In discussing Islamic banking and finance (IBF), I first provide a brief overview of its development in Gulf monarchies, before turning to an investigation of particularities of its form and substance. I address a set of issues related to, on the one hand, the adoption, governance and regulation of IBF and on the other hand, the conformity of its practice with its alleged purposes. My aim is to uncover the actual goals of IBF, that has become prominent in the Gulf (and in the global economy) in recent decades. The analysis shows that IBF is a means for regimes to both appease their restive populations and respond positively to the material interests of key segments of society. Thus, ruling priorities related to enrichment and social management cohere; these are the principal purposes, even though ruling elites cloak their intentions in religiosity and ethical commitments. Like the other institutionalized practices discussed in this book, IBF represents the conjoined instrumentalization of (oil) wealth and Islamic doctrine for the sake of social control, and beyond that, the ongoing political domination and material enrichment of the royal family.

Much ink has been spilled on the issue of how to design central bank mandates since the improvised and hasty birth of the inflation target in the UK in the aftermath of its exit from Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism in the autumn of 1992. This chapter is a brief introduction to the argument for raising the inflation target in the light of the experience since the target was first set, and aims to spill as little further ink as possible

Edward A. Tenenbaum’s Jewish parents from Galicia/Austria had been highly educated, his mother with a PhD in botany, his father in medicine, which qualified him to serve in the Austrian Army as medical company commander during all of WW I. They emigrated to New York City in 1920. Three sons were born there, Edward in 1921 as the oldest. After his graduation from Stuyvesant High School at the age of fifteen, he attended Ecolint at Geneva, perfected his French and wrote a prize-winning essay in English there. For his four years at Yale, I treat his study achievements and his extra-curricular activities, especially in Yale’s Political Union. At Yale he was best of his class of 1942. His B.A. thesis on the Nazi economic system was published by Yale UP in 1942. I cover his services for OSS and the US Army Air Forces in the USA and Europe as well as his friendship with OSS colleague and fellow economist Charles P. Kindleberger, who had headed the Enemy Objectives Unit in London. Tenenbaum was the first American officer to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp and wrote a famous report on its self-administration by inmates under SS supervision. For this he was awarded a Bronze Star.

Ludwig Erhard was a severely injured WW I veteran. I present data on his vita. Erhard’s education ended with a doctorate at the University of Frankfurt/Main with Franz Oppenheimer, the “liberal socialist,” in 1925. After some unsuccessful years in his father’s textile business at his hometown Fürth, he was employed by the Institute for Economic Observation of German Manufactured Goods in 1929 in Nuremberg. In 1943, Erhard founded his own Institute for Industrial Research. I provide evidence that he had twice shown political turncoat behavior: from a liberal in the European sense during the Weimar Republic to Nazi economic-policy doctrines until German military defeat in 1943 became a foregone conclusion, and thereafter to the American conception of market instead of government-controlled economic conditions. I discuss Erhard’s qualifications for public office as well as the strengths and weaknesses of Erhard’s character.

Tenenbaum and his family returned from Berlin to Washington DC in September 1948. In October, he started working for the European Recovery Administration (ECA). His friend Charles P. Kindleberger had been the head of the German desk within the State Department to which ECA was attached. But Kindleberger had just left to assume his professorship of economics at MIT. At ECA Tenenbaum was employed as “Assistant Chief (Finance) of the European Trade Policy Branch,” which was part of the Fiscal and Trade Policy Division, of which he finally became Director. He mainly worked on plans for the founding of the European Payments Union in 1950 and on European trade liberalization and market integration. For almost a year, 1950–51, he worked for the IMF on Multiple Currency Practices in the Exchange Restrictions Department. In May 1951, he went back to ECA, which a few months later merged into the MSA. Here he worked on Greek fiscal and currency problems as well as on plans for a currency reform, hopefully as successful in stopping inflation as the West German one. But Greece, in contrast to the German situation in 1948, had its own government and strong interest groups. Therefore, this one of Tenenbaum’s missions failed. This chapter contains reliable annual-income data for his jobs in Berlin and in Washington DC.