The growth of Islamic finance is a remarkable story in the history of global financial systems Islamic banking, starting in Dubai in the early 1970s now.

The growth of Islamic finance is a remarkable story in the history of global

financial systems

• Islamic banking, starting in Dubai in the early 1970’s now commands an estimated $400 billion dollars in assets

• Operates in 70 countries

• Western Finance is spurring growth by establishing IF divisions

• Poised to expand geometrically

As a transnational movement - Islamic Finance can be a global force of peace, prosperity and

cooperation

Financial systems are more than economic institutions – they are powerful societal and cultural mechanisms

They are organic - changing over time sometimes gradually –

sometimes abruptly

19th & 20th C review shows the relationship between monetary systems and world stability

• While the 20th C saw two devastating wars and brutal dictatorships – the 19th C was an era of peace

• After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 – nations formed the Concert of Europe

• Except for brief localized struggles, peace lasted 100 years on European Continent

• Elsewhere Europeans were carving up whole continents as part of colonial expansion

Mercantilism to laissez-faire

Mercantilism - a joint venture formed between the state and its chartered monopolies to gain riches thru trade, exploitation and plunder –ceded to a balance of power, the liberal state, a self regulating market and the gold standard

Gold standard Gold standard was a fixed currency rate system

– all currencies were convertible to gold As a supranational mechanism, the gold

standard gave reins to commerce resulting in unprecedented prosperity for Europe

Transnational projects such as railways and canals and capital markets integration kept nations out of war

To the East – the gold dinar had flourished as a trade facilitator since the 7th C

War brewing

• In the end - competition for resources and shifts in the balance of power set war in motion in early 1900’s

• Reaching into the Mid East for more colonial possessions, Britain and Germany signed an agreement over the Baghdad railway in 1914 – too late to avert war

World War I proved cataclysmic

Battle and famine claimed 15 million lives 4 Empires collapsed – German, Russian,

Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman Ruling dynasties imploded into a dozens of

states in central Europe A pact between Britain and France carved up

the Ottoman Empire into the mandates of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine

State drawn boundaries in the 1920’s produced a lasting legacy - causing constant tension for over 80 years

The gold standard collapsed with the war.

• The gold dinar that had operated in the Muslim world for 13 centuries - longer than anywhere else- did not survive

• Gold convertibility gone - hyperinflation, unknown in the preceding century, ravaged the economies of Germany, Russia, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Depression followed inflation

• Inflation of the 1920’s ended abruptly in the 1930’s with the complete collapse of the global economy.

• The U.S. and France held 63% of the world’s monetary gold but halted credit to Europe’s new nations

• Nations turned inward and embraced the state as the savior from the great depression.

Fascism emerged as a response to a failed monetary system

• From Tokyo to Madrid • Buenos Aires to Caracas • Helsinki to Belgrade • Without a monetary system, Germany turned to

barter and by 1932, Mussolini declared capitalism dead.

• Territorial expansion by Italy, Germany and Japan seen as a means of solving goods shortage

• It took another war to revitalize the gold standard system - under Bretton Woods in 1945

From fixed to floating• In 1971, Vietnam War caused U.S. to leave the

BW gold exchange standard • For last 35 years currencies are paper fiat

issued by sovereign nations• The spread of capitalism and the inflation of

dollars has filled the world’s banks with greenbacks

• U.S. dollar rules as the global reserve currency because of America’s post WWII economic position and its ability to shape global monetary system

Birth of petrodollars – how fiat systems produce imbalances

• After Arab oil embargo in 1973, dollars flooded into Mid East oil producers’ coffers

• Fearing a glut of “inaccessible” dollars, International Monetary Fund set up a dollar recycling facility

• Arguably dollar based loans to South America led to its debt crisis in the 1980’s

• Recent fast rise of petrodollars helped create Mid East stock market bubble and correction

Since the fall of communism 1989 -developed world is giving way to

emerging countries

Islamic Finance mirrors emerging market growth

Sea change in productivity and consumption

• Emerging markets now make up over half world’s GDP (purchasing parity basis)

• U.S. in 1945 was 40% of world’s GDP and is now 20%

• Emerging markets consume over half world’s energy

U.S. Trade deficit has caused huge dollar reserve build-up in China, India and Mid East

• Oil exporters’ dollar reserves rising faster than Asia’s – estimated at $600 bn

• Contrary to standard theory – capital “runs uphill” – emerging countries finance developed ones

According to Nobel Prize winner Robert Mundel

• “The present international monetary system neither manages the interdependence of currencies nor stabilizes prices. Instead of relying on the equilibrium produced by [gold’s] automaticity, the superpower has to resort to "bashing" its trading partners which it treats as enemies”.

Since the collapse of Bretton Woods – U.S. trade deficit has ballooned

Flip side to C/A surpluses elsewhere

in millions of dollars

-800000

-700000

-600000

-500000

-400000

-300000

-200000

-100000

0

100000

60

75

90 5

Current Account positions in emerging regions

Current accounts in emerging regions

Next stage of emerging market development

• Fewer dollars will be recycled into American debt markets – reversing U.S. credit cycle

• Money will be used to facilitate banking and credit institutions to promote growth and consumption in emerging markets

• Clout of IMF to dictate terms to other countries (such as it tried in Malaysia in 1997) further diminished

Islamic Finance can build a more equitable and balanced financial system in rapidly changing world

Islamic Finance “putting money to work” is profoundly different from Western Finance

• Dollarized world has left Western Finance awash in liquidity

• WF increasingly involved with speculative ventures such as hedge funds

• Hedge fund activity is becoming cannibalistic – extracting money from money

• Derivatives trading now tops a $ quadrillion in notional amount in US

• Capital raised by sukuks can be put to work for infrastructure or transportation for real use and revenue streams

• Oil development projects often structured like commodity bonds that pay back in kind – i.e. – Iranian Oil Bourse – in which investors and state predetermine tonnage receivable based on capital investment

Investment in IF harmonious with peaceful co-existence

• WF places top priority on profits

• Ignores any social, moral or religious component

• Joins the state and corporation in military enterprises like 18th mercantilism

• IF defines permissible investments

• Forbids investment in

weapons/defense• Harmonizes financial

activities with social and religious life

Concept of risk sharing has powerful implications

• WF increasingly focused on risk transfer - creates wall between lender and borrower – i.e. - housing bubble affects owner not lender

• Creates constant conflict between workers/shareholders and lenders/borrowers

• Average citizens in developed world are losing out in globalization’s spoils – wages declining

• CEOs now make 300 times average wage earner

• IF - Risk sharing decreases bubble likelihood

• Mortgages share home value risk

• Labor and capital providers more equitable in profit and loss sharing partnerships

• Micro-finance is proving to be highly successful in alleviating poverty

IF is similar to gold standard era of 100 years peace

• Like gold standard, IF is transnational –aids state to state cooperation

• Promotes non-adversarial relationships

• Views conflicts as destructive to society

Gold dinar?

• In 2002 Malaysia and Iran tried to revive the dinar – did not succeed

• Mistake may have been to believe all paper currency needs gold backing – it does not

• A gold “signal” system can work as well• If gold price increases – money supply needs

decreasing and vice versa• This system was used by the U.S. in 1800 when

the new country had no gold at all.

Gold dinar?

• A gold signal system would be a powerful new financial system

• Historically gold creates price stability, high employment and balanced trade

• High theological appeal

Is it possible?

• Monetary systems change with every war• The past century has seen no less than 5:

gold standard interwar dirty floats, pound sterling (ended 50 years ago over Suez canal crisis)Bretton Woods Dollar-centric fiat floats and pegs

The world is changing at an unprecedented pace

• Russia, which suffered an economic meltdown in 1997 is now a trade surplus nation and the world’s largest energy supplier

• Triple alliance of Russia, China and Iran are forming a counterweight to U.S. hegemony

• China is now the largest consumer of tin, steel, copper and the 2nd largest importer of oil

• The U.S. is becoming increasingly protectionist as shown by its rejection of the DPW in Jan

• Creation of the Euro in 1999, a peacetime event, has shown benefits of fixed rate system

History suggests change is coming

• U.S. can no longer use emerging market financing to fund its debt burdens

• Median wage stagnation and asset depreciation may put America into sharp recession

• Emerging markets have tremendous opportunity to refashion global monetary system

IF has rare window

• To create a sound hard money system• To form a more distributive system

across society • To integrate the financial system with

society – making a cohesive whole• To promote global peace and

prosperity