Is There A Connection Between Spirituality And A Global Financial Meltdown?

Money and God: are they connected?

I was sitting at home watching one of the TV news magazine shows and they were talking about the global economic meltdown that had occurred over the previous few years.

They detailed how we literally were days away from a complete collapse in which consumers would be unable to withdraw money from their banks; how there wouldn’t be funds for businesses to make payroll; how all financial systems worldwide would screech to a halt.

I’m watching this, thinking to myself, how the hell did this happen?  Whose fault was it?  Was this the work of George Bush?  Does fault lay back further, for example, Bill Clinton?  George Bush, Sr.?  Or even Ronald Reagan?

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So I began, in earnest, to research the causes of the meltdown.  And the more I peeled back a layer, the further back it took me.  And then I discovered something even more fascinating.  The causes of the entire global economic meltdown could be explained, and easily understood, by anyone who has studied Kabbalah.

I know…it sounds crazy.  Is that really possible?  What is Kabbalah anyway?  In one sentence, Kabbalah are the non-physical laws of the universe. The Kabbalistic laws that I will discuss in relation to the global economic meltdown are:

1) the desire to receive for the self alone

2) planting seeds and the disconnect caused by time, space and motion

3) correction

4) restriction

5) curtains

6) bread of shame

7) and the reality of the 1% versus the 99%.

In order to understand current events, we need to focus on past events and in this particular case, the history of Kabbalistic principles.

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We are not born with a clean slate

Before we begin with 52,000 years of world economic history, I want to discuss

the first Kabbalistic principle, the desire to receive for the self alone. 

Kabbalah teaches us that we are not born tabula rosa -- with a clean slate. Rather, we are born with a “tape recording” of sorts -- remnants from previous lives.

One of those remnants is the desire to receive.

 

Kabbalah, by the way, literally means 

"to receive." 

We are hardwired with the desire to receive, it is part of our DNA. 

 

 

Touch an infant's cheek and they will turn towards the touch with their mouth open, to receive food. It's called the root reflex.

One of the ways we test to see if a newborn is "normal" is called the Palmar Grasp Reflex. Touch the baby's palm and it grasps your finger.

 

There is nothing wrong with the desire to receive. 

In fact, Kabbalah teaches that receiving is a necessary component of sharing.  

If you have a problem receiving, odds are you have a problem giving. 

BUT when the desire to receive is for the self alone, with no intention of sharing, Kabbalah teaches that chaos is inevitable.  


Keep the concept of "the desire to receive for the self alone" in your mind, as we take our journey through the economic history of the world.

BARTER NETWORKS

Now, let’s begin at roughly 50,000 BC where the first economic activity is evident with barter networks -- 

 
I trade you this saber skin for that trinket of sea shells. 

However, it’s not 
until 10,000 BC 
when we see the first truly significant event in economic history,the domestication of plants and animals. For the first time in human history, people were tied to land. Economies with tradable goods began to develop.


Another significant development during this Neolithic Revolution was one of the
most extreme examples of the desire to receive for the self alone-- slavery. 

Prior to this period of history, specifically with hunter/gatherer cultures, there was no
economic advantage to "owning" another person. 


While the concept of slavery is repugnant to most human beings today (I say "most" because it is estimated that 30 million people worldwide are still enslaved today), the fact is that slavery was
commonplace among many societies around the globe throughout history.

MERCHANT CAPITALISM

Around 2,000 BC we see the earliest recorded activity of long distance merchant capitalism, conducted by the Assyrians in Mesopotamia (modern day Northern Iraq). 

The Assyrians had an early and crude form of capitalism whereby merchants would buy goods and resell them for a profit. This merchant capitalism greatly expanded during the Roman Empire and the medieval Islamic world during
the 9th Century and more so during the 12th Century in Medieval Europe.
 

Another early form of capitalism was money lending. 

Money lending was almost exclusively between private individuals, and mostly wealthy individuals.  
Very simply, one person would loan money to another person, and charge interest. 

In Ancient Israel, it was against the laws of Moses to charge interest to other Jews, but it was okay to charge interest to “strangers.”

  

At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, which was a council of Christian bishops convened by the Emperor Constantine, Canon 17 was enacted.

Prior to Canon 17, Canon law forbade clergyman from engaging in usury-- defined at that time as charging interest of any kind. 

However, Canon 17 allowed Clergy to charge 1% of interest per month or 12.7% per year. This law was later extended to the laity. 

Subsequently, Popes abolished all secular laws allowing usury, and if you accepted any interest you could not receive sacrament or a Christian burial. It was deemed “detestable to God and man to charge interest. Similarly, interest is also forbidden by the Quran under Islam.

FEUDALISM

During the decline of the Roman Empire (around the 3d Century AD), increased
tax demands by Rome crippled the peasant class by reducing tenant farmer to serfs.
And this leads us into an economic model known as Feudalism. Feudalism was
prominent between the 9th and 15th Centuries. While it has no broadly accepted
definition, feudalism was common in Japan and Europe. There were three basic
components or attributes of Feudalism. First, you had a Lord, a nobleman, who
held huge tracts of land. The Lord granted possession of lands to a Vassal to
exploit, and in return the Vassal would pledge armies for the protection of the
Lord. The actual pieces of land granted to the Vassals were called fiefdoms, or
fiefs. And those fiefs were farmed by peasants known as serfs. The serfs farmed
in exchange for their keep (this is known as subsistence farming). Lord, Vassal
and Serfs were all loyal to the King.

Serfs could not abandon land without permission from the Lord, nor could they
hold title to any lands. There were also peasants known as Freeman, who were
rent paying tenant farmers. They owed little or no service to Lords. In 11th
Century England, 10% of peasants were Freeman. However, Freeman frequently
wound up serfs if economic conditions became harsh– crop failures, for example.
Serfs paid taxes and fees usually by working the fields or in the Lord’s manner for
a certain number of days (the rest of the days they worked to sustain their
families). Fees were normally paid in the form of crops.
Up until the 12th Century, less than 5% of Europe’s population lived in towns.
Skilled workers lived in the town, but still earned their keep from Lords rather than
a real wage.

So, what were the economic implications of feudalism?
For one thing, there was a lack of technological innovation. Since serfs were
merely subsistence farmers working for a Lord, they had no incentive for
technological innovation, nor incentive to cooperate with other serfs. The Lords
had no innovation incentive either since they did not produce goods to sell on the
market. Feudal manners and workers were self-sufficient.

What changed this dynamic? One of the largest transformational events affecting
Feudalism, was the Black Plague, aka The Bubonic Plague. The plague began
around 1346, and quickly killed 1.5 of 4 million Europeans. By 1400, 75-100
million people died worldwide. There would be more outbreaks from time to time,
and, in effect, the plague lasted until the 19th Century. And what does this have to
do with Economics, you might ask?
The plague created a tremendous labor shortage. Family guilds had to train and
hire outside workers, who were now moving into towns for a wage. Even Lords
had to pay to get labor. Birth rates exploded, and child labor became a huge
engine of economic development, as did a more active slave trade. Serfs were now
earning a real wage for their labor instead of simply subsistence farming.

MERCANTILISM

Feudalism had laid some of the foundations necessary for the development of
Mercantilism, our next economic model. A precursor to Capitalism, Mercantilism
is basically trade for profit, but where the government institutes controls to assure
the prosperity and security of the state. Mercantilism began principally as trade
between towns, but it was non-competitive trade since the towns trading with each
other had different goods or services to offer. Then over time, as demand
increased within the respective towns for the same goods and services, the products
and services became homogenized between those towns, thus trade had to spread.
First, county to county, then province to province, and eventually between nations.
What happens when nations become competitive with each other for trade? Often,
it stokes feelings of nationalism and sparks wars.

Among the measures governments took to protect the State, and promote
prosperity within, were: High tariffs to discourage imports; banning gold and
silver exports; limiting wages to keep profits high; forbidding trade with foreign
ships and colonies; and subsidizing home production of manufactured goods. The
State also took the place of local guilds as regulators of the economy. Before the
State usurped that function, there had been a collection of merchants from different
towns, such as the Hanseatic League in Germany, which pooled resources and
instituted regulations for conducting and protecting business. And finally, a vitally
important governmental measure instituted to protect and promote the State, was
the granting of monopolies to merchants that engaged in oceanic voyages-- leading
to colonization.

COLONIZATION

Oceanic voyages, while potentially fantastically profitable, were extremely
dangerous and risky. They required huge investments, and the returns on those
investments could take years to see. Merchants needed to be induced to risk their
fortunes. Kingdoms wanted to not only increase trade, but to extend their nation’s
reach via settlements and colonies. Most importantly, they wanted to mine the
natural resources from those colonies to send back to the motherland-- especially
precious metals such as gold and silver.

So, how did the Crown induce wealthy merchants to invest in these conquests?
One way was to grant Company charters – a monopoly to a company or
association for a number of years on trade within a certain region. With that
Charter came broad legal powers to enforce order in distant lands. There were also
some restrictions that came with the Charter. Colonies couldn’t trade with other
nations. In the case of England’s America, the colonists had to buy back finished
products with a pseudo currency that couldn’t be used anywhere else.

Still, a large number of speculators were needed. Thus was born the Joint Stock
Company, in which risk could be spread among many investors. Investors could
buy into a company and own the right to share in the profits in proportion to their
amount of stock. Britain issued their first joint stock backed charter in 1555, The
Muscovy Company. Other well known charter’s issued were: The East India
Company in 1600; The Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670; and The South Sea
Company in 1711.

So how did all these investors come to invest in these joint stock ventures? How
did they learn of the opportunities? Was it from a “town crier” on a street corner
or notices posted on doors? Very often, it was from within the first “Starbucks.”
In 1652, the first coffee house opened in England called Jonathon’s Coffee House.
Merchants would gather to partake in this new fashionable rage of drinking coffee
and talking business– many joint stock deals were consummated there.
Meanwhile, at another popular coffee house, Edward Lloyd’s, ship captains and
ship owners would also congregate to discuss business. Here, some investors
began gambling on the success of a voyage by ensuring the voyage against loss in
exchange for a premium. The “insurance” business grew in popularity at this
coffee house which later became known as Lloyd’s of London.

The joint stock structure was next adopted by unincorporated companies (those
trading without a royal charter). Previously, investors were buying stock in
companies with which they had a personal link, such as merchants seeking to sell
goods, etc. Now, investors could buy into a company in which they had no link.
Share prices were simply set by whatever price the buyer and seller agreed upon.

So, if you were an investor with no personal link to a company’s core business,
how did you find out about that opportunity? You needed someone with access to
those opportunities that would present them to you. This led to the advent of stock
brokers, who would arrange deals between buyers and sellers of shares, in
exchange for a cut of each transaction. By 1773, these popular brokers at
Jonathon’s coffee house labeled themselves – the stock exchange.
Along with colonization fever came an explosion in the growth of slavery.
Imperial powers such as France, Britain, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal and others
amassed worldwide empires primarily from agricultural plantations using African
slaves.
By 1552, African slaves comprised 10% of the population of Lisbon. Slavery was
a vital part of the Brazilian colonial economy, especially with regards to sugar cane
and mining production. Brazil had obtained 38% of all African slaves traded.

British colonies in the West Indies were unable to match the low cost of Brazilian
sugar in the marketplace. Moreover, Brits had become huge consumers of
product-- averaging 16 pounds per person per year by the 19th Century. This
eventually led, along with pressure from Evangelical reformers back in the U.K., to
intense lobbying by the British government for the Brazilians to end slavery.
However, those lobbying efforts came long after the British themselves had
become the principal purveyors of slaves. In fact, by the time of the Industrial
Revolution, profits from the slave trade and the West Indian plantations
represented 5% of the British economy.