Tag Archives: Topic: Economics

Bloomberg: “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may have to renew his battle to preserve the central bank’s independence after Republican victories in yesterday’s congressional elections.”

London Telegraph: “As the US Federal Reserve meets today to decide whether its next blast of quantitative easing should be $1 trillion or a more cautious $500bn, it does so knowing that China and the emerging world view the policy as an attempt to drive down the dollar.”

Bloomberg: “The plan to create national Shariah boards to oversee sukuk sales is drawing criticism from bankers and lawyers who say the groups would increase bureaucracy in the $1 trillion Islamic finance industry. The Accounting & Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, a leading global regulator, is in the final stages of a plan recommending governments appoint panels of scholars and experts at the national level to rule whether products comply with the religion’s tenets.” Via Religion Clause.

David Lapp writing at First Things / On the Square: “Should the decline of marriage among the less-educated concern us? . . . While economic explanations abound, less appreciated is how now-demolished traditional norms helped to maintain marriage as a broadly democratic institution. Traditionally, marriage was governed by norms that aimed to help all people, regardless of class, to attain a thriving family life—which resulted in a more equitable society.”

R.R. Reno writing at First Things / On The Square: “Today as we shift toward a seemingly ever-increasing interest in the machinery of partisan politics, we’re becoming Marxists by default. Marx held that economic realities are fundamental, and questions of culture are epiphenomenal . . . Not every controversial political issue boils down to economics (though it’s amazing how much passion gets invested in whether the top marginal rate is 35% or 39%). The question of who controls the Supreme Courts also looms large. Yet across the board we assume that politics is about power—getting it and wielding it. The question, asked by Plato and Aristotle, as well as Augustine and Aquinas, ‘What is politics for?’ is irrelevant, and indeed uninteresting.”

Conn Carroll writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “On issue after issue, this administration has dressed up their political proposals behind the mantle of ‘science,’ and on every issue there simply is no scientific consensus to support their political positions.”

AP: “Western democracies were founded on colonization, exploitation and slavery, and would crumble if not for welfare payments to their underprivileged citizens, it said.”

Conn Carroll writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “[I]f you total up all of the new regulations already passed by the Obama administration last year, using their own cost estimates, fiscal 2010 saw the largest increase in regulatory burdens placed on the U.S. economy in the nation’s recorded regulatory history.”

San Francisco Chronicle: “Interestingly, the economic slowdown has not resulted in birth control budget cuts, but has in fact created a rise in the use of birth control measures as fears over the cost of unplanned pregnancies rise amid the weak economic climate . . . As stated by the new market research report, Europe and the US, together account for a major share of the global market.”

Conn Carroll writing at The Heritage Foundation / The Foundry: “$154 billion. That is the amount of taxpayer money that will be needed to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac according to a new ‘stress test’ performed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency . . . The Progressive Corporatist partnership between the Obama administration and a few of the nation’s largest financial institutions represents a fundamental threat to our nation’s economy.”

“This basic commitment to consumption as the highest economic good is clearly connected to an anti-metaphysical, essentially materialistic anthropology. What is the good for man? To serve a higher purpose, or to gorge his appetites? Keynesianism assumes it’s the latter.”

“They marshal evidence that the underlying relationship between economic conservatism and social conservatism is changing. I think they’re right, and I think the Tea Party represents this on the popular level in the same way the new fusionism emerging among conservative intellectuals represents it on the elite level.”

AP: “The world’s second-largest economy grew 9.6 percent in the July-September quarter over a year earlier, official figures showed Thursday. That was down from the previous quarter’s 10.3 percent but still by far the highest of any major economy.”

Bloomberg: “Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda . . . he U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent . . . The high corporate tax rate in the U.S. motivates companies to move activities and related income to lower-tax countries, said Irving H. Plotkin, a senior managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s national tax practice in Boston.”

The Daily Caller: “Social conservatives . . . are now on the defensive. Federal courts continue to march against their priorities . . . among the ranks of Republican elites in Washington, D.C., acceptance of gay rights is on the march . . . Faced with these obstacles, leaders of the social conservative movement are crafting a vision fit for the times with a heavy emphasis on economic issues and scaled back ambitions that might have been shocking in their modesty only a few years ago.”

TIME / The Curious Capitalist: “What is the most likely cause today of civil unrest? Immigration. Gay Marriage. Abortion. The Results of Election Day. The Mosque at Ground Zero. Nope. Try the Federal Reserve . . .

Christian Science Monitor: “Foreigners keep buying Treasury bonds, despite their low yields and the falling dollar. Are foreign governments deliberately manipulating the exchange rate?”

“. . . necessary for a happy and lasting marriage: a stable job, adequate financial resources, and homemaking or housekeeping. Today the current socioeconomic situation in the United States makes the issues of a stable job and adequate financial resources exceptionally difficult for young people today.”

Associated Press: “China’s holdings of Treasury securities rose to $868.4 billion in August, the Treasury Department reported Monday. That’s up 2.6 percent and followed a smaller gain of 0.4 percent in July. China’s holdings had fallen 2.8 percent in June and 3.6 percent in May.”

Telegraph: “The remarks from China’s ministry of commerce came hours before the US was due to release a report on whether it considers China a “currency manipulator” as fears grow that tensions over the currency could lead to a protectionist trade war.”

AP: “President Barack Obama faces a deadline Friday that could test already fragile U.S.-China relations: He must decide whether to accuse Beijing formally of using its currency to gain unfair trade advantages against the United States.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “Everyone from President Reagan’s economic advisor Martin Feldstein to President Obama’s economic advisor Jonathan Gruber agree that this hidden cost of taxation is very real and very large. . . . When the federal government takes an additional dollar from taxpayers, the actual cost to society is generally $1.44.”

Victor Davis Hanson writes at Townhall: “. . . there is a growing sense of despair that even vastly increased income taxes cannot cover the colossal shortfalls . . . That bleak reality creates hopelessness — and anger — among voters, who feel they are being taken for fools by their elected officials. The public opposes tax hikes not because they don’t wish to pay down the debt, but because they suspect the increased revenue will simply be a green light for even greater deficit spending.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “Thirty companies and organizations get waivers from the new health care overhaul because otherwise they’d have to raise rates or drop coverage.  The president said neither would happen.  Hey, where’s our waiver? asks Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) . . . The irony here is that most of these million workers are on the lower end of the income scale, the very people ObamaCare was supposed to help . . . ”

“The crux of this problem and its costs is that a lack of marriage causes poverty. The poverty rate for single parents with children is 36.5 percent, while it is only 6.4 percent for married couples with children.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “Government debts will surge in coming decades if action isn’t taken quickly to cut the cost of paying pensions and providing health care to aging populations, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Ratings Services says. If governments don’t cut age-related spending the size of the state relative to the economy will jump and credit ratings will fall, with developed economies suffering the largest downgrades . . . ”

CNBC: “Google is using its vast database of web shopping data to construct the ‘Google Price Index’ – a daily measure of inflation that could one day provide an alternative to official statistics.”

World Net Daily: “The Institute of International Finance, a group that represents 420 of the world’s largest banks and finance houses, has issued yet another call for a one-world global currency, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.”

Daniel Ikenson writing at Cato @ Liberty: “The Chinese currency issue is in full bloom this week, as the House of Representatives passed the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act of 2010 by a vote of 348-79 on Wednesday. Though there is so much to criticize about the bill and about the layers upon layers of misinformation, myth, and subterfuge that brought us to this point, this post concerns the dubiousness of the bill’s central premise: that Yuan appreciation will significantly reduce the bilateral trade deficit.”

WorldNetDaily: “Savage’s 37-point plan – ‘Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama’s Attack on Our Borders, Economy and Security’ by HarperCollins – hits bookstores today with a call to ‘run the country like a business, not an empire; close the borders; institute a flat tax; use profiling to prevent terror attacks; and privatize the regulation of Wall Street;’ among others.”

Mona Charen writing at Townhall: “‘Given the scope of the recent recession, many more couples are likely to choose cohabitation over marriage in the coming years,’ Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau told The Associated Press. Mather may be correct, but if so, Americans are choosing exactly the wrong way to weather hard times because marriage is one of the surest ways to escape poverty.”

Phil Gramm writing in The Wall Street Journal: “This may not be your grandfather’s Great Depression, but many aspects of today’s situation would remind him of the 1930s. If the recession that officially ended a year ago feels uncomfortably surreal to you yet familiar to him, it’s probably because the recovery went missing.”

ADF Attorney David French writing at Phi Beta Cons: “Professor Pannapacker is correct that professors ‘have become increasingly condescending, sanctimonious, and shrill’ because they shut down the marketplace of ideas on campus. Large segments of the population are hungry for knowledge, but less hungry for the postmodern, race/gender deconstruction that dominates much of academic thought. What’s more anti-intellectual? Reading (or writing) one more screed against the patriarchy or reading seminal economic texts? The much-maligned Glenn Beck and his much-maligned audience have demonstrated more hunger for knowledge than many academics. He asks his audience to read serious works, and he recently blasted The Road to Serfdom back to No. 1 on the Amazon charts.”

Craig Barrett and James P. Moore, Jr. in The Wall Street Journal, “Outsourcing and the 21st-Century Economy” [full text available via Google News]: “Companies outsource for two reasons . . . . The second reason U.S. companies outsource is that our own government pursues policies that drive investment and job creation offshore: excessive taxes, needless regulations, lengthy permit processes, a decreasing supply of U.S. citizens with technical and engineering degrees, and a general governmental misunderstanding of how to support private-sector jobs.”

Rasmussen Reports: “Speaking at a dinner of American and Chinese businessmen in New York last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the China-U.S. relationship ‘enjoys a bright future because common interests between our two countries far outweigh our differences.’ But just 32% of Americans agree.”

Washington Post / Political Economy: “Some of this talk is a little premature: It is not a given that the Fed will take action at all at its the Nov. 2-3 meeting . . . But here is a guide to the range of technical and strategic questions that Fed leaders will need to resolve, should they choose to act, on how to ease monetary policy and stimulate growth. These are the questions that have already started to occupy both officials within the Fed and the outside analysts who scrutinize their every move.”

Chuck Colson writing in The Christian Post: “[T]here’s another, little-understood theater in the war on marriage-our struggling economy . . . What do today’s tough times have to do with marriage? In a word, fear. According to Cherlin and Wilcox, ‘Working-class couples still value marriage highly, but with their paychecks shrinking, they don’t think they have enough money to make a marriage work.’ The fear that they can’t afford to get married translates into an alarming increase in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births. The share of working-class women who were living with someone when they gave birth jumped from 10 to 27 percent in just over a decade.”

Nicholas D. Kristof writing in The New York Times: “Over the next decade, some astonishing new technologies will spread to fight global poverty. They’re called contraceptives. This is a high-tech revolution that will affect more people in a more intimate way than almost any other technological stride. The next generation of family planning products will be cheaper, more effective and easier to use — they could be to today’s condoms and diaphragms what a smartphone is to the bricklike cellphones of 20 years ago.”

Family Research Council: “Family Research Council is hosting a symposium to discuss the relationship between economic and social conservatism on Friday, September 24 from 1-3 p.m. ET at FRC’s headquarters at 801 G Street, NW, Washington, D.C. WHO: Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist; Lawrence Reed, Foundation for Economic Education president; Bob Patterson, Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society adjunct research fellow and The Family in America editor.”

CBS News: “CBS News has obtained a final draft of House Republicans’ legislative agenda for the next Congress, a 21-page ‘Pledge to America’ that they will formally unveil Thursday morning at a Virginia hardware store.” CBS includes a link to the text.  New York Times / Associated Press

Rasmussen Reports: “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 43% of Adults agree that free-market capitalism is the best anti-poverty program in the world. Thirty percent (30%) disagree, but another 27% aren’t sure.”

AP: “The U.N. chief is warning of growing political polarization and social inequalities in the world and urging greater tolerance and mutual respect.”

LifeNews: “Congressman Paul Ryan, a respected Republican leader on the health care debate, put himself in the ranks of governors Mitch Daniels and Hailey Barbour when he said fiscal issues would need to trump social ones this election cycle and that pro-life advocates would have to ‘agree to disagree’ about abortion . . . Now, in a new opinion column posted on his congressional web site, Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, is walking back his previous remarks. The title of the column — ‘The Cause of Life Can’t be Severed from the Cause of Freedom’ — appears to indicate Ryan disagrees with the ‘truce’ language Daniels and Barbour proffered.”

Kristin A. Collins, ‘Petitions Without Number’: Women’s Petitions and the Early Nineteenth-Century Origins of Marriage-Based Entitlements (September 20, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1679919

“Between 1792 and 1858, Congress enacted approximately seventy-six public law statutes granting cash subsidies to large classes of military widows. War widows’ pensions were not wholly unknown in Anglo-American law before this time, but the widows’ pension system of the early nineteenth century was distinctive in both scope and kind: Congress rejected the class-based approach that had characterized war widows’ pensions of the eighteenth century by pensioning widows of rank-and-file soldiers, not just widows of officers, and by extending pensions to widows of veterans. This significant equalization and expansion of widows’ pensions resulted in the creation of the first broad-scale system of marriage-based entitlements in America. This article seeks to explain the blossoming of this system and argues that widows’ petitioning efforts played a central role. Unlike the women who used the petition to oppose slavery and Indian removal during the same period, widows seeking pensions did not overtly challenge socio-political conventions by petitioning Congress. Rather, in both locution and purpose, widows’ pension petitions conformed to and reinforce dominant views concerning men’s and women’s social roles and responsibilities. And it was precisely the conformist nature of widows’ petitions that made them effective in precipitating the development of a substantial system of public marriage-based entitlements. Attention to these overlooked sources helps explain the emergence of marriage-based entitlements in American law, and enables us to construct a more textured picture of how, in the early nineteenth century, the law shaped women’s lives and women shaped the law.”

Rasmussen: “A plurality of Americans (43%) believe that government programs increase poverty in America. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of the nation’s adults believe that those programs decrease poverty. Twenty-three percent (23%) say they have no impact.”

Goldwater Institute: “A new Goldwater Institute report, written by Senior Fellow Robert Natelson, shows the country’s Founders rejected drafts of Article V that contemplated a wide-open convention that could ‘run away.’ Instead, the authors of the Constitution intentionally picked language that calls for conventions of limited scope so state legislatures could target specific topics, such as a restriction on the federal government’s ability to borrow money . . . State Senator Chuck Gray of Arizona and U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas are right to urge state legislatures to reconsider invoking Article V to limit the federal government’s ability to take on more debt.”

Associated Press: “As they begin the fall harvest, wary farmers are watching a federal debate over whether to clamp down on one of rural life’s constant companions – the dust clouds that farm machinery kick up in fields and along unpaved roads.”

The New York Times: “Even after taxpayer bailouts restored bankers’ profits and pay, the great Wall Street money machine is decelerating. Big financial institutions, including commercial banks, are still making a lot of money. But given unease in the financial markets and the economy, brokerages and investment banks are not making nearly as much as their executives, employees and investors had hoped.”

Wall Street Journal: “Eyeing a potential Congressional win in November, House Republicans are planning to chip away at the White House’s legislative agenda—in particular the health-care law—by depriving the programs of cash.”

Eamonn Butler: “Austrian School economists gave us the ideas of marginal utility, opportunity cost, and the importance of time and ignorance in shaping human choices and the markets, prices and production systems that stem from them. ‘Austrian’ economics has revolutionised our understanding of what money is, why economic booms invariably turn to damaging busts, why government intervention in the economy is a mistake, the importance of time and information in economic decision-making, the crucial role of entrepreneurship, and how much economic policy is just plain wrong.”

Dallas Blog: “In a surprise e-mail to the Dallas Blog, Ron Robins, founder and analyst of ‘Investing for the Soul,’ reveals that the motivation to construct a new and controversial mosque nearby Ground Zero in New York City is to promote Islamic finance and ‘Shariah-compliant investing.’”

“’There is no question that the economic and trade policies of China represent clear roadblocks to our recovery . . . ‘ China spends an estimated $1 billion a day to keep the renminbi more or less pegged to the dollar.”

Baptist Press: “Dr. Yin-Kann Wen has a distinguished career as an economic scholar, including 20 years serving as a senior economist at the World Bank . . . By following the money trail, Dr. Wen can clearly see the ‘dangerous direction’ in which America is headed. He believes our current course began with the rejection of God’s financial principles that warn against debt and overconsumption.”

Timothy Sandefur writing at National Review Online: “Franklin Roosevelt’s clash with the Supreme Court is one of history’s greatest legal dramas, but it has generated an unfair and misleading mythology. In this legend, the Court greeted the New Deal with a blast of reactionary decisions in 1935 and 1936 . . . to which Roosevelt retaliated by threatening to pack the Court with a new, more loyal majority of justices . . . This account further holds that the justices opposing Roosevelt — the “Four Horsemen”: George Sutherland, Willis Van Devanter, James McReynolds, and Pierce Butler — were wedded to the cruel, sink-or-swim philosophy of Social Darwinism . . . Attorney Dean Alfange came closer to the truth when he wrote in 1937 that the New Deal’s ‘one guiding principle’ was ‘wholesale and pervasive governmental interference with all branches of private business,’ which required a ‘readjustment of constitutional values.’”

Telegraph: “A State Council think-tank in China has warned Washington that the US will come off worst in a trade war if it imposes sanctions against Beijing over the two nations’ currency spat.”

CNBC: “A new study obtained by CNBC says Americans are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire. The study, conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, says savings have been squeezed by declines in stock and housing values.”

Daniel Griswold writing in The Washington Times: “All the evidence points to the fact that rising imports and a growing trade gap, far from being drags on growth, are among the surest signs that the economy is expanding . . . In the long run, imports spur growth by forcing domestic producers to be more efficient and productive. Like competition generally, imports weed out the less-productive domestic producers, leaving the market to more-competitive U.S. companies. Those companies are better able to expand their share in global markets and create sustainable jobs with higher pay.”

Associated Press: “China’s currency advanced to a fresh high against the U.S. dollar for the third straight trading day Tuesday, as U.S. lawmakers prepared for hearings on Beijing’s foreign exchange policies.”

“A Balanced Budget Amendment has been linked to the idea of a constitutional convention for a simple reason: Congress refuses to restrain government spending.”

Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute, writing at Public Discourse: “[O]ne of the Great Recession’s unexpected benefits is the manner in which it has reignited a range of economic debates that have needed attention for some time. One is a widespread questioning of the methods and priorities of mainstream economic science. Another discussion concerns the conduct of monetary policy . . . Closely related to this are questions about the long-term viability of fiat money: the means of exchange that has dominated the world since the end of the gold standard . . . One [of the problems associated with fiat money] is the greater ease with which it permits governments to devalue currencies, thereby reducing the wealth of those with assets denominated in that currency . . . [It] facilitat[es] systemic moral hazard throughout entire economies . . . [and] it encourages the illusion that governments and central banks can somehow ‘manage’ multi-trillion dollar economies.”

Wall Street Journal / New Europe: “Opposition to Poland’s possible adoption of the euro is growing in the country in reaction to the Greek public finance crisis, with 47% of Poles against the plan, according to the results of a survey conducted in June, Poland’s finance ministry said in a statement Thursday.”

Google News (AP): “The U.S. has slipped down the ranks of competitive economies, falling behind Sweden and Singapore due to huge deficits and pessimism about government, a global economic group said Thursday.”

Gulf Times: “Malaysia, the world’s largest market for sukuk, plans to improve its legal system to become an alternative location to the UK for resolving international Islamic finance disputes.”

Washington Post: “The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s . . . What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014 . . . Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China . . . ”

Amity Shlaes in the Wall Street Journal, “How government unions became so powerful” (full text via Google News): “Early 20th-century strikes by police and other public employees were effective but proved politically damaging. Over time, the unions opted for a more quiet form of coercion—what might be called compensation coercion. Their success in this area brought them to the privileged ground they hold today . . . Another factor leading to the rise of the public unions is the decade-over-decade increase in the size of government.”

Frost Illustrated: “Historically, severe economic downturns draw many people to turn to their faith, praying for the strength to hold on just a little bit longer. But now, where people pray or worship is also being affected by foreclosures. From California, to Tennessee, Georgia and other states, houses of worship are struggling to avoid foreclosure, especially in areas where residential foreclosures are particularly high.”

Findlaw (AP): “The United States expects to spend about $6 billion a year training and supporting Afghan troops and police after it begins withdrawing its own combat troops in 2011.”

Insider Online: “Jim Van Eerden, the producer of the film, told a group of bloggers at The Heritage Foundation today that he wants the film to help promote a national conversation about the importance of getting government spending under control. The film will release to theaters on October 15, but it will be shown in private screenings around the country throughout September. If you are interested in hosting a screening, you can find out how to do that at IWantYourMoneyScreenings.net.”

re . . . The grim employment picture is familiar, but what’s less widely known is that they are losing not only jobs but also their connections to basic social institutions such as marriage and religion. They’re becoming socially disengaged . . .

Yahoo News (AP): “. . . Romer called on officials Wednesday to move forward on policies that will increase government spending and cut taxes. She also called for investments in infrastructure and new trade agreements . . . ”

Bernard Kouchner, foreign minister of France; Katsuya Okada, foreign minister of Japan; Charles Michel, development cooperation minister of Belgium writing at The Christian Science Monitor: “We are determined to find an effective way to finance development that would be alongside – and not in place of – public aid. In a world marked by substantial gaps in development and standards of living, we must promote innovative approaches and instruments . . . We approached the top specialists – legal scholars, economists, researchers, and even bankers – to analyze the different options. They proposed several different mechanisms for levies on financial transactions, including on foreign exchange movements (currency transaction development tax).”

San Francisco Chronicle: “Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of London-based Barclays Plc, is offering Shariah-compliant repurchase agreements to allow Islamic banks and investors manage their funds. Barclays introduced the product worldwide two weeks ago and is focusing on clients in Malaysia and the Middle East, where the largest Islamic financial institutions are based, Harris Irfan, the bank’s Dubai-based head of Islamic finance products, said in an interview.”

Saudi Gazette: “Islamic finance is a trillion dollar industry and has become a part of the global financial system. The industry represents around 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide as well as non-Muslim investors seeking to diversify their portfolio. Institutional and private investors look to tap into a market that may reach a staggering $5 trillion, according to forecasts by rating agency Moody’s.”

Roger Scruton writing at Big Questions Online: “Everybody has an opinion about what we ought to do to fix our dreadful financial situation. Here’s a thought: why not listen to Muhammad? True, the Prophet did not hold an economics degree, nor was he a fixture on noisy cable chat shows about finance. Times have changed since the seventh century. But Muhammad knew a thing or two about human nature, which has not changed . . . The theory of refinancing and sovereign debt fills many a volume of innocent-seeming graphs and statistics. But this should not blind us to the truth that dawned on the Prophet, which is that we have another and truer way of perceiving these matters: the way of moral judgment. If you borrow money, you are obliged to repay it. And you should repay it by earning the sum required, and not by borrowing again, and then again, and then again. For some reason, when it comes to the state and its clients, those elementary moral truths are forgotten.”

Bloomberg: “Emirates NBD PJSC of Dubai is waiving payments on personal loans for the holy month of Ramadan. Maybank Islamic Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur started automating charitable donations. Jakarta-based PT Bank Syariah Mandiri sponsors a television slot teaching Islamic banking. Marketing campaigns aimed at reminding the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to follow the teachings of Prophet Muhammad that ban receiving interest have increased as the global economy recovers this year, according to the Pan Arab Research Center in Dubai.”