Gold News

Malaysia's New Gold Currency

Islam's new gold money vs. the crony corporate capitalism of the West...


SOME OF OUR
Islamic cousins have seen the light and wish to move away from paper money and back to commodity money, notably gold and silver, writes Toby Baxendale at the Cobden Centre.

It seems that a brave state in Malaysia will be doing this within weeks. We welcome this. The British Pound and US Dollar have declined by 99.42% and 98.17% in value respectively since they were detached from their roots in gold. The beneficiaries of this massive wipe out in the purchasing power money are, firstly, the governments of the day, which can issue excess paper currency to fund their various promises via "monetizing" bits of their debt obligations. Secondly, the handmaiden in this activity – the private sector banks – are next in line to benefit.

Banks use the state-supported apparatus to create new purchasing power out of nothing via the bank credit generated by the new deposits made available to them via the monetization process, and thereby enrich themselves and their favored clients. This is the Crony Corporate Capitalism that we have today.

So fair play to the state of Kelantan, who wish to get the monkey off their back. The Americans, with the Dollar as the world's reserve currency, have been able to print gigantic amounts with little negative economic effect to themselves. Each time an Asian exporter sells real goods for this newly created paper or bank deposit that has been created out of nothing, he essentially trades his real goods for depreciating purchasing power.

Reporting the news from Malaysia, The Guardian points out that:

"The idea was first mooted by Malaysia’s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He argued that the coins would never hang their possessor out to dry in the same way that paper money had. As precious metals with intrinsic value, gold and silver are more resistant to market fluctuations and devaluation compared to the US Dollar – an argument he took to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference as a tool to battle western hegemony."

It will be interesting to watch the UK based Dinar Exchange mentioned in the article:

"Then there is Dinar Exchange, the British equivalent of Indonesia's WIN. As the 'official certified supplier of Islamic gold Dinar and silver Dirham in the United Kingdom', the company had just concluded a month-long series of roadshows in May that saw it promoting the gold Dinar to Muslims in key UK cities such as London, Birmingham and Edinburgh. The group is inviting more to spread this Islamic vision as Dinar agents."

Immigration is very controversial in this country. Here, at least, I clearly see potential for Islamic immigrants to have a positive ideological influence on the native community, by imbuing new spirit in the fight for Honest Money!

This is the people's money spontaneously trying to compete with the legal tender Pound Sterling controlled by the state. Bad money crowds out good money with legal tender laws, as Gresham taught us. I do see this as a beacon of light in a very murky world.

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Built on anti-Corn Law radical Richard Cobden's vision that "Peace will come to earth when the people have more to do with each other and governments less," the Cobden Centre promotes sound scholarship on honest money and free trade. Chaired by Toby Baxendale, founder of the Hayek Visiting Teaching Fellowship Program at the London School of Economics, the Cobden Centre brings together economists, businesspeople and finance professionals to better help these ideas influence policy.

Cobden Centre articles

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