Friday was a bad day for the United States Stock Market as sellers of American securities overwhelmed buyers. MSN Money Central says the market was “Infected with wide-spread selling” and Forbes points out “It was the biggest one-day drop for all three indexes in nearly three years--since March 24, 2003”.
Speculation about the reasons for selling centered on the usual suspects of disappointing earnings growth and concerns about the price of oil, but why people are selling is a different matter from who is selling. Based on other news, it would not surprise me if some portion of the selling pressure originated from the Iranian Government adjusting their holdings.
Confusion Over Iran 'Assets Move' The Iranian students news agency (Isna) reported on Friday that Iran's central bank governor Ebrahim Sheibani had revealed that the country had started to shift assets from Europe.The Iranian Government remembers 1979, and the US response to the kidnapping of American citizens by freezing bank assets. A quarter of a century later, Iran is taking preemptive action to get their money out of Europe, and I doubt their holdings were entirely Euro dominated cash accounts. The Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran is run by individuals who completely understand Western economic theory.
Iran Says Not Planning to Move its Money to Asia Iran, which has said it is shifting its money out European accounts as the threat of U.N. sanctions mounts, will not move its currency assets to Asia, a deputy central bank governor said on Saturday. Tehran has bitter memories of its U.S. assets being frozen shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution and many foreign and domestic media speculated that Iran was eying accounts in Malaysia, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong. "Iran at the moment has no plan to transfer its currency accounts to those countries," Mohammad Jafar Mojarrad told the official IRNA news agency, when asked about the reports on Tehran shifting its holdings east.
Mohammad Jafar MojarradA key member of the Central Bank of Iran was schooled at Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania, and it may be his Berkeley background that prepares him to operate the Islamic banking model.
Vice Governor (Foreign Exchange Affairs)
The Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran
PhD in Economics, 1977; University of Pennsylvania.
Major: Econometrics and International Trade &Finance.
MA in Economics, 1973; University of Pennsylvania.
AB (Hons) in Economics, 1971; University of California, at Berkeley.
Iran Daily Economic Focus Islamic thinkers have always criticized the banking principles of the capitalist world for two main reasons. Firstly, they believe that western banking systems run contrary to usury-free banking prescribed by Islamic tenets. Secondly, such banking systems attach great significance to accumulation of wealth in the hands of capitalists - what Muslim scholars strongly believe prevents social justice from being administered.Both Locally and Nationally the observation is being pointed out that American Left and Islamic Jihadist rhetoric is nearly identical. The convergence of thinking may well have its roots in the false concept that earned wealth and social justice are incompatible.
For the very reason the Usury-Free Banking Law was promulgated and put into practice after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. According to this law, interest was removed from the capital market and a state-controlled administrative system was formulated for the banking system. The government, henceforth, closely watched the performance of banks and was in charge of making their policies.
