People with People

The word these days is crisis.  But, don't we go through crisis continuously?...in the individual level, in the group level (with our family, our friends, our neighbours), in the country level....

Probably you are thinking now: What?...crisis??...what in the hell is this guy talking about??..

I'm talking about change. I'm talking about the fact that everything around us is changing continuosly, but in such a way that we don't perceive it, so we prefer to live in the illusion that things are "static", that "they are what they are"...

It is a kind if "WYGIWYS" attitude (WYGWYS: "what you get is what you see"), but as a fact, is a very naive one.

All the cells of our body are in a continuous process of change...our consciousness is changing all time; every time we have to make a decision we are "changing" the state of the art, even if we only decide if we go to the cinema or we go to the theater...we change the world doing that, because what would have happened going to the cinema will not happen now, because we have decided to go to the theater...

Everything has consequences....so...how can find what is the right action?...how can we understand rightly the scenario?...

If we take a look to "the scenario" of our life, we could see that, mainly, is formed by other people. The continuous interaction with people determine our life.  Even is there is no one to interact with, we are determined by that (we feel bad, alone, sad, etc.....). 

So, the waving of people with people  is the main scenario in our life, in our jobs, in economics, in everything...

From other point of view, we have learned to think in an "individual" way, that is: but it is happening unconsciously, mainly based in the "individual" way of living that we have taught. No one has taught us to think in the consequences of our actions in our fellow human beings, nor on how this fellow human beings are "needed" for us to be able to think creatively and differently. 

Because of this "individual" way of thinking, we tend to create an image of reality and the rest of human beings as things separated from us, and even considering them the cause of our problems, so we react trying to change reality, trying to change the other human beings, so that they behave fulfilling and/or marching our desires, wishes, needs, and thinking patterns. 

But other human beings, that are the main "ingredient" of our lives, are not things, are not static...they are "beings"; they are "living beings", they are "sensitive and feeling beings", and even they are "consciouss and intelligent beings able to be creative", so we are failing all the time when we manage them as "things"... 

New concepts are appearing more and more about learning new ways of thinking. Edward de Bono, for instance, talks about "lateral thinking" and "parallel thinking" as ways of thinking connected with change and social reality.

I like more to talk about "asking questions" as a way of conversation. And I like to talk about changing our focus, from our goals to the process that is happening in front of our nose. And I like to talk more about changin the focus from the light that we obtain conversating to the conversation itself.

Try to focus on this for a moment: you are in front of an human being, that has a biography, with thousands of facts, details, moments in his/her life, that had impacted his/her soul in an specific and unique way, and you realize that this person, that is such a complex being in front of you, is mainly unknown to you, because of all this individual , specific and unique subjectivity. But you have now, the opportunity of contemplating this fascinating process, and even perhaps, the opportunity to collaborate together to create something new, if you learn to conversate and to think in a new "individual and social" way. 

We are people, relating with other people. We are changing continuosly. We are in a continuous crisis, and in a continuous creative process. All our life is based on that, but for some reason, no one has taught us how to do it.  Now we have the opportunity to learn to do it properly.

Every human being is a unique work of art. Our task is not to judge her/him, but to accompany her/him in her/his life path in the best possible way. 

Bernard Lievegoed.

Los Milagros Existen....

Voy a empezar hablando de milagros...hemos comenzado un nuevo año, y eso ya es un milagro en si mismo. 

Nuestros años, nuestras vidas, estan en continuo proceso de cambio. Pero vivimos como si no fuera así. Tenemos la impresion de ser los mismos de hace ...10 años?...incluso 20?...pero cuando el cuerpo nos da un aviso, nos damos cuenta de que hemos cambiado..y decimos eso de "me estoy haciendo viejo!!".

Pero cada año, ante nuestros ojos, las estaciones se suceden, y llega el invierno, oscuro, frio, casi amenazante, y antes de darnos cuenta, ya estamos en Enero, en un nuevo año, empezando nuestra actividad de nuevo, y mirando el calendario pensando ya en la primavera, y despues en el verano...y despues...y despues....

Vivimos en el cambio; es una obviedad decirlo, pero quiero resaltarlo. Vivimos en el continuo cambio, natural, individual y social. Pero no sabemos como sucede, solo, que sucede.

Cada día mas y más personas se encuentran con dificultades personales en determinados momentos de sus vidas, que les hacen vivir lo que podríamos llamar "inviernos personales". Estos inviernos pueden ser cortos o largos, a veces muy frios, y al igual que en la naturaleza los arboles se quedan sin hojas, y la vida se apaga, en el alma de las personas con dificultades la vida del alma se va desvaneciendo, y el sentido de la vida poco a poco desaparece. 

Pero esto es parte del cambio. Todo cambio necesita de un invierno para renacer despues, para generar una nueva primavera vital. Lo realmente increible es que, a traves de la escucha, a través de la conversación, podemos ayudarnos los unos a los otros, y hacer que los inviernos se conviertan en primaveras y veranos más rapidamente.

Esto nos permite aprovechar mucho mas nuestro desarrollo personal. Digamos que si normalmente, una persona pasa por una o dos crisis de desarrollo personales, a través del coaching y de la conversacion este proceso puede ampliarse, lo que sería equivalente a vivir mas inviernos, más años, y con ello, a progresar más.

Y os aseguro que, aunque a veces parezca imposible, la primavera siempre llega, especialmente cuando otro ser humano nos ayuda a hacerlo a traves de su escucha desinteresada.

A mi este año, la primavera me ha empezado a llegar en Enero.

Hasta pronto.

Una descripcion "castiza" de la situación económica actual

Arturo Perez Reverte escribió este artículo hace quince años, pero como podreis ver, es totalmente contemporaneo, y ademas, esta escrito, como diria Perez Reverte, de p.m. .. :-)

Echadle un vistazo, que merece la pena.

Haced clic en el link de este post para ir al blog de Arturo Perez Reverte, en en el siguiente link:

http://blogs.laverdad.es/calderon-de-la-huerta/2008/11/3/los-amos-del-mundo-arturo-perez-reverte#c53336702

Logic and Love: the new sympathy for the fellows

Perhaps we are starting to live the transition between the old logic and the new logic..the logic of love, the logic based in understanding the other human being, and not only oneself...the logic that lies behind the discover that the fellow human beings around us "are our personal reasons"..... These are the misterious equations of love.

THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: THE DEATH OF CAPITALISM (III)

Summarizing, until now we know that:

1.- The "ninja" mortgages were producing that the banks around the world were full of garbage and untrust, and every one of use was paying more money every month in the mortgage bill.

But the next question is: How has affected that to the real economy?...In Finland is not still very strong, but for instance, in the U.S.A. 200.000 employments have been destroyed in a month; Spain is destroying employmen at a rate of near 7.000 people/day....the companies in the countries affected have started to have real problems of liquidity, because the work capital has disappeared. How has affected the financial crisis to the companies?....

THE FEAR IN THE BANKS: STOP CREDITS BEFORE WE HAVE NO MORE MONEY!!

One aspect of this "transmission" of the financial crisis to real economy is that, when the "ninja" business started to fail, the banks stopped the credit to the normal companies. Why?..because they were not sure about three things:

a) how many money they were having available (that is, how many money have they lost in the investments on "hedge funds" and similar "financial instruments").
b) how could they know what is a good or a bad credit, after the big failure they had had!!!
c) how many money they could ask for to another banks, in case of emergency, because the other banks were in the same or worst situation!!

So, through the restriction of credits of the banks, the money has stopped to flow.

The Untrust, provoked by the lack of consciousness, has created a stagnation of the money flow all around the world.

Now, in other hand, we have to consider that, in parallel, all these years, it was happening something truly important, that I can call:

The incredible rise up of the Emergent Countries!!!: The new star of China!!

Lets try to describe this rise up of the emergent countries plainly again:

• Every house that every one of us was buying during these years was paid with mortgage money. This money was paid to the constructors.
• Additionally, in many cases, we were receiving more money than the market value of the house (sometimes 150% of the market value of the estate), so we were spending this money in new cars (do you understand why GM, Ford, etc...are having problems now that the banks are not giving more mortages?....), new technological gadgets, increasing our consumption, going holidays, going to dinner, etc....
  
• The constructor, with the money he was receiving, was paying mainly wages, his suppliers, and finally he was retaining some profit for himself. To do what?...probably, to buy a new car, a new house, or to go holidays with his family...and so on...
  
• The suppliers, with the money they were receiving, were paying wages again, and retaining some profit for themselves. To do what?...now you know what for...
• The workers that were receiving their wages, were paying their mortgages, and spending the rest in...do you wonder what?....yes, you know it....cars, holidays, dinners, etc...why?..because they have "extra money from their mortage" or the bank could lend them more money!!..they would pay in the future!...things were going really well!!!
• Therefore, the main amount of money of the mortgages was going to pay "wages" and "companie profits". Both were destined mainly to increase in an spectacular way the "consumption" of all kinds of goods and services.

Now, the next question is: where are this goods and services coming from (our DVD,s, our clothes, our computers, our plastics, our light bulbs, etc...)?...where are they produced?...

Yes!!! In the emergent countries!!!!..like China, India, Taiwan, and Korea.

20 years ago, the money invested in China, for instance, was coming back to the western world. why?...becaue there was little amounts of money circulating in China itself. Most of the people was so poor, that the internal consumption in China was almost non existent. So, the Western countries (I will call them the WC from now on...don't ask why.... :-) ) were investing the money to build factories, and then paying miserable wages to the chinese people to produce our "goods", so that they could later sell these goods in the WC's at a much higher price, creating for themselves an excellent profit.

Summarizing: The WC's companies were using the people of the emergent countries as almost slaves, to create high profits back in the WC's. Additionally, the consumers in the WC's were another kind of slaves, consuming more and more and more withour having (or without wanting to have....) the faintest idea about what was happening. The first people (the chinese workers)were unhappy slaves, and the second one (the people in the WC's) happy and addicted slaves.

But, after decades, the chinese people and their government had decided that they want to be happy too!!..obvious, isn't it?...so, the wealth created in decades, has started to be distributed in China, and the people has started to consume. Not so much as in the WC's, but remember that the population of China is 1.500 million people. Do you remember these old say: "If the all the chinese were stepping at the same time, the world would tremble!!" ??...ok, now it has started to happen. They have started to walk together.

So, the money invested in China is not coming back (at least not as before). And wonder something...who has bought the debt that has been issued by the U.S.A. governments in order to have money to save their banks?....YES!!!China!!! interesting, isn't?....

Here you have some info about China on "The Economist": http://www.economist.com/countries/China/profile.cfm?folder=Profile%2DEconomic%20Data&CFID=32839557&CFTOKEN=25446794

Here you have a couple of videos on the topic of Chinese development:








We could say that, in the last years, the happy slaves in the WC's were living happy and dreamy lives thanks to the poor and unhappy slaves of the Emergent Countries (that I will call EC's, from now on ), but now this is not possible any longer, so that we have to share the pie with the unhappy slaves of the EC's that have become more happy now that they have a piece of pie.

This is other of the aspects of globalization that noone had talked about before.

The question now is: Are we going to fight for the pie, or are we going to create, to develop, a true global economic model, that is including all countries, and not any longer sustained by poverty-based productivity, but sustained in creativity and innovation because of common vision?

This last possibility is threatened by two opposed tendencies:

• The first one is that EC's companies and Asiatic Countries (AC's) Companies begin to buy WC's companies, imposing their values and lifestyle. In the EC's and AC's a minority lives in a high standard, and a majority live on extreme poverty. So, they reproduce in domestic scale what the WC's were doing in global scale. Try to imagine the consequences of imposing this lyfestyle on Europe and U.S.A.
  
• The second option is that (as the G-20 said in Washington) a new central organism (probably a Central World Bank) is created, to control finances and money in a global level. Connected with that, in a few years it will be created a single world currency. This would mean that economics would be something unreachable for democratic governments, that would impose its rules on all countries and all peoples. This would mean a completely un-human economics. Try to imagine, working 80 hours per week, just because the Central World Bank has said that thw WC's productivity is so low that we can not compete with the AC's, and this kind of decisions, now don't depend on your government. How do you feel imagining it?
  

Do you still think that we can do nothing about economics?....Do you still think that we can just be sitted in our sofas seeing TV?...

THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: THE DEATH OF CAPITALISM (II)

What has happened, as a phenomena, provoking the crisis??...

Let' s try to describe the first part of it, following the excellent summary of the Spanish Professor of Madrid IESE, Mr. Leopoldo Abadia (http://www.leopoldoabadia.com). The title would be something like:

THE INTERESTING STORY OF THE MORTGAGE BUSINESS AND ITS UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES!!! THE "NINJA" CRISIS!!!

• All started in a scenario in which the interest rates were going down in the western world, specially in U.S.A.
• In this scenario, is better to take credit than to invest money, because the interest paid for a deposit is so low that is probable even smaller than the inflation rate. In these conditions, a investor in losing money (for instance, if your deposit pay 2% and the inflation is 2.5%, you are losing 0.5% every year if you have your money invested in the deposit)
  
• Thereby, the banks start to promote credit, specially mortages, to make business
• All of us start to buy new houses.
• The houses prices rise up.
• The banks forecast that the business is so good that they have to look for more of this business.
• They identify a new kind of client that following Mr. Abadia, we can call NINJA (No Income, No job, No Asset). This is the kind of person that you will never lend even 5 Euros, because they can not pay them back!!!..But, suddenly, this kind of client has become interesting because the banks can lend them money and, in the worst of the cases, recover it selling the house some years later, in case of unpayment, because they believe that the real estate market will continue rising up. So, as you can now understand, the risk of the operation is quite high...what if the market stops growing???...
• The banks give mortgages to the "ninjas", so the mortgage bussines grow.
• The banks begin to lack money, (the business os going so well that they need more money to lend it!!!) so they look for it. where?..All around the world!! This is a global economy!!
• The banks that have given mortgages to the ninjas, and that want to continue doing it, divide the mortgages in "little financial packages". This financial packages are composed of three types of mortgages: good ones, normal ones, and "awfully bad ones". This last type, we can call it kindly "garbage" mortgages, because they are the mortgages of the ninjas.
  
• Of course they don't sell "garbage" to other banks, but "Mortgage Backed Securities" or MBS's, that is a name that sounds much more better, to say it plainly. In a later post I'll explain other financial instrument that they invented later: the "Structured Investment Vehicle" or SIV, that makes possible to transform garbage mortgages in an attractive investment!!..incredible, isn't it??...
  
• Investors and Banks around the world (In England, in Spain, in France, in Iceland, perhaps even in Finland....)invest in "Hedge Funds", that are composed of MBS's and SIV's. That is, they invest on garbage, but they don't know how much garbage is there. They think that have invested in a very profitable international funds. So, in this stage all the banks in the world are full of garbage, but they don't know.
• Now, the first unpayments by the ninjas start to happen. The illusion starts to crumble down.
  
• The banks that start to understand that they have garbage in their balance sheets, understand too that the other banks are in the same situation, or even worse. So they start untrust each other.
  
• What does it mean that they untrust?...it means that in the interbanks market, where they lend money to each other, they ask for an extra interest rate because of this untrust. In europe, this determines directly the Euribor Rate.
  
• So, as a consequence of teh untrust created by the garbage that the banks had bought, the Euribor rate is rising up.
• And finally, as a consequence of the rise up of the Euribor interest rate, you and me pay more money every month in our mortgage payments.
  

So, summarizing: some guys in U.S.A. sell garbage around the world, and finally, because of the globalizations, and because of our global lack of consciousness, we pay more every month. Funny, isn't it?..

Take a look at this video, that explains it really well in an humoristic way:




To be continued....

Un poco de humor...

En el entorno de la informática y la tecnología, poco a poco, parece que las cosas tambien están cambiando...la revolución "open source" se aproxima....

reid un poco con este video.... The windows matrix....y estad atentos a la frase final del protagonista!! 

:-)