the __earthinc – Page 73 – By Hafiz Noor Shams

[2659] Valentine’s secularization

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Wednesday, February 13 2013
No Comments on [2659] Valentine’s secularization

As far as I understand it from my experience living in the United States during my undergraduate years, the Christian right, which is a loose socially conservative religious group, believes that there is a social war going on. It is a war on Christmas.

The war is really about the secularization of Christmas. It is a symbol of a wider conflict between the social conservatives and the liberals.

Putting that aside, an example of the secularization involves greetings associated with Christmas. In place of the phrase ”Merry Christmas”, many liberals are resorting to wishing ”Happy Holidays” instead.

The very phrase ”Happy Holidays” is partly an effort to be inclusive by those who embrace liberal, cosmopolitan values that are inclusive. That is so because Christmas is not only a celebration that takes place in December. There is the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. There is Thanksgiving at the end of November. Soon after Dec 25, there is the New Year’s Eve. And given the nature of the Muslim calendar, it is very possible that Ramadan can fall around the same time as Christmas.

The point is that non-Christian holidays do and can happen around the same time as Christmas. So, the greeting ”Happy Holidays” sounds inclusive, especially when one wants to be polite but does not know the other person well. This is particularly a relevant point to mass communication when tailored messages can be a little hard to deliver with precision.

The more important point is that the end-of-the-year holidays — at the risk of committing tautology — are the end-of-the-year holidays. Schools end, professionals take their leave and families or friends go to somewhere together if they do not spend it at home. Even non-believers do this.

So, the time that is traditionally celebrated as Christmas holidays becomes the common great holidays for all. For many Christians in America, Christmas is about Christianity. For many non-Christians, Christmas is a secular holiday devoid of any religious connotation. So secular that if the political left had their way, they would have labeled Christmas as a capitalist holiday for all of the shopping sprees that happen all around the world.

Apparently, the secularization of Christmas does not only happen in America. Some years ago, several of my French friends wished ”Merry Christmas” to me. I told one of the friends that I am not a Christian. She replied, ”Neither am I. I am an atheist.”

”Oh. Then Merry Christmas to you too,” I said while smiling at her.

There we were, two non-Christians wishing each other ”Merry Christmas”.

We were just being nice to each other and we had no Christian image of Nativity in our heads.

This is only a data point but it is a proof of secularization of Christmas nevertheless.

Some secularization also happens in Malaysia.

There are nominal Muslims who celebrate the end of Ramadan not because they consider it as a particularly religious day. In fact, a lot of them do not observe strict fasting during the month of Ramadan. Still they celebrate Hari Raya because it is a tradition to do so and because everybody is in their gayest of all moods, dressed in their best bright-colored baju Melayu and baju kurung. It is effectively a nationwide party. It is hard not to get afflicted by the ambience comes to being only in the month of Syawal. Never mind that there are also non-Muslims who celebrate Hari Raya by visiting friends in the days after Syawal 1.

That is the seed of secularisation that to some extent divorces the holiday from its religious significance.

The full separation between those holidays and its religious significance however is unlikely to happen anytime soon as long as religion continues to play an important role in any society.

In Malaysia, religion will continue to be relevant for a long time.

While that is so, there are celebrations that have been fully divorced from their original religious connotation. One of such celebrations is just around the corner and it is St Valentine’s Day. Despite the name, Valentine’s in its popular conception in Malaysia and in many other places has nothing to do with religion.

The simplest way to ascertain that is to run a survey. Ask any couple out on Valentine’s and see if they have religion in mind. More likely than not. They are likely to have each other in their mind instead. The truth is that Valentine’s of modern times is a very secular romantic celebration of each other.

And secularization has allowed the idea of Valentine’s to come closest it has ever been to becoming universal.

Yet, many conservative Muslims in Malaysia in one way or another believe that Valentine’s is about Christianity. Like the Christian right which suffers from make-believe assault and siege mentality, the Malaysian Muslim conservatives suffer from the same delusion. In their mind, this is yet another conspiracy against them.

But it is not.

It is an evolution within society. Society takes what it thinks good from within it. Through secularization, society makes whatever that was confined within a restrictive four-wall more universal so that all can benefit from it.

So, to take Valentine’s as celebrated today within a religious context and then to oppose it is truly to miss the point of it all.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in the Selangor Times on February 8 2013.

Tags Islam, religion, secularism, Selangor Times, Valentine's Day

Economics

[2658] Quick reaction to Malaysia’s December economic figures

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Friday, February 8 2013
No Comments on [2658] Quick reaction to Malaysia’s December economic figures

Export and import numbers for December 2012 do not look good. Export contracted by 5.8% while imports decreased by 6.5% from a year ago. Despite the bad numbers, industrial production index grew by 3.7% from a year ago.

I find this curious. Import contracted and that means the domestic economy might have slowed down. Exports contracted too and that means external demand did not do too well either. So, industrial index should take a hit but it grew anyway, albeit slower than the 7.1% growth in November versus a year ago. It is possible that there is a lag between the index and trade figures but strong index number last month did not reflect in this month’s trade figures.

Maybe the inventory went up. The fourth quarter GDP figures will be released later this month. We will see what happened to the inventory soon.

Tags exports, imports, Industrial Production Index

Economics

[2657] Fiscal devaluation mimics currency devaluation

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Thursday, February 7 2013
No Comments on [2657] Fiscal devaluation mimics currency devaluation

I am a supporter of regionalism. Despite whatever jokes I may have about the euro, I do not want to see its disintegration.

While I have refined my opinion by stressing on the importance of having similar economies coming into a union instead of having a disparate set of economies with wildly different setups and cycles coming together, I do still pretty much in favor of monetary union. I may be in the minority now but I do advocate a single currency for Southeast Asia. Not for all countries in the region but maybe just between Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. These countries were in a union before while Singapore and Brunei are effectively already in a currency union. Furthermore, Malaysian and Singaporean economies are similar in many ways – both are trade-dependent though more so for Singapore. A combination of Indochinese countries can form another separate union. So, I envision at least two monetary unions within Asean (or three with Indonesia and Timor Leste together).

I am still amazed by the fact my trade professor at Michigan showed me. During one winter morning, he showed that trade between New York and Seattle was many times higher than between Seattle and Vancouver, despite the fact that Seattle is much closer to Vancouver than New York. “It appears Canada is located on the moon!” he stressed.

He was demonstrating that monetary union increased trade. As a strong believer of the net benefit of free trade, I was hooked by it. Even now.

And Europe has benefited from its monetary union, even as it is hobbled by troubles right now.

One painful but the obvious solution to the ongoing European problem is for countries in economic recession, indeed, depression, to leave the Eurozone and devalue their currencies. That would have happened in a typical country during a recession. Currency devaluation helps a country regains its competitiveness by making its exports cheaper to the rest of the world. That what happened in Malaysia in the periods after the worst recession the country has ever experienced yet. That was what happened in Asia. It was an export-driven recovery.

For the 17 members of the Eurozone, devaluation is not an option if the integrity of the euro is cherished.

There are alternatives to exit from the Eurozone.

The first was internal devaluation. This pretty much refers to austerity measures. Wages are cut down to make a crisis country more competitive, among others. This a painful because while it does aid competitiveness, it does create a downward spiral that is associated with deflation. People will not spend before they expect prices tomorrow will be cheaper than today. People will not spend because they have less money. While real prices will adjust in the long run, the short term can be really painful.

There is an interesting article on Bloomberg today about fiscal devaluation as proposed by economist Gita Gopinath (of Harvard “Call Me Maybe” recruitment video fame, anybody?).^[1] It tries to mimic the effect of currency devaluation, which makes it very appealing. It includes a hike in value-added tax along with the provision of tax credit. The arrangement discourages imports and support exports. The VAT is imposed on all domestically consumed or used goods but the tax credits are granted to all domestic producers that eliminate the effect of VAT. Exporters benefit from this setup. Importers suffer. The great part is that it is no clear link to price deflation, which makes this arrangement usable in time of recession.

That however does raise the alarm of protectionism. In times like this in Europe, it is tolerable. In normal times, this can be a barrier to free trade. It can give unfair advantages to the home countries that may later mimic the ugliness of currency wars.

[1] — When French President Francois Hollande unveiled a plan in November for a business tax credit and higher sales taxes as a way to revive the economy, he was implementing an idea championed by economist Gita Gopinath.

Gopinath, 41, a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has pushed for tax intervention as a way forward for euro-area countries that cannot devalue their exchange rates. ”Fiscal devaluation” is helping France turn the corner during a period of extreme budget constraints, former Airbus SAS chief Louis Gallois said in a business- competitiveness report Hollande commissioned. [Rina Chandran. Harvard’s Gopinath Helps France Beat Euro Straitjacket. Bloomberg. February 7 2013]

Tags austerity, Bloomberg, currency devaluation, Eurozone, fiscal devaluation, fiscal policy, Gita Gopinath, monetary policy, monetary union, trade policy

Economics Humor

[2656] Chinese New Year to cause a recession in Kuala Lumpur

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Wednesday, February 6 2013
2 Comments on [2656] Chinese New Year to cause a recession in Kuala Lumpur

With Chinese New Year being just around the corner, many are expected to leave Kuala Lumpur behind to visit families and relatives who live outside of the city for a week or so. Many of those living or working in the city have left the city.

With the Chinese forming more than 40% of the population of Kuala Lumpur, and possibly with others who may just take the opportunity to travel out, the city is poised to suffer from a massive demand and supply shocks. Without any intervention from the relevant authority, the economy of Kuala Lumpur is expected to go into recession this week and the next.

Keynesian economists are already in panic mode and they are pushing the City Hall to expand government expenditure to combat the expected sudden output loss. The City Hall has indicated that it is prepared to spend more on mobile toilets. In a surprising turnaround, the City Hall has invited Bersih to hold a big clean election rally to boost demand for security and sanitation services.

As a concession to the supply-side economists, the City Hall is incorporating tax cuts within the city. The authority is also prepared to increase immigration quotas to combat the supply shock. Indeed, the City Hall is in close contact with Sabah state government to import excess labor that is prevalent in the state to the east.

The demand and supply shocks are expected to bring about deflation even as unemployment rate remains low. There is a labor shortage in fact.

While the monetarists are silent on the supply side of the problem, they are advocating the central bank to reduce the policy rate as quickly as possible. To avoid complication that arises when the rate reaches the zero lower bound, a group of monetarists calling themselves market monetarists are demanding the central bank to guarantee certain nominal gross domestic product growth. The central bank appears reluctant to set such an explicit target but in a recent press conference, the governor has hinted that the bank is prepared to minimize fluctuation in the aggregate demand.

Amid the calls for government action, there are groups which are vehemently against any stimulus. The real business cycle economists, educated at various freshwater schools, insist that there is nothing the government and the central bank can do. “The economy will be at its optimal path. In fact, the economy has always been at its optimal path. Any attempt by the government will cause the economy to deviate away from its stable state. And after all, a majority of people are going on a holiday. I fail to see why that is even a problem,” said an economist at a domestic bank. He refused to be named in fear of backlash from the establishment which might not take diverging views too kindly.

Meanwhile, Austrians criticize the manipulation of monetary policy and assert that it will cause future recession. “The only real way to prevent future recession is to prevent the central bank from playing with the rates. We should back money with gold and other precious metals,” said an Austrian economist seen holding F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Another proponent of gold standard coming from Islamic school of thought agreed. “Besides, it is haraam that we make money out of money. A gold standard will kill off a system of interest rate by reducing the possibility of inflation.”

A Marxist was quick to add, ”Capitalism is corrupt. This coming recession will see the collapse of capitalism. I have been saying this since 1990s. Some have been saying this since 1930s. Since 1867, in fact. You just wait and see.”

Economists from major schools of economics were seen rolling their eyes. “There are reasons why Marxist, Austrian and Islamic economics are heterodox economics. They’re nuts. We lived through the 1930s but these people are stuck in the past. These people have no idea what they are talking about.”

Private economists expect the domestic economy to recover completely by March as Kuala Lumpur experiences reversed migration flow after Chinese New Year end.

Economists however warned Kuala Lumpur may suffer from another recession in August, when Muslims in the city will celebrate the end of Ramadan. “There are just too many holidays in Malaysia. The government should really stop introducing new holidays every year. The government should stop interfering with the holiday market. It’s recessionary, every time,” said the freshwater economist. He suggested that we do away with holidays. ”But I don’t think it will ever happen. At least not before the election. Everybody loves holidays. Any politician who dares to take away those holidays will lose his or her seat.”