Masih ingat John Nash, jenius periah nobel yang kisahnya
diangkat menjadi film berjudul "beautiful mind"?? baru-baru
ini
dia menyatakan perlunya emas sebagai standar moneter duniakarena nilainya yang
tak lekang oleh inflasi.
konsep ini kurang lebih sama digunakan dalam ekonomi syariah
yang dipraktikkan di masa nabi Muhammad ratusan tahun lalu:
”Ali bin Abdullah bercerita kepada kami, Sufyan menceritakan
kepada kami, Syahib bin
Gharqadah menceritakan kepada kami,
ia berkata : saya mendengar
penduduk bercerita tentang ’Urwah,
bahwa Nabi Muhammad memberikan
uang satu Dinar kepadanya
agar dibelikan seekor kambing
untuk beliau; lalu dengan uang
tersebut ia membeli dua ekor
kambing, kemudian ia jual satu
ekor dengan harga satu Dinar. Ia
pulang membawa satu Dinar
dan satuekor kambing. Nabi
mendoakannya dengan keberkatan
dalam jual belinya. Seandainya ‘Urwah
membeli debupun, ia
pasti beruntung”(H.R.Bukhari)
dari hadits tersebut bisa dilihat bahwa harga
pasaran kambing
yang wajar di zaman Rasulullah
adalah satu Dinar (sekitar
Rp1.250.000) . sekarangpun,
dengan ½ sampai 2 Dinar
(Rp1,2 juta sampai Rp2,5 juta) kita bisa membeli kambing
dimanapun di seluruh
nusantara.
artinya setelah lebih dari 14 abad, daya beli uang emas (dalam
kasus ini, dinar) tak berubah.
beda jauh dengan uang kertas.
dulu di 1980-an, Rp5.000 bisa buat membeli satu pizza
ukuran kecil, sekarang uang yang sama tak cukup untuk
membeli pizza ukuran mini.
bahkan, pizza palsu dari melamin pun sepertinya tak cukup
dibeli dengan Rp5.000.
:D
Shalom,Tawangalun.
A Beautiful Mind Indeed: Nobel Economist Says More Stable
Currency Needed
John Nash, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics, praised the
gold standard in a recent talk at Fordham.
Contact: Janet Sassi
212-636-7577
fallersassi@
fordham.edu
Nash said that various interest groups that
subscribe to Keynesian, or short-term, economic theories have sold the public
on
the notion that inflation is acceptable or that "bad money is better than good
money."
Such a notion, he said, led to the dangerous
proliferation of bad mortgage loans--loans made on the gamble that house values
would continue to rise and eventually turn a profit.
"A fixed-rate 30-year mortgage would be reasonable
under the gold standard," Nash said. "Now, there are variable rates, and
adjustables, and convertibles, and it is very complicated" for homeowners to
figure out what they are getting into.
In fact, Nash said, nobody really knows the depth
of the financial crisis. More than 200 members of the Fordham community
converged upon the Flom Auditorium on Oct. 14 to hear John Forbes Nash Jr.,
Ph.D., winner of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, talk about
solutions to the downturn in the national and global economy.
Nash told the audience that such financial crises
would be less likely to occur if there was some international monetary
standard,
such as the gold standard or competition among worldwide currencies, to curb
inflation and prevent the rise of mortgage abuses.
He expressed some skepticism about a government
bailout as a solution. “I get the impression that the government is not ready
to
do anything that is really beyond a short-term basis,” said Nash, a senior
research mathematician at Princeton. “[But] we need a natural stability of
value.”
Nash said that various interest groups that
subscribe to Keynesian, or short-term, economic theories have sold the public
on
the notion that inflation is acceptable or that “bad money is better than good
money.” Such a notion, he said, led to the dangerous proliferation of bad
mortgage loans--loans made on the gamble that house values would continue to
rise and eventually turn a profit.
“A fixed-rate 30-year mortgage would be reasonable
under the gold standard,” Nash said. “Now, there are variable rates, and
adjustables, and convertibles, and it is very complicated” for homeowners to
figure out what they are getting into.
In fact, Nash said, nobody really knows the depth
of the financial crisis. Having an internationally oriented money standard
would
promote better quality currencies and less inflation, he added. Nash further
said that any such new international
monetary system should be democratically determined, and cited the recent vote
in Swedennot to abandon the Krona for the Euro.
Nash shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize with two
other economists for research in game theory, a method of predicting behavior
in
strategic social situations and a tool now widely used by economists and
biologists.
His academic notoriety was catapulted into
celebrity status in 2001 when he and his wife, Alicia, became the subject of
the
movie "A Beautiful Mind." The film was nominated for eight Oscars and won four.
The movie, part of which was filmed in the basement of Keating Hall, documents
Nash’s seminal contributions to game theory and mathematics and his subsequent
25-year struggle with schizophrenia.
The event was also attended by special guest
Charles Soludo, Ph.D., governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Dominick
Salvatore, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Economics, introduced Nash and
Saludo to the standing-room- only crowd and concurred with the need for a new
international regulatory system more in tune with today’s global economy.
“The entire financial sector has to be regulated,
but those regulations cannot be specific,” Salvatore said. “Money is fungible.
You have to be comprehensive, but general.”
Reform starts at home, Salvatore argued. “We need
less exotic derivatives and much more transparency. And the U.S.has to live
within its means. We save practically nothing at the individual level . . . we
have a huge trade deficit and we are mortgaging our future.”
The event was part of the Distinguished Lecture
Series hosted by Fordham’s Center for International Policy Studies. Founded in
1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional
education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to approximately 14,700
students
in its four undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional
schools.
It has residential campuses in the Bronxand
Manhattan, a campus in Westchester, and the Louis Calder Center Biological
Field
Station in Armonk, N.Y.10/08
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