Fragility Of Interest-Based Debt Financing: Is It Worth Sustaining A Regime Uncertainty?

Mughees Shaukat, Abbas Mirakhor () and Noureddine Krichene

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Evidence has been mounting that the interest-based debt financing regime is under increasing distress. Evidence also suggests that the financial crises, whatever title they carried - exchange rate crisis or banking crisis – have been debt crises in essence. At present, data suggest that the debt-to-GDP ratio of the richest members of the G-20 is expected to reach 120% mark by 2014. There is also evidence that out of securities worth US$ 200 trillion in the global economy, no less than three-fourth represents interest-based debt. It is difficult to see how this massive debt volume can be validated by the underlying productive capacity of the global economy. This picture becomes more alarming considering the anemic state of global economic growth. There is great uncertainty with regard to interest rates. Although policy-driven interest rates are near-zero level, there is no assurance that they will not rise as the risk and inflation premia become significant. Hence, a more serious financial crisis may be in the offing and a general collapse of asset prices may occur. This paper argues that the survival of the interest-based debt regime is becoming less tenable, as is the process of financialization that has accompanied the growth of global finance over the last four decades. It further argues that Islamic finance, with its core characteristic of risk sharing, may well be a viable alternative to the present interest-based debt financing regime.

Keywords: Regime Uncertainty; Ambiguity; Complexity; Black Swans; Debt Stress; Islamic finance; Risk-Sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H63 P43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/56362/1/MPRA_paper_56362.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:56362

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().