Agenda-clarified and personified

Back to issues of dunya.

1. I need to place my unconditional support towards reinforcing the “real” productive economy, rooted in engineering, sciences and technology.

2.  I need to also understand that it cannot happen without the understanding of the financial and capital impact and movements to the underlying economy, and that the financial markets can only be efficient by undergoing a rigorous structural change to align with human values and reduce the impact and effects of unbridled greed. The dimunition of gambling in complexity of speculative financial products, driven by materialism which feeds “growth” outlook is an absolute necessity – and hence an unconditional support for the asset-based transactions of Islamic finance.

3.  This understanding should also lead to the view that while a viable alternative, it has not met its platform on par with conventional finances which utterly dominates the landscape despite being an inferior, defective mechanism lubricating the international trade between nations and firms. The strategy forward to elevate Islamic finance to its rightful level should be formulated and cadres of proponents, respected and strong figures, cultivated and reinforced continually.

4.  And, while advocating all of the above, what remains to be seen is whether we will have the right quantity of quality human capital to carry out the above. Malaysians are talented, listening to Idris Jala, Andrew Sheng and Danny Quah inter alia, people who have reached a certain level of confidence and competence to stand in front of an intenational audience and speak their minds and knowledge. But do we have the quality among the Malay-muslims?

5. What stands out is that Malay-muslims are few and far in between due to this notion of the need to have approval from their audience. Yes, there are people who have bucked this tendency – NGO leaders for instance have been fearless in voicing out the “third view”, Abu Urwah, Zaid Kamaruddin, SIS women leaders, watsisname of Just International, and by no means am I giving credence to the opinions of the latter two by equating them with the first two, but the mere fact that they state their ground in voicing their opinions make them a beacon in the dark icons for frankness and forthright opinion-sharing, if not outright opinion-making- yet the fact that their opinions get amplified if resonance is found with the ruling elite emphasizes my point of needing approval.

6. Others are more willing to stay in the background, let others take the limelight, have the opinion of who-are-we-to-say-anything.. misplaced humility every bit as damaging as misplaced arrogance.

7. To ensure a proper democratisation of voices, and to place meritocracy on the pedestal, and to make the malays more confident and more competitive instead of this internal bickering and shameful jostling for positions as evidenced in the ongoing UMNO elections, there is a need to put in place a system where crutches are removed.

8. The crutches have been a bane for the Malays. It is a right – as argued by certain quarters. Why should it be when it hinders us from progress, not as a support to aid our convalescence. It needs reform, a change in implementation – shouts others. Agree, but how can we dismantle a mechanism so intertwined with the system that unraveling it will be so vexative, so difficult and ultimately political suicide for those attempting it. The realists realize this, so those who are on firmer footing among the Malays will always find DSAI’s bold clarion call fitting.

9. Those from the opposite end will always regard this call as traitorous, and hence the increasing polarization of these two ends of implementation approaches towards the same objective – that of improving the lot of the malay-muslims.

10. The “third view” has to find its footing. The need to return to Islam’s emphasis on equality, and also on the meritocracy objectives. The need to ensure that Islam reigns supreme. The risk here is that this call is being hijacked by the Teresa Kok’s of Malaysia, the zealous Christain missionaries, the other races opting for a short-cut to equality. This risk can only be mitigated once the simmering antagonism aka the ‘rotting fishes’ is brought to the table, thrashed over and over with, all disputes, suspicions clarified and overcome, and then we can sit and move forward together as one. Otherwise, the risk is that the lingering goodwill is all used up, and at the end of it the ‘we were here first’ brigade will win. And all others, collectively as Malaysians, primarily Malays, will lose.

 

turmoil, tsunami and armageddon? - causes

Well - I could spend some time to really understand and try to predict the right way of overcoming this, but the sheer complexity of the whole issue means it'll take time to comprehend, let alone undertake the necessary structural changes.

For a start, this is a brilliant encapsulation of the effects of greed, not a technical description of the mechanics of the failure, that I presume will be well covered in other areas - but also fittingly describes the failure of ribaa'...

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/10/10-people-who-p.html#more
Minsky:Dr. Michael Hudson - global research dot ca wrote:"A generation ago, for instance, Hyman Minsky gained a following by describing what he aptly called the Ponzi stage of the business cycle. It was the phase in which debtors no longer were able to pay off their loans out of current income (as in Stage #1, where they earned enough to cover their interest and amortization charges), and indeed did not even earn enough to pay the interest charges (as in Stage #2), but had to borrow the money to pay the interest owed to their bankers and other creditors. In this Stage #3 the interest was simply added onto the debt, growing at a compound rate. It ends in a crash.This was the flip side of the magic of compound interest – the belief that people can get rich by "putting money to work." Money doesn’t really work, of course. When lent out, it extracts interest from the "real" production and consumption economy, that is, from the labor and industry that actually do the work. It is much like a tax, a monopoly rent levied by the financial sector. Yet this quasi-tax, this extractive financial rent (as Alfred Marshall explained over a century ago) is the dynamic that is supposed to enable corporate, state and local pension funds to pay for retirement simply out of stock market gains and bond investments – purely financially and hence at the expense of the economy at large whose employees are supposed to be gainers. This is the essence of "pension-fund capitalism," a Ponzi-scheme variant of finance capitalism. Unfortunately, it is grounded in purely mathematical relationships that have little grounding in the "real" economy in which families and companies produce and consume.Mr. Paulson’s bailout plan reflects a state of denial with regard to this dynamic. The debt overhead is self-aggravating, becoming less and less "solvable" and hence more of a quandary, that is, a problem with no visible solution. At least, no solution acceptable to Wall Street, and hence to Mr. Paulson and the Democratic and Republican congressional leaders. The banks and large swaths of the financial sector are broke from having made bad gambles in the belief that money could be made to "work" under conditions that shrink the underlying industrial economy and stifle wage gains, eroding the market for consumer goods. Debt deflation reduces sales and business activity in general, and hence corporate earnings. This depresses stock market and real estate prices, and hence the value of collateral pledged to back the economy’s debt overhead. Negative equity leads to bankruptcy and foreclosures."He also states:The main impact will be to reinforce the concentration of wealth in the hands of creditors (the wealthiest 10 percent of the population) rather than wiping out financial assets (and debts) through the bankruptcies that were occurring as a result of "market forces". Is it too much to say that we are seeing the end of economic democracy and the emergence of a financial oligarchy ­ a self-serving class whose actions threaten to polarize society and, in the process, stifle economic growth and lead to the very bankruptcy that the bailout was supposed to prevent?Everything that I have read in economic history leads me to believe that we are entering a nightmare transition era. The business cycle is essentially a financial cycle. Upswings tend to become economy-wide Ponzi schemes as banks and other creditors, savers and investors receive interest and plow it back into new loans, accruing yet more interest as debt levels rise. This is the "magic of compound interest" in a nutshell. No "real" economy in history has grown at a rate able to keep up with this financial dynamic. Indeed, payment of this interest by households and businesses leaves less to spend on goods and services, causing markets to shrink and investment and employment to be cut back."
We all should be organizing to take our democracies back.

Post-raya stocktaking

Lots of stock-taking still to be done.
1. Am still in hot standby mode - for the new guy to make his entrance. My prayers that mother and child will make it safely.
2. Post-ramadhan blues - my prayers too that Ramadhan's lessons linger as long as possible. It is part of my rehabilitation of my soul. And, yeah my writing is taking on a more personal angle instead of an onlooker angle. Slight change there, and all reforms begin from the small changes.
3. SWF work - finalising a paper on an approach which focuses both advocacy and repository building simultaneously. I need to angle this right, otherwise potential ramifications, mainly negative will arise.
4. Primaya - small updates required.
5. Personal angst - did a mini-PA, and am taking on initiatives designed to make me more at ease with myself, to create a better environment - bi'ah solehah, overcome feeligns of betrayal by being true to self and finally, to better understand basis of decisions and be firm in my stand. The beautiful ayat of "Intansurullah wan yansur lakum" comes to mind.
Translated by 3 contemporary mufassirin as below:
047.007
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly. PICKTHAL: O ye who believe! If ye help Allah, He will help you and will make your foothold firm.
SHAKIR: O you who believe ! if you help (the cause of) Allah, He will help you and make firm your feet.
btw, PA definition centred upon -the feeling of insecurity, low self-esteem and vulnerability, arising out of uncertainty, lack of guidance and feeling of unmet aspirations, resulting in unease and feeling of betrayal with and to self.