Posts Tagged ‘Washington’

About Subsidies

Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Around 1993 I became responsible for Subsidy Management at ABN AMRO. The whole thing started when the bank contracted a specialized company called PNO. I was asked to coordinate their activities in the Bank.
  • First you have to write a proposal (estimate time (including advisor).
  • When you get a subsidy you have to spend time reporting (estimate time).
  • The sum of both multiplied by the price per hour result in the costs.
  • Multiply the sum of subsidy by the chance you get the subsidy. A simple way to do that is to estimate the amount of contenders. This gives you a simple statistical expectation.
  • If the Estimated sum is lower than the costs don’t spend your time and try to get money in a different way. In general when you are a small company stay out of subsidies.

If you really want to become rich start a company like PNO (Pecunia Non Olet, Money Does Not Stink).

When I met them I soon found out that I was there when the company was created. They started their activities at the same place (Hengelo) and the same building as the company of a friend of mine. This company (Utopics) developed the expert-system they use to track subsidy opportunities.

Until 1993 I did not realize that it was possible to acquire a huge amount of money when you play the game the right way.

The Subsidy Game is played the right way when you combine two things. You have to align your strategy and related projects with the vision of government and you have to create the right level of contacts.

When the local or international government defines a policy they look for instruments to support this policy. One of the instruments they use is subsidies. They pay you to do what they want you to do.

When you want to get a lot of money you have to align your policy with the policy of the government.

It is very important to understand that aligning your policy is a virtual act. You have to show that the policy is written down on paper. If you are clever you don’t have to adjust your plans. In reality you play the same game government is playing. They also act very differently at the inside.

They play the Game of Politics. The game of politics is a combination between the Unity (Plan, Model) and the Social (Emotions, Network) World-View. The game is about persuading people to accept a model or plan or asking an opinion about a plan.

The simple trick is to relate all the projects you are doing to the policies of the Government and translate the project-plan into a proposal for subsidy.

The next step is much more important. You have to influence the network of decision makers. I hope you are not a naive person who believes in an objective government.

Everybody in government can be influenced to do what you want. The only thing that counts is the price you have to pay. Please understand that bribing is possible but this is a very stupid way to get influence because it only influences one person.

To get an optimal result you have become an “important person” in the network of decision makers itself.

To do this you have practice the art of Public Relations (PR). When you are practicing PR you have to know WHO is WHO, visit meetings and parties and give something to receive something.

When the Subsidy-project grew I became involved in PR at a large scale. PR is really fun. You talk a lot, travel a lot, you eat (and drink) a lot and sometimes you make a beautiful deal.

Soon I found out that the power of the Dutch Government was gone. The power was moved to Brussels. I made a proposal the create a special lobby-office in Brussels and to my surprise top-management agreed.

This started a new level of sophisticated manipulation. Getting things done in Brussels is much more difficult that getting things done in the Hague.

Brussels can be compared with Washington and the European Union acts the same as the USA. Many things are decided behind close doors and the most important influencers are the rich companies.

To get some instant experience I visited a few lobby offices and talked with the managers to find out how they were doing “it”.

My most spectacular experience was with IBM. IBM seemed to me the perfect lobby machine. The manager of the Lobby Office was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of IBM and he also had the power to act.

Influencing EG Policy was a very important issue at IBM. You have to understand that the EG is deciding about many standards and the standards have to be built in the products of IBM.

When I got acquainted with the practices of Brussels I discovered many “bribing patterns”. Later they were also detected and many scandals appeared. Yes, High Level Officials of the EG asked for money and they were also payed.

When you are not a high level player in the Subsidy Business I advice you to make use of an advisor. Even if you use an advisor the changes are low. Because of the low changes you are able to make a simple calculation to find out if subsidies are something you have pursue.

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.
LINKS

About InterPersonal Theory

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

interpersonal

World Views are Perspectives on the Inner and Outer World. “Every man has his own Universe” so there are so many Perspectives as there are (and were) Humans. To communicate we have to decrease the Amounts of Perspectives.

Will McWhinney has found a model that covers most of the perspectives of the Human Being. It contains Four Perspectives circulating around a Center. His model is Self-Referencial (A Fractal) which means that the Model can be Applied on its Self.

It can be expanded to the Infinite Perspectives of all the Humans on Earth by detecting the Right Enfolding of the Fractal Pattern.

When I was working with Will McWhinney on his theory of World-Views I found many theories that could be mapped to his Theory of Change. The World Views proved to be a generic explanation of almost everything. This was a big surprise.

One of the sciences that interested me the most was Psychology. I studied Philosophy, Psychology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics and kept my knowledge of these fields always Up-To-Date.

My main problem with Psychology was the conceptual  mess it was in. I read book after book and all the time new ideas came up. It was fascinating but also frustrating.

Suddenly I found a book that helped me to see everything from one Perspective. The book contained a Model and I was able to Map the model to the World Views with ease.

The book I found was Horowitz, L. M. (2004). Interpersonal foundations of psychopathology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Interpersonal theory looks at the world from the perspective of Relationships.

According to attachment theorists, the infant’s attachment system keeps the child close and connected to the adult, thereby increasing the child’s chances of surviving infancy. As children come to feel sufficiently secure in their attachment to the caretaker, they separate from the caretaker and explore the environment, a first step toward autonomy.

When a person initiates an interaction with another person, the other assumes that the behavior is motivated (purposeful). When an important goal is satisfied, the person experiences a positive emotion; when it is frustrated, the person experiences a negative emotion like sadness or anger.

Internal motivations can be conflicting. This can result in serious mental disorders. The interpretation of the motivation of the other is often ambiguous leading to misunderstanding and even conflict. To resolve these potential conflicts an open dialogue is necessary where people make their motives clear to others (and themselves).

Motivational constructs (desire, motive and personal striving) can be conceptualized in two very broad, abstract categories, namely, Communion and Agency.

A Communal motive is a motive for a connection with one or more others; it is a motive to participate in a larger union with other people. A communional motive can range from Indifferent (no connection) to Love (a complete connection).

An Agentic motive, on the other hand, emphasizes the self as a distinct unit; it focuses on the person’s own individual influence, control, or mastery over the self, other people, and the environment. An agentic motive can range from Dominating to Submitting.

Interpersonal behavior can be described with the so-called Interpersonal Circumplex (a Cycle). This is a widely tested model that predicts the reaction of a person to a Motive (a combination of agency and communion) of the other.

The motivational behavior of a person is more or less determined in his youth. People that are extreme in the connection/agency-matrix (e.g. indifferent to the other, too dependent, very dominant or submissive) are unable to work in a collaborative manner. They are Psychopathic.

Interpersonal Theory is very helpful to understand relationships.

interpersonal2

The Interpersonal Circumplex or Interpersonal Cycle suggests that there are Infinite Types of Relationships. Some of them are named (Friendly, Dominant) most of them are not named.

When two persons are reacting according to the complementary expected behavior of the Other they feel “Related“. A highly dominant partner, a Master, needs a highly submissive partner, a Slave,  and vice versa.

By using the World Views Interpersonal Theory can be easily mapped to other Psychological Subjects like Learning. When we use the method of Mapping it can also be transformed to Art, History, Ecology, Mathematics and Physics.

To use the Four World Views (Unity, Sensory, Social and Mythic) we have to Map the Matrix of Horowitz to the Matrix of McWhinney .

Sensory people (Experts) are disconnected from their Self (Ego-istic). They are focused on the Senses (Facts).  An addiction to the Senses is called Schizophrenic.

Mythic (Artist)  is a Union with the Self. Mythic people are highly Imaginative and Creative. An addiction to the imagination is called Histrionic.

Social is a Union with Others. Social people are highly Emotional and influenced by the Other (Status). An addiction to the emotions is called Dependent.

A Unity (Master) is disconnected from the Self. Unity people want to control the Future. They are planning and expecting. An addiction to Control is called Paranoid.

Consciousness, the Observer,  the Center of the Cycle, is a Balance between Communion and Agency. People that are Constantly Out of Balance are called Neurotic.

What is Happening?

Paths of Change explains why Life is a Paradox.  It is a Paradox because the World Views are completely independent. They are valid ways of Looking At the World.

Normal” people combine Two or more Worldviews and are able to Switch from one View to the Other but they always look with one View at the Time.

Normal” people are mentally ill but we don’t see their illness because they are Switching all the time.

The Switch is called a Relation in Interpersonal Theory.  It connects two parts that are disconnect and will always be disconnect.

Is there a Structure behind this Structure?

Behind the Four WorldViews lies a much simpler structure. This structure contains just Two Views, the View of Control and the View of Desire.

Control is the proces of Compression. Control makes thing simple and essential. It brings everything back to the Void, the state of Infinite Potential.

Desire is the process of Expansion. Expansion makes things more complex. It generates an infinite amount of new combinations. It moves away from the Infinite Potential.

Control and Desire are Complementary Powers. When they join they are annihilated. If this happens They combine and become the Void again.

Control and Desire are constantly moving around the Void to A-Void that they move back to the state of the No-Thing, that is Every Thing.

The Four Views are nothing but Four Combinations of the Two that are Avoiding the Void which is the Center, the Connector, the Relation, the Switch, between Every Thing.

LINKS

A website about Interpersonal Theory

About the Interpersonal Circumplex

About Learning and Interpersonal Theory

About WorldViews

About the Void and The Logic of Creation

About Wordviews and the History of Literature

About WorldViews and the Cycle of History

About Mapping