The Royal Malaysian Mint has now started to produce Golddinar coins and will óffer them to the public from October 2003 onwards.
This is one of six pilot ptograms under which the mint hopes to awaken the interest of Malaysians to use gold for specific purposes, namely Islamic banking and specifically saving accounts for the Haj pilgrimmage. The Haj is the highlight in the life of devout Muslims, when they partake in the rituals and cermonies in Mekka and Medina (Saudi Arabia). As the teachings of Islam include specifically the rule that only gold and silver are money and condemn the practice of charge for no value (interest, inflation, etc.) this is of course the most obvious item the Golddinar can (should, must?) be used for. The concept of 'clean' money does not forbid profiting from giving loans (or maintaining saving accounts) per say, but instead condemns the charging of interest. Instead one participates in the earnings generated from tangible investments. The reason I consider this important is simply that together with the first Islamic bond in Golddinar denomination, these two pilot programs are re-introducing the use of gold in trade and commerce to the public. If successful, other Malaysian banks are expected to follow suit and offer Golddinar saving accounts and ultimately current accounts and debit cards maintained in gold. Of course, ideally this would mean that the Malaysian Ringgit would over time not need to be depegged against the US dollar, but instead the Golddinar would replace the Ringgit in day to day transactions. From a certain point onwards, as Ringgit accounts are replaced with Golddinar accounts on a broader scale, the Ringgit would only stay in circulation for convenience reasons and would by then be synonymous with the Golddinar. While this is certainly newsworthy, I do suspect that we won't find much, if anything, about this in the foreign press. After all, the difference between Golddinar accounts and the saving accounts in gold denomination available in some other countries is that deposits and withdrawals are done in actual gold. Whereas in traditional gold accounts one deposits or withdraws fiat currency at market conversion rates, to make a deposit into this new type of account, you first buy the coin and take the coin to the bank. The bank in turn can not sell the coin, but can work with your deposits (ie. granting loans, making investments, etc.) only in the form of coin. That in turn means that with the emergence of Golddinar saving accounts, gold denominated mortgages, leasing contracts, etc. are a necessary consequence. Let's hope that Malaysia succeeds to wean her population off the paper until the paper becomes the same as the coin. If that happens, I could envision Malaysia becoming a business holiday destination for many people who simply want to open an account here. Cheers, Robert. budget & privacy website hosting http://www.cyberica.net budget & privacy domain registrations + mail http://www.u2planet.com/cfdomaintrust.html --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
