Posts Tagged ‘economic disaster’

About Worldwide Disaster Planning

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

For more than five years I was responsible for the Security of a big bank. One of the responsibilities of Security is Disaster Planning.

Disaster Planning is very easy until you want to implement the disaster plan. You just sit down with a small group of creative people and imagine everything that could happen to your company. You have be to as disastrious as you can be.

When we performed our first Disaster Planning we asked the managers of the company to respond to every “Act of God” we could imagine.

Soon we discovered that some questions could not be answered. They could not be answered because there was no data available or there was no “decision-structure (+ priorities)” that could decide what to do.

The end of our first phase generated a lot of awareness and action. We even knew what would happen to the bank when the biggest disaster (a complete destruction of the computer centre) would occur. The answer was simple. The bank would go broke within 24 hours!

The next step was to take preventive measures. Some of them where easy to implement. The realization of a back-up computer center was very expensive even if we priotized the use of the centre to the bare minimum.

Suddenly all the disasters we imagined “would never occur” or could occur but with a very very low chance. We were Just Imagining.

At the end we convinced the top management to take measure and we created a full back-up center. The load was divided between the old and the new center and the data was copied at both places.

Soon after the back-up center was finished an airplane crashed very close to the data-center.

I am telling this short story to open up your Awareness to another level of Disaster Planning.

I want to do it on the level of planet Earth.

Have you ever imagined what disasters could happen to our planet and what we/you would do if this really happened?

What would it be to be without electricity, without heating, water, food, a doctor, medicine, a car, a telephone, work?

What would it be like when many people were looting and you have to defend yourself with weapons to survive?

What would it be like when there is no police or army to help you and you have to do it on your own?

Have you ever imagined what decision-structure and priorities we would need to handle this?

Any idea about the amount of money involved?

Do you know where we can build a Back-up Earth?

The Moon?

Mars?

Now I Know what NASA is Really Doing!

Do we have enough time (and budget and technology and ..) to save everybody when it happens?

I hope so. If not we have to decide who will stay! Perhaps we have to Organize a Lottery!

As a back-up strategy I advice you to do a Survival Training and build a back-up centre Yourself on a place on the Earth that will not be hit by “the disaster”!

Any Idea Where to GO?

Any Idea What to Look for to know when it Starts?

Perhaps A Global Warming of the Earth, Strange Weather, a Food Shortage, a Worldwide Financial Crisis or April 2010?

I Know where to Go, but If I tell you the place Everybody would Go there when it Really Happens!

I Think I Keep it a Secret.

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Posted in Business, Completed | Comments Off

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.

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Posted in Completed, Cycles, Economy | Comments Off