was received last Friday! Two days later all the projects have been stopped and the employees of Fortis are leaving ABN AMRO. Nobody knows what to do!

The financial people were constantly trying to understand what the Risks were. Everytime a new problem arose and the Board had to take action. The message to the outside world changed all the time and the investors lost their faith in Fortis. The End of the (Credit) Line was reached last Friday!

A few days ago somebody decided ABN AMRO had to be sold to another bank to create enough cash to pay the current debts. The process of integration has to be reversed and a new process of integration has to be started with another Bank.You don’t have to be an expert to understand what will happen. The end of this process will be Total Chaos.

I am not afraid I will lose my Savings. The Government will take care.

I am not afraid to lose my shares. I have sold them a long time ago.

I am not afraid the bookkeeping systems of the Bank will finally break down and ABN AMRO will deny I am a Customer or present completely different data about my savings-account.

I am sure many things will go wrong. During my time as a customer of ABN AMRO the amount of mistakes that were made increased. Most of the mistakes were small but some of them really cost me a lot of time and money.

I am afraid  nobody will be able to help me when things go wrong. I just want a little bit of Service. Nothing More. I have decided to leave ABN AMRO. I am moving to RABO-bank.

I hope they will not buy ABN AMRO or merge with another bank. If this happens I have to find another Bank but I really don’t know where to go. At that time I probably have to buy Gold or another Object that keeps its value a long time ago. I really don’t know what will be valuable in the future.

Perhaps I have to start a farm and grow my own food at a place that will not be affected by the rising of the sea-level or big tornado’s or big earthquakes or heavy rain or intense drought or intense cold when the Ice-Age starts.

LINKS

 About the Merger of Fortis and ABN AMRO (Culture)

About the Merger of Fortis and ABN AMRO (Software)

About the Merger of Fortis and ABN AMRO (The Bank of the Heart)

About the Crisis in IT (About Software Layers)

About the Crisis in IT (About Outsourcing)

 About the Crisis in IT (About ERP Packages)

About the Crisis in the Banking Industry (Avalanches)

About the Crisis in the Banking Industry (Fraud)

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the End of the Banking System

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

I left the Banking Industry in 1997 because I did not want to be part of an environment where cooperation and compassion was gone. At that time I expected a major crisis. It took ten years until the crisis of the Banking Industry was very visible to everybody.

Until now I don’t think many people are aware of what is really happening and what will finally happen. We are approaching the End of the Banking System. In this blog I will show you that everybody was aware of the reasons behind the crisis. The reasons are extreme greediness and incompetence.

The solution to the crisis is simple. We are able to create a New System with Ease. It is just a matter of time when this will happen.

Let me start with two citations out of an article of Fortune April 1, 2008: “half the huge gains from 2003 to mid-2007 could be attributed to increased leverage – otherwise known as gambling with borrowed money – that magnified earnings in a boom. If a firm’s portfolio is leveraged at 33 to 1, it takes a mere drop of 3% to wipe out its entire capital“. “The compensation system is a fundamental problem. The system rewards swashbuckling behavior by everyone from traders to CEOs“.

Bankers are Gambling with Your Money. When they Win they get huge bonusses. When they Lose You Pay their Debts. You Pay their Debts because Your Investment has evaporated and/or because You Pay more Taxes.

Related post: Casinos en ligne .

The Investment Bankers know everything that is happening in the Market months before You know What is Happening. They are not allowed to use this knowledge (Chinese Walls) but Bankers are Humans and Sometimes they Forget to Keep their Mouths Shut.

The Chinese Wall is an ethical barrier between different divisions of a financial institution to avoid conflict of interest. A Chinese Wall is said to exist, for example, between the corporate-advisory area and the brokering department to separate those giving corporate advice on takeovers from those advising clients about buying shares. In spite of Chinese Walls, these conflicts of interest allegedly arose during the heyday of the Dot/Com era, when financial research analysts published dishonest positive analysis on companies in which they, or related parties, owned shares.

The U.S. government has since passed laws strengthening the Chinese Wall concept (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley Act) with the desire to more carefully formalize and prevent such conflicts.The big problem with procedures is that they are imaginary.

In reality people always find a way to avoid procedures. It all comes down to two things Personal Ethics and Transparent Working Methods implemented in “simple” IT-Systems. As you will see later the Personal Ethics is highly surpressed by the Corporate Culture and the IT-Systems are exceptional Complex.

 Now two citations out of an article of Bank Director, Second Quarter 2003 by John R. Engen.

The past few years have witnessed the big-money failures of institutions, due to fraud or risky business strategies“”But L. William Seidman, FDIC chairman in the Reagan and Bush administrations, says regulators shouldn’t be judged too harshly. The industry turned in record profits of $105.4 billion in 2002, up 21% from the previous year“. “To go through the stock-market drop we’ve had, 9/11, and everything else without a major banking problem shows the value of having someone looking over your shoulder“.

The Regulators knew and know about the Fraud and Risky Business Strategies but their Theory is simple. When the Banks make a Profit Everything Works Fine. The Banks earned the Profit by Gambling. The Regulators just watch over the shoulder of the Banks and are Very Happy about the Gambling System. It always Cures Itself. Some People Win, Some People Lose. It is all in the Game. Funny Enough the Winners are Always situated in the environment of the Banking Business and the losers are Small Investors.

A few citations out of an articles about Index Funds in The New York Times (May 17, 2008): “It has been long established that even most active fund managers fail to beat the overall market on a regular basis”"Stock bubbles are examples of huge inefficiencies, in which prices get completely out of whack for months and even years at a time” “We have people investing tens of billions of dollars in index funds and they are getting drawn into bubbles“.

The Stock Market is a Gambling Machine and the Value of your Stocks has nothing the do with the Real value of Your Stocks. Nobody is able to predict the effects of the manipulations of “Greedy” Bankers on the Market. The only people that really profit are the bankers themselves. They create the Stock Bubbles and Collect the Bonuses. The real value of your stocks is the dividend a company pays to his investors. Many Stocks are Highly Overvalued.

Let us move to the Employees. A few citations out of New York Times (May 16, 2008):

You’re seeing a very, very inconsistent message to employees,” “It’s, ‘I don’t know when it’s going to happen, it may be tomorrow, it may be next month; we may be able to keep you, we may not.’ “banks are keeping employees in the dark about the size and timing of layoffs”. “She did not return to her office and ended up asking the bank to send her the photos of her son that she kept on her desk”. “many laid-off employees are not allowed to return to their desks, because the banks fear departing employees will try to take valuable colleagues or clients with them” “Euphemisms for layoffs are making the rounds too. Banks do not just fire people anymore. They engage in “head count reduction,” “reduction in force” and “redundancies.” And gallows humor is rampant. One joke: A banker calls a colleague and asks, “Are you busy? Or are you lying?”

Investment Banks use Fear to Manipulate Their Employees. You Never Know if you are able to Keep your Job. When You Live in Fear You never tell the Truth. You are Busy or you are Lying.

When You have to Perform to keep You’re Job You have to take High Risks. You keep you’re mouth about these Risks because in a Fear Based Culture You never talk about Failures. You hide them and Hope Nobody will See. When You tell Somebody about the big problems that could happen You are Fired because Everybody Knows and Nobody Wants To Know. “Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the deluge”)(Louis XV).

Again the New York Times (May 17, 2008):

Few employers want us around for 40 years, so our income is likely to have ups and downs and disappear altogether for brief periods between jobs. Saving for retirement is now mostly our responsibility, too. Health insurance, for those of us who have it and manage to keep it, requires increasingly large amounts of money out of our pockets. The list goes on and on”. “As fewer people have pensions and more retirees live longer, an increasing number of people may need financial help from their children” “Financial planners may not have all the answers, or the best answers, all of the time” “Thankfully, a number of Web communities and blogs have grown up around almost every aspect of spending and saving“.

Many more people will be Without a Pension. They have Lost their Investment at the Stock Market. Perhaps You even have to help you’re Parents. To do this You have to Save Money but You don’t know what to do with the Money You have Saved. The best way to get an independent advice is to use Networks of Experienced Customers. Never Ask a Bank to Give you an Advice.

And the Customers. Citations out of the Telegraph (16/05/2008):

The conventional wisdom in financial markets is that the time to move back into bank stocks is just after a slew of rights issues has depressed prices. There are, however, good reasons not to give the banking sector the benefit of the doubt. At the best of times, as Anthony Bolton, the fund manager who ran Fidelity’s Special Situations fund for many years, observes, banks “are the most opaque of all companies”. With a building materials company, you more or less know that, barring fraud, the right amount of stock is there. With a bank, it is much harder for investors to understand the assets on the balance sheet; and in the course of the credit crisis, it has transpired that the banks themselves experienced severe difficulties in this area“.

Nobody Understands the Financial Practises of a Bank. Even the Bankers Themselves don’t Understand what they are Doing. I am not convinced Banks have kept all the Data about You in the Right Order. Someday You will Find Out that You’re Savings are Gone and Nobody Knows Why.

It does not help to create Chinese Walls when Nobody Knows what is really happening. The Controllers are and were unable to understand the complicated financial structures that were created. The Book-Keeping systems are not Covering the Truth. Even very Bright Mathematicians are unable to value the Complicated Financial Transactions. The Effect is that Dealers are able to go their own way without a proper monitoring instrument. This has created many “unexpected” situations where low-level Dealers were able to build High-Risk Positions for a Long Time without the Knowledge of the Management. When the Gambling failed the Bank lost billions.

Reactions of readers to this Column:

I still think banks are greedy and lack integrety but they will bounce back because they are essential to a capitalist system” How can anyone believe a word they now say? Furthermore they remain in position, collecting their millions”. “It is the real investors namely pension savers and private investors who have no meaningful say and ultimately pay the price for this corrupt state of affairs, deception and lack of accountability” “Don’t let the politicians throw our money at bailing these irresponsible bankers out” “I am suffering in this downturn, and feel worried about the future. But we all have had a hand in this fiasco and we all can be affected by events (floods, droughts, disease, terrorism, earthquakes, storms and wars) which not wanted by anyone, we must plan for“.

The Customers are Powerless and Very Angry but there is no Alternative. We have to Live with the Greedy, non-Ethical Capitalistic System.

It is wrong to associate Banks with the Capitalistic System. Everywhere in the World people are Saving and Borrowing Money. The fundamental principle that was lost is to take Responsibility for what You are doing with the Money of Others. There is nothing wrong when you Gamble with you’re own money but don’t Gamble with the Money of Others. It is as simple as that.

My Conclusion:

There is Really Nothing that stops Us (the Customers) to start a Bank of our Own. The Technology is there and the Customers are really fed up with the Current System.

There are already Customers who are advising Customers for nothing. It will be very easy to transfer money without the Use of the Banking Payment Systems. If we agree on one principle, “You are trusted until you prove the opposite” it will be very easy to make a loan. There are already Systems Operational who are doing this. They are called Cooperations.

Nobody is taking the initiative to create a new Banking Infrastructure. Everybody is waiting for Everybody.

The Regulators wait and see. They hope the System will recover. I think it has died recently and nothing will help us to revive the dead body.

Why Psychiatrist are Unable to Cure their own Mental Disease

Monday, August 20th, 2007

psychiatry wardI have been involved with mental illness all my life.In my fathers family many people were mentally ill.

 

My grandmother was taken to a mental prison after the birth of her last child and staid there all her life. She died before I was born.

My aunt was sexually abused when she was young. My uncle was a simple friendly person who was only capable of taking care of animals and gardens.

He was really too friendly (not assertive). Many people took advantage of him. He ended his life in a mental prison where he was incapable of doing anything. His friends, the animals and the plants where left out of the prison because there was a shortage in specialists to “help him”.

 

The only thing he could do was sit, eat and worry. To stop his worrying he had to take pills. Many years later he died of a heart-attack. He never found the harmony nature could provide him with.

 

My father was a talent in handling people that were mentally disturbed. He understood what they were saying and what they needed. I have inherited his talent.

 

My father was born in 1909. Just like all his brothers he was a farmer. In 1940 he was taken prisoner by the Germans, escaped and found my mother far away from his home in a city called Leiden. I was born in 1951. I was their only child. His experiences in the War and Childhood had an influence on my childhood. He was never able to talk about it.

 

My father was never educated so he had to do dirty work. The dirty work generated a lot of stress. To find rest he created a garden. He trained me in his specialism. When he got old he could not work in his garden anymore. Just like his brother he became very depressed. He also died of a heart-attack. Many years later my mother died of Alzheimer.

All the time mental disturbed people appear in my life. They are diagnosed as paranoid, psychotic, schizophrenic, depressed, histrionic, autistic, dependent, Alzheimer, split personality, dissociation, ADHD and many other new terms. I am able to help some of them with my “para-normal” talent.

Later I found out that my grandmother was also gifted with the same talent. It was the main reason why she was put into the mental prison. At that time (1920) “para-normal” people were not liked. They were disturbing the System of Religion.

At the university I took many courses in psychology and philosophy. Psychology has been my main interests all my life.

I became befriended with very capable psychiatrists and psychologists and also with people that were also gifted with a special (para-normal?) talent to cure mental diseases

In this blog I use Self-Reference to show you what is happening in the Mental System. What I am writing about this System is applicable to all Systems. It is just an example.

 

In the current system you are officially mentally ill when a Mental Engineer decides you are mentally ill.

 

wardA specialist uses a questionnaire and out of the test comes a mental-illness-term, a procedure and medication how to treat the illness. Mental illness is standardized like many other areas in our society.

 

Standardization was invented by Winslow Taylor in the beginning of the 20th century. His invention created the factory and of course the computer. Standardization is possible when we look at the world trough the eye of the machine.

 

Mental illness is a defect in the control system of the machine. Somewhere there is a bug in the software of the mind. When we have detected and repaired the bug we are able to run the system again.

 

Another solution is to ReProgram the Operating System (Memory) itself with a new version or a completely new operation system. A very effective way to do this is Hypnosis.

 

The current theory about mental diseases has a lot in common with the Microsoft Operating System. It is very complex, contains a lot of bugs and the outside (the user-interface) is more important than the inside.

 

To become a Mental Engineer you have to be trained to acquire a certificate.

 

To get a certificate you need a certificate to enter the training. The process of certification acts like a filtering filter, a quality system. Only the perfect machines are allowed to leave the education factory. Its starts with many. In the end only a few survive.

 

This causes a shortage and a shortage creates a market. Mental engineers are highly paid like all the specialists that are able to move to the filtering filter.

 

To-earn-a-lot-of-money is the attractor of the educational factory. Parents that believe earning-a-lot-of-money is the most important thing in life push their children into the system and keep pushing until they are in the right production-line.

 

To help the System Banks and Governments are providing loans. This helps the System a lot because now the perfect machines have to stay in the System to be able to pay back their loans.

 

When you are a talent the theory is very different from what you feel you have to do, you become uncertain.

 

When you start to work in the System and you see that everybody is doing ‘it” you lose your “inner voice” (intuition).

 

Finally you are ‘one of them” telling others to do what the theory is telling you to do because “ everybody knows it works this way”.  The System is filtering out your talent and the talent of others.

 

A talent, a person being able to act without training, is most of the time not recognized in our society. When you are a specialized talent you are unable to get a certificate. You are not accepted by the System. Sadly enough some of them become mentally ill. When they go to the System for help they are programmed into a mental patient and they lose their “inner voice” too.

 

When you are a multi-talent you are able to move to the system with ease. Unfortunately multi-talents are scarce and equipped with a highly analytic mind. They don’t like the theoretical mess caused by the Microsoft Operating System Theory the Social Sciences is using.

 

When they stay in the System most of them are unable to change the Operating System into a simple system like UNIX. They are blocked by their colleagues. They don’t like to be shown wrong.

 

The last problem is that psychology is divided into many many separate specialisms (Word, Powerpoint…). The specialisms are related to other branches in science like religion, medicine, physics and mathematics.

 

They all use their own dialect and are therefore incapable to sustain a dialogue to become “One” system. This is also happening in Computing. There are thousands of computer languages that are unable to “talk” with the other.

 

On a higher level we see a very peculiar thing happening.

 

The System protects itself by leaving out everybody who is able to disturb The System.

 

psyTo put it in other words The System itself is mentally ill and according to its own terminology it is Paranoid. To cure the System we have to find out what helps a Paranoid to become “Normal” again.

 

To become mentally ill you have to go the specialist with a story and when the story convinces him you are ill.  The simplest way to become ill is that you (the Patient) want to be cured of something.

 

This something is a negative emotional feeling. You tell the specialist your sad story and if the story is convincing you are ill.

 

Funny enough the System is not going to a meta-Specialist to be cured. This is again an indication of the mental illness Paranoid. Paranoids want to control everybody and are unable to see what is happening. They use their theories to look at the world.

 

The only thing that “helps them” is a major event that shows them they are wrong. The System is only cured when it runs into a major crisis.

 

Funny enough the System is in major crisis but the only thing that is not happening is that the specialists are “feeling” this crisis. The only persons that are ‘feeling” the crisis are the patients and the patients are programmed into a machine. They obey the rules. Something more has to happen.

 

The specialist translates your negative feeling into a standardized term. This is sometimes very difficult because many emotional terms are not the main entrance to the standard.

 

There are many types of fear and combined with other issues you are given a different diagnoses and a different treatment. Fear is a simple emotional entrance and treating fear (a negative expectation of the Future) is really simple. Change your expectation and your fear is gone.

 

A paranoid “fears” change. So to change the System we have to change the positive expectations of the specialist about the Future. We have to show them that we are getting into a major crisis and they will also be troubled by the crisis.

 

One of the expectations we could show them is something the System believes in. It is called the Budget. We could show them that the amount of mental disturbed people will rise and rise and rise and at a certain point in time they will not be able to get the money to help everybody.

 

This is happening but again the System has already found a solution. The solution is “not helping everybody”. Not helping everybody is called a “waiting-list” and the length of waiting list is increasing.

 

To solve this problem the System has created a new specialist to tell the people that they have to wait. These specialists guide the gate of the system. They are called Gate-Keepers.

 

Sometimes they have to use violence to keep the patients out. In this case the Gate-Keepers employ other specialists called Security people. The Security-business is exploding because many Systems are in a State of War.

 

They even have invented a very special type of mental ilness that is helping the Security Business to increase their Business called Terrorist. This proves again the System is Paranoid. When a paranoid is threatened he reacts with violence.

 

When we react with violence the system will not change. The System has found the final prove of its own theory. Paranoid people are always afraid of somebody that will kill them.

 

Their ultimate fear is the fear of death. When they are confronted with this fear they get totally “out-of-control”. They are insane.

 

The Mental System is preventing with every thing it is doing to become Insane.

 

MunchScreamInsane is a state where all structure is gone. Insane is the ultimate state of Chaos. Insane is the state where the Conscious is gone and the Darkness of the Unconscious rules.

 

The Mental System is desperately preventing it will have to stay the rest of its life in its own Mental Prison. It is taking its own pills and treatments to prevent this.

 

Now the Darkness of the Unconsciousness is not at all dark. It generates the Light of Insight and Intuition. The Mental System is really afraid of its own intuition that is telling the System it is not working.

 

To keep the System running the System has to prevent there is time to reflect and to prevent this the System is generating a lot of demand. It is generating demand by “not-working”.

 

When the System is helping people to cure themselves with ease the demand will go down. When the demand goes down the Shortage will go down. When the Shortage goes down the Salaries will go down.

 

When the Salaries go down the Educational System will lose its attraction and when the Educational System goes down the only people that are able to solve the problem are talented people.

 

What I am showing you is something that is called the Cycle. It goes up and down.

 

autistAt this moment we are in the downfall of the factory-model that is striving to make everything the same. It is aimed at Equality.

 

The opposite, Uniqueness (Individuality), is rising. Uniqueness has its own mental disease called Autistic. An Autist wants to do “everything on its own”. An Autist is incapable of Cooperation.

 

What we have to prevent is that when a new System arises it will again fall in its own extreme mental trap. This happens when the people in the System are unaware of the movement of the Cycle.

 

They start as Innovators and use their Imagination. When they don’t look outside they become highly Conservative people. Extreme Conservative people are by definition Paranoid.

 

The only way to keep out of a very high Up and Very low Down (called a crisis) is to balance the Extremes.

 

 To balance the extremes we have to find a balance between the need to create a Future that is Predictable (Control), the need for the Human to be Unique, the need of the Poor and Helpless to find Solidarity (Soul) and the need to find New ways to solve New problems by using the Imagination (Spirit).

 

A cycle is balanced by the Centre. The Centre is the Heart of the Cycle. It uses Empathy, the Mirror of the Other to learn about the Self.

 

Let’s start by doing it ourselves again and use our own abilities to help the other. When we do this we are in the right State of the Cycle. We move with the Flow.

 

When you have a multi-talent or a specialized talent just do what you feel you have to do. It will work out fine.

 

Everybody is equipped with a Talent. You can easily find your talent when you feel a positive emotion when you are doing the thing “you are good at”. You are in the Flow.

 

You are “good at something” when others become enthusiastic (Spirit) and want to work with you (Soul) to create something Beautifull. You can also join others who generate this feeling of excitement with you.

 

To create Beauty is al that matters. Beauty is the process where Spirit and Soul are active. Beauty is not the result of a process. Beauty is created when you and others become the Process of Creation itself.