When Islamic banking was being introduced in Malaysia in the 1980’s, the basic strategy was one of replication, essentially transforming the sources and application of funds of conventional banks into Islamically acceptable products. Thus, on the liability side, savings and current accounts became Al-Wadiah accounts, whereas fixed deposits became Mudarabah General Investment Accounts.
On the asset side, short-term loans were redesigned as Murabaha financing, while medium and long-term loans as Bai al Bithaman Ajil (BBA). This strategic choice of moving on the path of least resistance has been a success. Islamic banking has obviously taken root in Malaysia. Having grown at an annual average in excess of 50%, over the last decade, it now accounts for approximately 10% of the country’s total banking sector. As an order of magnitude, total deposits within the Islamic banking sector was one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) in 1994. This level of growth is impressive by any measure.
This paper presents models of endogenous business cycles based on the following idea. Some investments are good, while others are bad. Good investments are like those in the business sector, which create jobs and purchase inputs, thereby generating much aggregate demand spillovers. On the other hand, some investments, like trading and speculation in the commodity and real estate markets, generate little aggregate demand spillovers, even though they may be highly profitable. Furthermore, some of these investments are relatively difficult to finance, because their default risk is high. During the recession, the agents are not rich enough to finance these investments.
Marine mitieral occurrences include a large number of metallic, nonmetallic, and energy minerals which occur throughout the ocean regimes from shallow (sea-level) beach deposits to deep-ocean (> 5,000 meters) manganese nodules. Although many of the marine minerals have been, and continue to be, commercially exploited, many others require changes in economics or technology before they can be commercially developed. In particular, manganese nodules, cobalt-rich manganese crusts, and polymetallie sulfide occurrences, which are the focus of the present paper, must all be considered as possible future sources of metals because no commercial mining operation now exists for these occurrences.
In order to evaluate the potential of both the marine metallic occurrences that are exploited at present and those that may be developed in the future, we will use the McKelvey (1972) classification of resources and the definition of a resource as, ''A concentration of naturally occurring solid, liquid or gaseous material, in or on the Earth's crust in such form that economic extraction of a commodity is currently or potentially feasible" (V.S. Dept. of Interior, 1973, 1974). The term resource will be used in this article to denote both the currently and potentially economic concentrations of marine min rals. Utilizing this definition to include both present and future developments, we will see that the role of marine mineral resources in international minerals supply may increase significantly in the next two decades and beyond.
