This is a fairy tale about faraway places and clever men. Like all fairy tales, there is a hidden moral. See if you can find it!
This story begins in the mythical land of Malaysia. The leader of the Malaysians is a king, let's call him Mahathir. Mahathir is a Muslim, and is constrained to act in Muslim ways. He is not allowed to amass fortunes. All the money he receives from taxes must return to the people in one way or another. However, from time to time his country experiences a typhoon or famine and Mahathir is forced to borrow money for a short time, in order to feed his people. Mahathir has been working with another man, let's call him George, to obtain these short term loans. George is not a Muslim. George is not constrained by the beliefs of Islam. However, even knowing this, Mahathir has begun to trust George. George has proven himself to be a very capable man. On many occassions, when Mahathir was in a panic due to the sufferings of his people, George was right there with ready infusions of cash to help him through the dark days. Furthermore, George was worldly, and witty. He knew of things far beyond the borders of Malaysia, and Mahathir enjoyed his company.
George tempted Mahathir with stories about new technologies of almost unlimited power. George brought in experts from all over the world to delight Mahathir with clever new designs and cutting edge theories. George could also provide the loans to make it all happen. George's financial powers were far in advance of anything in the Muslim world. He had ways of converting and moving cash, of creating derivatives and leveraging investments, of profiting off taxpayers and foreign investors. George was amazing. Mahathir was a modernist, in that he believed that all men might approach God in their own way. Mahathir thought that George, although he was not a Muslim, might be allowed into heaven as he was a good man and a clever chap.
Mahathir began to commit the tax revenues of the land to George's marvels of engineering. He started off small, but every project was so wildly successful that he was encouraged to get more and more ambitious. Each new enterprise added to the power and influence of his country. Each new proposal opened up a floodgate to an astonishing amount of foreign capital. Malaysia began to become rich. Mahathir did not fully understand George's financial dealings at the beginning of their relationship, and now that the stakes were much higher he understood even less. However, Mahathir trusted George, and expected that George was committed to the welfare of the Malaysian people. George, however, had his own plans.
George was also courting the king of another land, let's call it Britain. This land was away to the West, on the very fringes of civilization. This king, whom we shall call Henry, was a Christian and was constrained by the beliefs of the Catholic faith. He was not allowed to amass a fortune, or profit to the detriment of other Christians. However, Henry was a modernist, in that he was ignorant. Henry did not worry about the future. Henry wanted his poor, forgotten land to become a great power and he was willing to do anything to achieve this. Henry promised George a very liberal return on investment, and George was more than willing.
One busy night, through a series of complex transactions, George converted the entire investment capital of Malaysia into cash and transferred it to the kingdom of Britain. The next morning, Malaysia was impoverished. Mahathir was stunned. He could not have imagined that George's great financial ferris wheel could be shut down and taken away so quickly and quietly. But it was gone. As the people of Malaysia began to starve, Mahathir sent an angry letter off to George demanding some expanation. George responded immediately, explaining that he was now under the protection of the British king and that he was sorry that things worked out the way they did but that after all he was just making a good business decision. Mahathir lay down his head in an attitude of dispair. He had betrayed the trust of the people of Malaysia.
King Henry was in a better mood. George's flood of cash had attracted the same kind of foreign genius that had transformed Malaysia into a great nation. Henry could see that Britain was about to become a world power. Henry could not see that these great loans would eventually impoverish the land of Britain, just as it had broken the economy of Malaysia. Henry could not have predicted that before his lifetime had ended, he will have sold his crown, robbed the Church blind, and turned his own people into paupers.
One thing Henry had not planned for was the enmity of Islam. George had suddenly become a world famous anti-semite, and George was under the protection of the British crown. The world began to draw lines in what was to be a great struggle between the growing powers of Christendom and the sophisticated Muslim world. The kings of Europe and the Middle East began to arm themselves, falling even deeper in debt to George and his friends.
Instead of turning to war, Mahathir turned toward wisdom. It became clear to Mahathir why his religion prohibited the kind of financial trickery that George relied upon to build his fortunes. After doing a little research, Mahathir learned that George, and people like him, had done this same trick to a dozen other nations over a thousand years. First it was Phoenicia, then Babylon, Venice, then Amsterdam... Each country was left more destitute than the last. Never again did Malaysia allow parasites like George to get a foothold within its borders. While the rest of the world shook with futile battles, Malaysia slowly and gradually became a peaceful harbor, free from want and generous to its neighbors.
What would you do if you saw George making deals with your country's leaders?
