Seven long years ago, I had a chance to meet Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani, a Pakistani scholar who is also a leading expert in Islamic finance. It was an unexpectedly memorable conversation. Back then, during the height of the credit bubble, there were very few people who expressed strong criticisms of how western finance worked. But Usmani was scathing. Most notably, he bewailed the tendency of American and European banks to create money untethered from any real assets; or, as he put it, to spin “derivatives out of more derivatives”. Indeed, to Usmani it seemed as if western finance was almost akin to a giant ball of candyfloss: a bubble of sticky froth, from which a few “real” assets or economic activities had been spun and re-spun to support numerous ephemeral financial deals, much in the way a tiny piece of sugar can be used to concoct a giant puffball. “Western banks create money from money,” Usmani told me, contrasting this with the world of Islamic finance, where “money is always backed by assets” and relies on “equity financing not debt”.
漫长的7年前，我曾有机会与巴基斯坦学者谢赫•穆罕默德•塔基•奥斯马尼(Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani)见面，他也是伊斯兰金融的领先专家。那次交谈意外地让我难忘。当时正值信贷泡沫的最高潮时期，对西方金融运转方式提出强烈批评的人少之又少。但他当时措辞严厉。最引人注目的是，他对欧美银行在没有任何实际资产支持的情况下创造金钱的倾向表示无奈；就像他所说的那样，它们用“衍生品繁衍出更多衍生品”。的确，对奥斯马尼而言，西方金融类似于一个巨大的棉花糖球：一个黏黏的棉花状泡沫，少量“实际”资产或manbetx20客户端下载 活动围绕着这个泡沫被旋转、再旋转，以支撑大量短期金融交易，就好像可以用一小块糖调制出一大个棉花糖球一样。奥斯马尼告诉我：“西方银行在用钱生钱，”这与伊斯兰金融形成对比，在伊斯兰金融业，“金钱永远有资产的支持”，而且依赖于“股权融资而非债务”。