Charts of the Day: Why a Pope from a ‘Poor’ Country

Domestic media inquires: Why has the incumbent Pope been chosen from a ‘poor’ country (emerging markets)?  Pope Francis hails from Argentina. Previously Popes were elected from mainstream Europe

The following charts from Pew Research via washingtonpost.com may explain why:

Bluntly put, to revive Catholicism in Latin America, a Pope must represent the region.

However so far this doesn't seem to be working. Again the Washington Post (November 2014):

Pew notes that its own data may not show the "Francis Effect," as he only took the papal position in March 2013. However, the report then adds: 

[Former] Catholics are more skeptical about Pope Francis. Only in Argentina and Uruguay do majorities of ex-Catholics express a favorable view of the pope. In every other country in the survey, no more than roughly half of ex-Catholics view Francis favorably, and relatively few see his papacy as a major change for the Catholic Church. Many say it is too soon to have an opinion about the pope.

The Bible and the Austrian Business Cycle

 From Luke 14:28-33 (Biblegateway.com)

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?  For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

The great Ludwig von Mises on the consequences of cheap money or the Austrian Business cycle

The whole entrepreneurial class is, as it were, in the position of a master builder whose task it is to construct a building out of a limited supply of building materials. If this man overestimates the quantity of the available supply, he drafts a plan for the execution of which the means at his disposal are not sufficient. He overbuilds the groundwork and the foundations and discovers only later, in the progress of the construction, that he lacks the material needed for the completion of the structure. This belated discovery does not create our master builder's plight. It merely discloses errors committed in the past. It brushes away illusions and forces him to face stark reality.

Happy Easter!

Chart of the Day: World’s Religion

From the Economist

RELIABLE data on the age and whereabouts of the religious and irreligious are hard to come by, which makes a new report on the topic from the Pew Research Centre welcome. Among its many findings is that Jews and Buddhists make the biggest religious minorities, in the sense of living in a country where another religion is dominant. Asia has by far the largest number of people who claim not to believe in any religion, something that is explained by China's official godlessness. Despite this, though, China has the world's seventh-largest Christian population, estimated at 68m. The report also contains data on people who call themselves religious but do not adhere to any of the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism or Buddhism. Here again Asia is dominant, largely thanks to the popularity of Shintoism in Japan.

Some observations

-Considering that many have used “religion” as an excuse in justifying imperial wars, note that the second largest religion or the Muslim share of the global population is 23.2% or about 1.61 billion out of the nearly 7 billion people.

In other words, while extremism exists—as they apply to every religion not limited to Muslims—they are a fragment of the total. Thus, war grounded on religion signifies as a fallacy of composition.

I might as well add that religious conflicts can also be triggered by political intolerance vented through various forms of political interventionism. Obviously the way to peacefully coexist is through the opposite tolerance and adapting freedom in religion

As the great Ludwig von Mises pointed out

Domestic political and religious persecutions had ceased, and international wars began to become less frequent.

-The share of agnostics, atheists or those with no religion ranks third or has grown in size to edge out Hinduism. As the article pointed out, much of the unattached are in Asia.

Quote of the Day: The Free Market is in Full Harmony with the Principles of Christianity

I am a very staunch believer that free-market principles are in full harmony with Christian principles and that the free market is the only economic system that is consistent with Christian or Judeo-Christian principles. I must say that in recent years the organized churches, both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, have not been in harmony with free-market teachings, nor have they been in harmony with what I must hold are the principles taught in the Bible. The organized churches have largely accepted the welfare state ideology so popular today. This ideology has changed the original meaning of the Ten Commandments. I could give you quite a speech on that. However, I want to make just this one point. There is the Commandment which in English is only four words: "Thou shalt not steal." Today, most of our people think that it has been expanded to eight words. They think it is: "Thou shalt not steal except by majority vote." They seem to think that any stealing done by majority vote is all right.

Except when necessary for defense, neither capitalism nor Christianity approves of the use of force or coercion. The fundamental principle of the free market, voluntary social cooperation for mutual advantage, is in full conformity with Judeo-Christian teachings.

This is from an article or transcript from a talk given by the late free-market economist Percy L. Greaves, Jr. (1906–1984).

How Italian Renaissance Bankers Bought off the Church

From at Mary Tao at the New York Fed Research Library (hat tip Bob Wenzel)

What do the Italian Renaissance and the Great Depression have in common? Commissioned works of art, Italian Renaissance methods of fresco painting, and themes of banking and money.

During the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, many Florentine bankers hired artists to produce devotional paintings and then donated those pieces to the Catholic Church to offset the Church’s disapproval of interest-bearing loans. Since usury was very much frowned upon, this practice of buying penance did not sit well with one Friar Girolamo Savonarola. He was such a vocal critic of the donations that he arranged for bonfires of “vain, lascivious, or dishonest things” (including many Renaissance artworks) in 1497 and 1498. The Medici Bank, the largest bank at that time, had much success in evading the ban on usury; its collapse in 1494 gave Savonarola leverage in his cause. The recent Florentine exhibit Money and Beauty. Bankers, Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities depicts “how the modern banking system developed in parallel alongside the most important artistic flowering in the history of the Western world.”

Buying penance is as relevant today as it has been during the Renaissance. Many wealthy citizens indulge in huge donations to their respective churches or lavish on pilgrims in the hope of acquiring spiritual salvation.

While the activities of Italian bankers in the renaissance may not be about salvation, it had been about political influence peddling. It could also be seen as the natural impulse to arbitrage politics.

Of course flourishing of trade has been a critical factor in the “artistic flowering” or the “rebirth of learning” in the history of the Western world.

To quote the late Professor Sudha Shenoy,

It was the Muslims who saved the Latin and Greek texts during the European dark ages. This led to the Renaissance in due course. The Italian merchants learned their business methods from Islam. There is a commercial history, and a history of tolerance, that needs to be recaptured.

Infographic: The Religions of the World

For a clearer picture click on the source of this infographic at the National Post

Easter’s Message: There is Hope for Freedom

There is hope for Freedom. And that’s Easter’s message according to this splendid article from Judge Andrew Napolitano…

Today it seems the power of the government continues to expand and the freedom of the individual continues to shrink. The loss of freedom comes in many forms. Sometimes it is direct and profound, as when the government stops you from doing what you formerly had the freedom to do – like choose your own doctor and your own health care insurance or choose not to have health care insurance. Sometimes it is more subtle – like when the government prints money to pay its bills and, as a result, all the money you already have loses much of its value. And sometimes the government steals freedom without you knowing it – like when federal agents write their own search warrants, authorizing themselves to learn of your computer use or medical or banking records; and they never tell you what they've done.

Freedom is the ability of every person to exercise his own free will, rather than be subject to the will of someone else. Free will is the essence of humanity, and humanity is God's greatest gift. When the government affirmatively takes away freedom, the government violates the natural law; it prevents us from having and utilizing the means to the truth. Your moral ability to exercise your free will to seek the truth is your natural right, and the government may only morally interfere with the exercise of that right when you have used fraud or force to interfere with the exercise of someone else's natural rights….

Easter is the linchpin of human existence: With it, life is worth living, no matter its cost or pain. Without it, life is meaningless, no matter its fleeting joys or triumphs. Easter has a meaning that is both incomprehensible and simple. It is incomprehensible that a human being had the freedom to rise from the dead. It is simple because that human being was and is God. Easter means that there is hope for the dead. And if there's hope for the dead, there's hope for the living.

Read the rest here

Rapture Watch: We Live!!!!!

My reply to the prophesy of yesterday's supposed econometrics derived Rapture is best represented by the video below of Mushu, a Disney character of the Mulan fame (played by Eddie Murphy):

Apocalypse Today: Divination Based on Econometrics

Today we all meet our creator. That’s according to the predictions of a religious Christian sect.

Here’s the Huffington Post,

Circled dates dot a calendar on John Ramsey's refrigerator door. They show the busy life of a 25-year-old: dinner parties, birthdays, holidays. But only until May 21.

Every month after May has been crossed out. As has all of 2012.

Ramsey is one of thousands of followers of a loose-knit Christian fringe movement whose members are increasingly found on sidewalks, in parks and at transit hubs in major cities throughout the United States.

They recite passages of the Bible line-by-line and say they have decoded a message for humanity: The world is about to end.

"God says when you see the sword come upon the land, you blow the trumpet and you warn the people," says Ramsey, paraphrasing Ezekiel 33:3. "All I'm doing is telling what I know."

Ramsey and the movement's followers say that at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, the ground will quake, graves will open and many of the dead will ascend to heaven. Two hundred million of the 'saved' -- dead or alive -- will float up. Those left behind will be doomed to live among blood, destruction and disease for five months before God annihilates the Earth on Oct. 21.

Now how did this sect come about with the prognosis of today’s supposed rapture?

Again the Huffington Post, (bold emphasis added)

Camping, a frail 89-year-old who speaks in a slow but sonorous voice for hours each day on his "Open Forum" call-in show, is convinced that he crunched the exact date of the Rapture through a complex set of equations.

For example, he says, certain numbers repeat in the Bible along with particular themes. The number five means "atonement." Ten means "completeness." Seventeen is "heaven."

"Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.," he says. "Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that's 1,978 years."

If you multiply that number by 365.2422 -- the number of days in the solar calendar -- it equals 722,449. And if you add 51 (the number of days between April 1 and May 21) to that number, it equals 722,500.

Multiply five by ten by 17 to equal 850, and multiply 850 by 850 and the result is the same: 722,500.

Another article brings about the same math based predictions but with a little twist.

From the Daily Beast (bold highlights mine)

Robert Fitzpatrick brings some papers to explain to me how the May 21 date was discovered. It’s not an easy thing to understand. Harold Camping’s calculation includes numbers divined from the founding of the state of Israel in 1948; Jesus’ order to “flee into the mountains” in Matthew 24; and the jubilee year of 1994. From there Camping performs handsprings back and forth through biblical time before ending up, with a great flourish, on May 21, 2011. For Fitzpatrick, the calculation’s outlandishness confirms its rightness. “A genius could not understand this,” he says, “because God has to open your mind to allow you to understand this.”

Fitzpatrick took Camping’s math and laid it out in a self-published book called The Doomsday Code, a soup-to-nuts guide to the Rapture. That cost him a few thousand dollars. He poured the rest of his savings into signage. Fitzpatrick’s belief in the May 21 date has been buttressed by various “proofs.” For instance, it is Camping’s contention that God imbues numbers in the Bible with special meaning. Five means atonement; 10 means completeness; 17 means heaven. If you were to multiply atonement times completeness times heaven and then, for a reason that remains mysterious, multiply that sum by itself again:

(5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17)

You’d end up with 722,500. Fast-forwarding 722,500 days from the date of the crucifixion—at least, the date as divined by Camping—lands you on May 21, 2011, the date of the Rapture. QED.

Like any instruments, which can be use for good or bad or for advancement or retrogression, mathematics can be used for many other matters (in the user's interests), whether for politics, environment, social signalling or even for religion (as the above).

Maybe like global warming, these divine 'econometric' (application of statistical and mathematical techniques in solving problems) modelers may (likely) have gotten their assumptions, applications or computations all amiss.

That's unless what they have been using could be extraterrestial models.

Blind Faith Analysis

Arguing political or economic issues based on biases, in my view, seems similar to layman’s argument in the context of religion.

They are hardly grounded from reasoning but from ‘blind’ faith.

Well, it’s interesting to know that in surveys, a vast number adherents of world religions fundamentally know less about their ‘beliefs’.

This from Pew Research

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.

In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) correctly answer that most people in Indonesia – the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – are Muslims.

Professor Bryan Caplan adds a brain twister to what he calls rationally ignorant,

Now consider: If people sincerely believed that their eternal fates hinged on their knowledge of religion, their ignorance wouldn't be rational. If you could save your soul with 40 hours of your time, you'd be mad to watch t.v. instead. Unfortunately for religious believers, this leaves them with two unpalatable options:

1. Option #1: Deep-down, most religious believers believe that death is the end. (This is consistent with the fact that even the pious mourn their loved ones at funerals, instead of celebrating the good fortune of the deceased). Even if this covert atheism is mistaken, the idea that most of the people in church aren't true believers seems threatening.

2. Option #2: Most religious believers are so stupid and/or impulsive that they'll knowingly give up eternal bliss for trivial mortal pleasures. But why then do so many believers show intelligence and self-control in other areas of life?

Strange or self contradictory as this is, rational ignorance only goes to show that what most people believe in runs in contrast to their actions.

And applied to economic and political analysis, blind faith analysis is simply cart before the horse logic; of which the common characteristics are: they are full of factual errors, the frequent use of logical fallacies, deliberately misinterpretation of theories, ambiguous definitions and data mining or selective application of evidence.

Asia's Economic Growth Engine: The Muslim Factor

This interesting chart/commentary from the Economist on world Muslim population.
From the Economist, (bold emphasis mine)

``THE total number of Muslims in the world is 1.57 billion, nearly a quarter of the global total, according to a new survey of the world's Muslim population by the Pew Research Center. Almost two-thirds of Muslims live in Asia, with Indonesia providing the biggest contingent (203m), followed by Pakistan (174m) and India (160m). One of the more surprising finds is that the European country with the highest Muslim population is not France or Germany, but Russia, where 16.5m adherents of Islam make up nearly 12% of the total national population. Compared with other studies, the report gives a lowish estimate for the number of Muslims in France (3.6m), as it does for the United States (2.5m); in both those countries, secular principles make it impossible to ask religious questions on a census."

Here is another chart from Pew Research...

To add some comments from Pew Research

``More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world's Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.

``Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shia Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq....

``The Pew Forum's estimate of the Shia population (10-13%) is in keeping with previous estimates, which generally have been in the range of 10-15%. Some previous estimates, however, have placed the number of Shias at nearly 20% of the world's Muslim population.³ Readers should bear in mind that the figures given in this report for the Sunni and Shia populations are less precise than the figures for the overall Muslim population. Data on sectarian affiliation have been infrequently collected or, in many countries, not collected at all. Therefore, the Sunni and Shia numbers reported here are expressed as broad ranges and should be treated as approximate."

Why do I find this interesting?

Because if emerging markets or Asia will serve as the world's economic growth engine, then the economic framework will emanate from vastly diverse cultures, religions (as the Muslims) and the political regime that underpins this.

This is far from the Western models, which we have been accustomed with, which would also alter the approach to contemporary analysis.

Besides, another very important factor would the character of marketplace in both the real and financial aspects-such as the resurgent Islam bond markets (Shariah compliant).

So the emergence of Asia, which incorporates the biggest segment of the world's Muslim population, will come with challenging heterogeneity and complexity.