Flowing with the Cycle: November 2009

The root cause of the Financial Crisis of 2008 is the unfettered creation of credit and money fueled by human greed for “economic and business growth” at any price and at any cost.

Before the creation of credit, one has to save enough money to buy or consume a commodity or a service or to barter if no money is to be transacted.

To boost sales, credit was invented and suddenly, when people are able to consume something with future money, GDP and the wealth of nations increase by leaps and bounces.

When new and more creative money and credit devices are created e.g. the stock market, derivatives, futures etc, further balloon wealth is created and without the real physical assets to support the created mirage of wealth, it is a matter of time the balloon burst.

Money can be created by printing, but real wealth is built upon sweat, blood and tears of enterprise, diligence and ingenuity.

If more money can solve all of the world’s problems, the printing of more paper money will solve all the world’s problems, but we know that is not the case.

The way out of this global financial crisis is for us all to return to the fundamental issue of what is the purpose of the human life and to add value while we are here on Earth.

While we need money to live; living just for money make life a baloney.

For us who lost much money through this crisis, be thankful, we could have lost our lives and sanity as well, so let us return to sanity.

For us who has not lost anything because we had nothing to start with, let us be also thankful that the Lord Who feeds the sparrows and clothe the lilies is the same and identical Almighty that sustains us and to who all humanity destined to when our term finally expires on Earth.

Let us through this crisis, return to sanity and appreciate the real meaning of living and begins to appreciate the serenity of Joy, Peace and Love, not necessarily with money and wealth.

Goodbye 2008, Happy 2009!

At this crisis time, no amount of blame apportioning finger-pointing will be helpful, neither any panic knee jerk reactive actions or inaction.

USA and generally the rest of the linked globalized world is facing what Dr. Peter Senge in his book “The Fifth Discipline” described as “paradigm paralysis” warranting a “shift in paradigm” and a change in “mindset”.

In the past 100years, history records for us the failure of the planned economy a.k.a. soviet styled central command planned economy, culminating in the implosion of the Soviet Union.

Now it seems the alternative to Soviet economic system at the opposite of the economic model continuum, the laissez-faire or free economy seems to be failing to the brink of a similar implosion.

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis propound Hegel and Fichte is the dialectic thinking outside our boxed paradigm and dogmatic mindset way out of the similar global economic-financial hammering at the very remaining foundations of the capitalist system since the other alternative had failed more than 2 decades ago.

Age old and universal dialectic is the way to go, but can 21st Century homo sapiens put aside personal and even national interest for the sake of the larger and paramount global interest?

Alas, I am pessimistic.

The human race is far too parochial and divided to see beyond his own navel to see ourselves as citizens of island Earth in the whole wide Universe.

There is no other place we can call home, save Planet Earth and it is only when we see ourselves facing the same identical fate that we shall either swim or sink together as one humanity.

There is still hope, if we remain united as one, united by common purpose and meaning because we are humans sharing a common Earth, then only can we see the meaning and purpose of enriching our neighbors because it will ensure our own survival too.

Like it or hate it, the person who taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves some 2000years ago still rings true today, but will the words of Jesus Christ, a Jew from the tribe of Judah still have a place in our heart let alone in our ears alone?

May the Good Lord forgive our sins as we repent and do what is right before Him, comprehensive and holistically from as diverse a matter as the environment to personal finance.

Ted, if you grasp the spirit and not just the letter of Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline, we will less likely to be gridlocked into chronic paradigm paralysis by endless finger pointing rhetoric but join in the light of the New Hope led by the President of Change: Barack Hussein Obama.

The name Barack Hussein Obama is in itself, an antithesis to the legacy thesis of USA and unless we confront the failing thesis with another alternative antithesis to arrive at synthesis, we remained captives of our own paradigm, that’s my point.

Partisan politics has its role in its safeguard against tyranny through a comprehensive system of checks and balances including the separation of powers, alternative competing philosophies and a free press, but not when America and the rest of the world who follows American leadership in ideals, values and economic system are in trouble and seeking ways towards a new paradigm and even adopting a new mindset.

Change, we must and Change we ought to, for where there is No Change, there is No Chance!

I am beginning to like you and that is not a joke, seriously. I like your candidness and if you are as serious as I am, even naive, it is fine with me, we are all entitled to our own views and as long as we don’t seek and use violence to promote or instill our beliefs, it is entirely fine with me.

I just have one question.

If you know the problem(s) what is/are your solutions?

If you are the President of the USA, what would you do save blaming people, parties and systems?

And to Faisal, your Islamic system as the new paradigm is interesting, can you share a little details how the Islamic system is the better vis-a-vis Marxism and Capitalism, save the God system part, because the US Dollar has the famous “In God We Trust” and yet her economy is in shambles! And please don’t tell me they are different gods here, to me it is irrelevant and irreverent.

Tell me why and how “Islamic Economics” is different and better than the two other systems in the dichotomy or continuum.

interesting ideas no doubt, but neither new nor fresh I am afraid.

It seems to me another Utopian Dream Economics ala Marxist or Egalitarian with the element of “God” skew.

I am also personally against Usury but see Capital as one of the two other economic resources: Land and Labor.

For the reward for the use of Labor is the payment of Wages, Land: Rent and Capital: Interest, Dividend, Profits etc.

Money is a form of Capital and the risk of parting of one’s money (cold cash, gold, liquid convertible assets) surely had to be the reward or incentive of interest as returns.

For the past 1400 years or so, we have yet to experience a viable “Islamic Economic System”.

Perhaps out of the ashes of Marxist and Capitalism Collapse, could we see the emergence of the Synthesis, with Islamic as a potential candidate?

Well, I am no prophet so I cannot foretell.

But certainly, with the Islamic Economic System as painted by you, I would rather be the hammer than the nail i.e. the Borrow, rather than the Lender .

No malice meant here but I am always tickled pink by a Notice I saw hanging out from a shop in Los Angeles, California, USA.

It says in Bold:

“In GOD we Trust TRUST, others pay CASH”

To me that is the succinct meaning of the printed slogan on the reverse side of the US Dollar Bill or was that the cheeky hint that In God we Trust and not others because all man are liars, politicians, bankers, lawyers, priests, imans, monks, soldiers, homemakers etc etc.

Well, you make your own conclusion(s).

By the way, I am not a youth anymore, but I am still a student nevertheless, because for as long as I live, I continue to learn new things and often by first unlearning the wrong or outdated, obsolete things first.

But one truth remains:

Let God be true and all Men: Liars! (Romans 3:4, Psalms 11:16)

It does not matter whether one believes in God or not, all humans need air, water, food, shelter etc to survive and in the modern day, money usually buys all these necessities and that is what money is for: a mean to an end.

No billionaire will want to give the 1/40? You mean billionaires who claim themselves Muslims or “infidels” billionaires like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates?

Go check your facts before you speak, please.

Usually the worst people are the religious hypocrites and that transcends religion type.

You may ask, how can we build and maintain billion dollars cathedrals, temples and religious buildings when so many of our neighbors die from the lack of basic potable water, nutrition, clothing and shelter?

When we rather spend our scarce resources on so called “defense” killing one another rather than helping one another because I see my Father’s creation in my brothers and sisters face although they bear a different color and have a different religion from me?

Why did God create such a mess with so much diversity when He could have just created one homogeneous commodity of humanity with identical color skin?

My take is even if we are homogeneous in color, homo sapiens will still fight one another because like it or not, there is an inherent class struggle defect in the human species!

The conclusion is not whether I or you believe in God, but are we prepared to love one another as brothers and sisters because we share a common ancestry, a common Earth and a common Destiny when we are gone from planet Earth, now or in the distant future when all things must come to an end, even the Solar System exploding into oblivion?

If we know how significant we are, we will become more generous with others.

Islam is no different from all other religions I supposed, they all espouse good works but alas their followers hardly follows.

2.5% per year is ambitious. if it is just 1% and from all the combined wealth of Middle East Oil revenues itself, I suppose Muslim countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Palestine etc will be very well today, but alas the classic failing rings true cross culture and religion: Good Religion; Bad Followers.

Yes, it is still the big “IF” and I guess we all can always dream and hope, but the reality still is, I assert:

“Let God alone be true and all men (and women), Liars (me included).”

The 2008 Global Economic Crisis is rooted in easy unbridled, unregulated and undisciplined credit.

But ironic it may seem, the availability of easy credit is what that grew the global economy in an unprecedented pace in the last 10 years.

The invention of credit was also what that spearheaded the accelerated growth of business, trade, commerce, manufacturing, mining, banking and every aspect of the economy.

In the subsistence economy of old where each family grew their own food and are self sufficient substantially, there is little trade and the economy did not grow much on an aggregate basis.

It was the creation of credit, where one can consume now with future wages, profits and income that made the sale of house, automobiles and other big ticket items take off in a mass market scenario.

China tried to manufacture its way out of poverty by selling its products to USA at the expense of paying a high environment cost for it, an now, she is paying a disproportionate level of cost, financially, economically and even politically and socially.

China in fact lend USA the money she made from the selling of goods and services to USA, so that she can continue to buy Chinese goods.

China, like Japan holds much US bonds and hopefully the Chinese will remain sane and not dump US bonds for US cash, causing the collapse of the US economy internationally.

China and Japan, together with the rest of the world outside USA, especially Europe are now like multiple commonly joined “twins” and we have no choice but to float or sink together as one big globalized nation.

Neither gold nor silver nor any form of currency is “real wealth” as you perceive.

The only real wealth that exists on earth are the lives you impacted upon while you are alive on earth, and that is not even in the pie-in-the-sky “Heaven” or Paradise with flowing rivers of wine and multitudes of virgins to service you.

If we had returned and remained in the gold or silver standard domain of the old, we would have turned the clock back to the Middle Ages.

Whilst I do not condone the wanton creation of false wealth by the printing of money or credit, curtailing economic growth to the pace of how fast gold and silver could be mined and minted into currencies is no solution either.

If USA has to print the Amero, so be it, if it solves the global economic problem; but things are not so simple. However, it is a much more progressive idea that regressing to medieval solutions.

By the way, it is easy to blame others for problems we ourselves also contributed to in whole and it parts, so please, minorities are always easy to a target at, as we, as a so called humanity had ill-treated for a more than 2000 years.

Faisal, FYI, paper money was first invented by the Chinese, that is factual history; “paper zionist currency”, I am not certain.

I do foresee a day where paper money will disappear, not because it is outlawed, but because there are better ways to transact as in mobile money in Africa via mobile phone money transfers.

History also shows us for what the Muslims collectively persecuted the Jews: it is pale compared to what the Christians collectively persecuted the Jews, culminating in Nazi Germany’s mass extermination of the Jews in the Second World War (of course this historical verifiable fact is still being disputed by certain people and certain parties, then and even now).

Gold, silver, platinum, titanium and all minerals need to be mined, refined and minted, and in order for them to have any intrinsic monetary exchange value, they must be sufficiently rare.

To bridle any economy on the account of the pace on how fast gold and silver in the ground or in the sea could be processed and turn into money would be foolhardy in the context of a 21st Century globalized economy.

Gold and silver was the the currency of China, and the currency of international trade with Europe during the 1800’s, but as you are aware, when silver flowed out of England into China and tea leaves flowed vice-versa, the tide was only reversed when British opium, grown in occupied India flowed into China and silver flowed back into England that started the Opium Wars that ended the Ching Dynasty that started the Modern China period.

No, much as gold and silver I like to own, nothing is like melting down the Silver Saints and circulate them into the economy, plagiarizing Oliver Cromwell.

At the end of the day, it is the people that matters and we all wonder how can the rich live off the sufferings of the poor and that applies to all seats of powers: political, religious, organizational etc.

What is the meaning of Saint Peters Cathedral in Rome, Saint Pauls in London, Kaaba in Mecca, Taipei 101, Petronas Twin Towers, Shanghai Tower etc when billions in the world are without even the most basic drinking water, sanitation, nutrition, clothing, warmth and shelter?

The world is not without its riches and there is enough wealth to spread around, rather it is the unequal and inequitable distribution of wealth where it ought to have been distributed willingly by the haves to the have nots that is the root of the problem.

Throughout history, thinkers and philosophers had tried to think and seek out a solution, from the Buddha right up to Karl Marx, various solutions from personal enlightenment to social re-engineering had been propounded, but none seems to work.

Faisal, your Muslim Solution is one of the many propounded solutions, I am afraid.

There are challenging times ahead of us and as we create solutions to an old economic problem, let us remain optimistic and open minded and not be boxed up by our limited parochial interest and perspective and blinkered by our prejudice and mantras.

Peace to you, my friend.

Faisal, I am a keen reader of history and if my memory serves me right, the last Ottoman Sultan was bankrupted and had to be done away with with the lost of the Axis to the Alliance in the Second World War.

I am not certain if the Ottoman system is Islamic for you, if it is, your theory about the flawlessness of the Islamic system you claimed as revealed in the Koran and elsewhere remains, at best, a pipe dream (pun unintended).

If not, there probably will never be a viable “Islamic Financial-Economic System”, empirically.

Name me please, your working model example: Taliban Afghanistan, Wahabi Saudi Arabia, Secular Islamic Indonesia, Islamic-Islamic Pakistan. Islamic-Malay Brunei?

You are probably referring to the system to come in the future, just as Christians look to the Millennium Rule of Christ or the Buddhist for the coming of the Maitreya Buddha of Prosperity.

If so, I rest my argument because Utopia will always be a dream like Heaven or Paradise may seem to be for all us lost souls yearning for a better place and a better in eternity. This is what many deemed as “Hope beyond Hope”?

Mind my cynicism.

We only have one life, we only have one Earth and we only have one chance on Earth, so let us make the best of it and not blow it up or screw it up because we are going to Heaven and Earth can go to Hell for all we care. Is that the right attitude we should take? Ought we? To me, an emphatic NO!

If we cannot realize a little semblance of Heaven on Earth for our kindred, we are not fit to be stewards of God’s Earth by just promising Paradise as the opium to sedate our daily struggle for survival!

Niang, I am heartened that you are matured in your concern for a mere 17 year old; I was still partying in my hippie days when I was your age!

Well, times have changed but the needs of homo sapiens for clean drinking water, nutritious food, clothing, shelter, transport, energy, heating etc remains unchanged throughout human history.

Do not be alarmed about what is going on around you, in Chinese Tao philosophy, the Ying Yang has to come to an equilibrium, so the world economy is finding its own natural equilibrium before it become stable again, and that has to happen by aggregate natural processes: the so called “Wu Wei” or “Sans Actions” or “The Invisible Hands” of the free economy.

Don’t rely on the government to do anything, they are no gods and sometimes, the more they intervene, the worst the situation becomes.

Governments are faceless and whether they are put in place through the ballot or the bullet, they face one common problem, they have no money. They merely tax and spend on behalf of the people. When they don’t have enough they literally beg, borrow or steal and that includes the printing and creating of more new money.

I am assuming you are from an agrarian based nation like China, if so, you will still have your land to provide you and your family your basic survival needs, you will be OK. Woe is you if you have only the desert and oil or buildings and worthless bills: you can’t eat sand, concrete and paper money or drink oil.

Yes, the New World Order is coming and it has to come, engineered or otherwise but blessed is the man or the woman who keep faith in the goodness of God and goodness of man in loving and bettering his or here neighbor!

Alex Kee

With due respect to the late Peter Drucker, this is a typical capitalist speaking. Quality today in the light of anthropogenic climate change, now ought to encompass responsible manufacturing and end of life disposal issues.

Thu at 3:57pm · Delete · Report

Venture Platform Pte Ltd

Which is still what the customers will pay for.

Why do you think companies which encompass responsible manufacturing and end of life disposal issues, are able to sell their services at a higher price?

Corporate and social responsibilities are capitalistic concerns as well.

2 hours ago · Report

Corporate & social responsibilities are capitalistic concerns only if they help rack in more for the bottom-line of the Capitalist, but if they can get away with blue murder, they will. It is for the People, through legislation that shall ensure that capitalist entrepreneurs oblige compliance. Be honest about it, we all talk big about taking care of the environment with our lips but nothing through our pocket or actions, because we only want to pay for what we use, not how the end of life is disposed or how the product was made in the first place, like Peter Drucker has said from the myopic Capitalist-Marketing focal point.

2 hours ago · Delete · Report

They do. If they do not, the market does not need it anyway.

So do not blame capitalists for doing whatever you deem is harmful to environment.

Are consumers going to pay for it, the market is the final arbiter of it. Capitalists can only follow what the market needs. Contrary to what you may think, they do not dictate what the market needs.

Correct, let's blame ourselves for learning wrong lessons from our teachers who were taught wrong knowledge by their teachers. The market wants cheap credit so that they can spend now and pain later. Everyone is looking for passive income and growth on their investment. Everyone wants to grab; but nobody wants to give and when institutions are too big to fail, we bail them out: We, the people under the guise of "the Government". There is no free lunch and we are all in it as one common community on Planet Earth and that is the hard facts beyond clever marketing and ideologies. The environment is not for turning; we shall reap what we sow!

about an hour ago · Delete · Report

Flowing with the Cycle

Sunday, November 15, 2009

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Friday, November 13, 2009

Repent, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

A Response to Pure Capitalism

This is my response to:
http://www.myfreedompost.com/2009/11/video-of-jon-voights-speech-in.html

Saturday, November 7, 2009

What are the Possible Causes of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis?

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Which is Worse, "There is Only 1 Choice" or "You have No Choice"?

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