Advanced Critical thinking (24/30)

The World bank loans to India can be viewed from two opposite view points. Both are actually true, which will be difficult for many to understand.
1) These allow the building of infrastructure, such as roads, rail, electricity, commercial, residential and modern industrial parks and airports. This will enable blah blah blah. Get comfortable with that view. Do some research.

Now, another view.
2) Get some large consulting firms in to convince the Indian government to take on these massive DOLLAR loans. Get some huge American conglomerates in to build the infrastructure. To be paid in DOLLARS. Now the Indian government gets tax payers to pay the bill, or at least maintain the interest payments. The few make lots of DOLLARS the many pay.

Get comfortable with both points of view.

Follow the money. Who gets paid and who pays? Who benefits the most? Sure?
You should be able to argue the point convincingly, either way. Without emotion.

However, you are a caring human being. Feel free to express your feelings in the comments but only after completing the above tasks.

Remember the blog is about you thinking and understanding. Not about me explaining or convincing you of anything. I am not a politician. I am not selling you anything. I am trying to give you back your power. Which is incredibly difficult as many don't want it. Why not give that some thought after researching cognitive dissonance?

Advanced Critical Thinking (23/30)

Advanced Critical Thinking

If you haven't passed ordinary critical thinking then this will be a waste of your time.

This course is not about yourself or your loved ones, it is about the world and how you perceive it.

Just reading my blogs is not going to help. You must put in the effort. Quickly review the IMF and what they say they do. Perhaps review what they are doing to Greece.

One point of view is that the IMF is providing emergency loans to blah blah. The Greek government are going to make cuts to enable blah blah blah.
This is what our media outlets and the IMF are saying they are doing.

I have given this some critical thought along with self directed independent research. The IMF are not helping Greek people. The IMF are bailing out German banks. The bill is being given to the Greek people.

Now, forget your feelings. In order to become an advanced critical thinker you will need to read a few articles until you can make a good argument for both what nonsense I have just written and the nonsense the IMF blather on about.

You need to be able to hold two opposing views, in your head simultaneously. I have just given you two opposing views.

Now, read a fresh article about Greece and the IMF, or watch a YouTube clip of the same. What are your feelings now?

When you become better at this you will watch the news with either utter contempt or simply be appalled. You will never again believe news that is handed to you on a plate.

You will have to do your own research, your own critical thinking and seek out others who have done the same.

That was quite deep. Probably, too much to take. You have as long as you want to get comfortable with the two views of the same thing. Proceed at your own pace, it isn't a race.

Gold (22/30)

I have been asked about gold. I'd really rather not say. However, I will.

Gold is money, everything else is credit.

Explaining this will take forever as you already know about gold and money which prevents you from understanding what gold and money is.

Imagine that you are in a really large and very busy casino. You are having a great time and are winning big. Your pile of multicoloured chips is vast. At this point you glance around the casino and notice a great many people are winning big. You decide to cash out most of your chips but keep playing as you keep winning. You manage to cash out once more before the casino declares bankruptcy.

As this blog is about critical thinking you shouldn't really be reading this bit yet. You should be thinking, critically, about gold, money and currency.

You already know that the banks can't actually function if just a few percent of the population try exchanging their bank credit for cash. You may already know that only a few percent of pensioners can convert their pensions into bank credit before the financial system can't function.

So, what I am suggesting is that exchanging some bank credit for gold or even silver is behaving similarly to the astute person in the about to be bankrupt casino.

Believe me, I know how hard it is for you to overcome your conditioning about the concept of money. After I had broken my conditioning, I spent three months having a gentle nervous breakdown. I am better now.

Thanks for your patience thus far. Sorry for any discomfort you may be feeling. Be aware that I have presented you with both a potential problem and a potential solution. I have, in the preceding months, done my utmost to prepare you for this moment. If you aren't panicking, you haven't understood anything or you have understood everything.

Thanks for you time.

What are interest rates 501

Interest rates are an interesting topic. We all know what they are. They are important. For me to suggest something different is dangerous for me. Not from the 'elites' but from every day normal folk. Normal people don't like feeling stupid, gullible and wrong about things they already 'know' about. Which makes keeping them enslaved to a barbaric financial system effortless.

Interest rates mean different things depending upon the underlying financial system. Our financial system uses interest rates to take wealth from the productive. The more productive we are the higher interest rates can be. Our governments also take wealth from the productive. Not just with taxes but by borrowing and only ever repaying the interest.

So how does this theft take place? Forget taxes, this post is about interest.

Whether it is us or the government, at the instant we are granted a loan the electronic currency is created at that very moment.

The above sentence is absolutely crucial, everybody 'should' understand it. You aren't borrowing 'money'. You are creating it.

Currently the bank of England will allow its chosen few customers to borrow into existence vast quantities of currency at 0.25% interest. What a massive advantage their chosen few customers have over the rest of us! This isn't real money, it is rules based currency creation. Who makes these rules up? Not government. The bank of England makes up the rules. The rules of currency creation!

My local hospital is going to be shut down due to funding issues. I live in Huddersfield. Many are objecting. Government and banking and every business either meets the public's needs or should eliminated. With rules based currency creation, the public is either served or the the public are enslaved. Guess which version we have?

We have financial enslavement which crushes humanity.

Are we powerless? No. Should you agree with me in sufficient numbers and you are prepared to expend some effort critically thinking, then things change in a single heart beat.

What changes? Everything. How? The US president is the most powerful man in the western world. What happens if when she/he speaks no one listens? Are they still powerful? No. Effectively, they no longer exist.

It is said that the pen is mightier than the sword. I would add that an idea is far more powerful and is the only thing capable of faster than light travel.

The world could easily be so much more.

Enterprise vs Critical Thinker (part three)

I hired a car from Enterprise and it suffered a superficial change of condition of around $1,000 according to Enterprise, who took the sum out of my visa issued deposit.

I thought this sum to be outrageous and asked Enterprise for documentation, specifically an engineers report of the damage. They have yet to reply. I also contacted VISA who were surprisingly sympathetic.

Recently visa sent me an email, copied and pasted below

Thank you for your patience during our investigations regarding the transactions for £900 and £500 from Enterprise.

I am pleased to advise that our investigations are now complete and the credits of £900 and £500 applied to your June 2016 statements will remain on your account.

In the circumstances the refund from Enterprise of £764.09 showing on your July 2016 statement has been reversed and a debit adjustment for this amount will show on your next statement.

I trust that this clarifies this matter.

Yours sincerely

So, what next?

I could speculate but I don't want to give Enterprise any ideas.
I could explain where Enterprise need to streamline their back office systems. However, I am a systems analyst and design engineer so that would be billable work.

I could guess as to how VISA conducted their investigations. I am not going to do that either.

I shall simply say this. The law was not on my side. It was already on the side of the property owner. This should be sufficient to cause public unrest on a massive scale and utterly destroy our current legal system because justice is crucial and justice is completely absent.

VISA, almost certainly asked for an engineers report too. I guess they didn't receive one either. I never thought for a moment that VISA would be the champion of justice. So, I am not always right. I do enjoy surprises.

Enterprise is a huge multinational company with huge financial resources and access to the very highest levels of government. They will pay lobbyists vast sums of wealth to protect their own interests. For all their wealth and power, they are just a business. I am a human being. I am alive. My government has police, courts, laws, wealth and power, they are just a public bureaucracy. I am a human being. I am alive.

I understand that I am a critically thinking human being and as such I outrank both government and business. They are there to serve me. They are there to serve us.

We all know this to be true. When will we understand it?

We should all seriously consider which businesses we wish to encourage with our custom. Not simply look at the price.

We should all seriously consider how coercive and destructive our governments are. How lacking in justice our millions of laws are.

We should all critically think about our world because it is ours.

House buying (21/30)

I mentioned that I would cover house buying and so here it is.

I nearly bought a house in 1990. I didn't. Zero critical thought allowed my mother and grand mother to easily dissuade me.  So, their advice has cost me dearly. £15,000 would have bought me a house valued at £100,000 plus today.

So, that is a really good reason for bothering with critical thought. I do live in a £100,000 plus home at a cost of £600 a month in rent. Critical Thought applied in 1990 would be saving me £600 a month. Every month.

Should buying a home really depend on what the first two people you mention it to think?

Can you blame them if their advice turns out to be bewilderingly bad?

Well yes, you can. Or you can blame yourself for not critically thinking about it.

Well that was then and this is now. Critical Thought means thinking critically. Thinking is hard. Reacting is easy. If I say buy or perhaps don't buy you will have an instant reaction. That is not critically thinking.

I know of a couple who worked hard all their lives running a bakery. They saved hard and dreamed one day of retiring to a brand new house full of brand new furniture. They have my best wishes. Unfortunately, the first house wasn't as they had hoped. Neither was the third. Lack of funds prevented further attempts.

Would it have benefited them consulting me for forty minutes? I have no idea but I would like to think that it would. Otherwise, why write these blogs?

Back to you. Today, a mortgage is for 25 years or so. What are your job prospects like for the next quarter century? Now that should be a topic on its own.

How about the general economy? Is that looking solid? Again, another topic for critical thought.

How about interest rates? Back in 1990 they were just under 10% with homes about 2.5 times income. Now they are about 2.5% with homes 6 times income. What are your thoughts for the coming decades?

Are you aware that house prices and interest rates are indirectly linked? High interest rates are linked with low house prices. See 1990. Low interest rates lead to high house prices.

So should you buy or rent? Tricky question. It does need a large amount of critical thinking. Yours not mine.

I didn't mention deposits. 25% gets you a low interest rate. As does getting your parents to act as guarantors. Neither of these methods is without risk.

Critically think about worse case scenarios and how you will cope with them.

As always, I wish you the very best of luck.

Making Changes 405 (enlightenment?)

Variety is the spice of life. I denominate my surplus wealth in gold. Others may wish to denominate it in experiences, or knowledge, or their children, or in their car collection, or silver, or platinum, or Palladian, or arable land, or property, whatever they wish.

Everyone denominating wealth in the same pretend money system is foolish beyond the realms of my imagination . Everyone and anyone relying on government to feed them, in retirement, risks their lives on a long dead politicians promise. Good luck with that.

Actually, I denominate most of my wealth in my cognitive abilities. That is where virtually all my efforts and wealth has been expended. I can't not do it, I have issues and problems. :-)

One day course, for up to four people. £5,000
One week course, for up to four people, £20,000
Four week course, for up to four people, £60,000

Courses held where I work in Wakefield, England. Starting 30th March 2017

Or just read all this, again carefully, for free and discuss it with friends, family and colleagues. Or seek someone out, who will help for less currency units or is happy to barter. There are a wealth of possibilities and seven billion people to ask, I am one.

The key question to ask is, does our financial system support or leach from the common man?

My answer is simple, it brutally crushes an ever increasing percentage of people, whilst corrupting the lives of practically everyone . Very subtly, totally imperceptible to almost everyone. (Including those doing the crushing!)

Being part of such a system dehumanizing.

The system(s) are built upon our ignorance. Our enlightenment dissolves the system(s) with no effort. New systems spring into life with the phrase, 'shall we.....' rather than 'you must.......' or 'you must not'.