Category: Commentary

Here is another thought experiment about what we can expect from our times as stimulated by Hexagram 53 in the Yijing (Book of Changes).

Free markets have a much-overlooked moral function, perhaps their most important moral function – providing retribution for hubris – unwarranted pride, arrogance and blindness.

In Greek mythology, Nemesis stepped in to correct excessive exploitation of one’s dominion, one’s failure to align with Aristotle’s golden mean, one’s going much too far beyond the square footage of good sense and due care and concern for others.

Consider Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun and so lost his ability to fly.

Consider Narcissus, who, because of his vanity, Nemesis led to a pool where he saw his own reflection, fell in love with it, could not turn his eyes away from the floating image and eventually died alongside the water.

Free markets in crypto currency have just acted as Nemesis to investors in Bitcoin.  Here is the story from the Wall Street Journal:

The crypto market turmoil only intensified this week, with bitcoin shedding more than 10% and over $10,000 in value.  In the 24 hours leading up to Friday morning, more than $2 billion worth of leveraged crypto trades were liquidated, pushing bitcoin below $81,000, according to data from CoinGlass.  The largest cryptocurrency is now on track for its worst monthly performance since June 2022, when the collapse of crypto lender Celsius Network plunged the market into what became known as its crypto winter.

Some traders have said the drop in bitcoin may be forcing some other selling in the traditional markets, which swooned this week.

“Every group chat I’m in, everyone wants to know who blew up,” said Nic Carter, founding partner at Castle Island Ventures.  “You can’t make sense of it all now.  There’s a general malaise with no exact catalyst to say this is why.”

This was supposed to be crypto’s year.  There was a perfect storm of a crypto-loving White House, Wall Street adoption and friendly legislation that put a close to more than a decade of antagonistic U.S. regulation and prosecutions.

In a sense, it worked.  Divisions between traditional and crypto finance seemed to blur.  Portfolio managers are modeling cash flows based on the yields of stablecoins.  BlackRock and Fidelity, among many others, hoovered up bitcoins for ETFs.  Banks like Bank of New York Mellon and JPMorgan Chase wanted to put funds on the blockchain, while digital token companies like Ripple tried to become banks.

“Gateways are being opened every single day,” said President Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who has co-founded two crypto companies.  “This dam is cracking.  The two were becoming one and I think it’s very exciting.”…

“When Trump got elected, we were saying ‘gosh, finally we’re going to get all the institutions, ETF approvals, pretty much all the headlines that we dreamed of in crypto,’” said Santiago Roel Santos, a longtime crypto investor and chief executive of Inversion.  “The market just has not reacted the way that you would have thought.”

Instead, crypto continues to struggle to break free of its reputation as the deranged, foul-mouthed little sibling of Wall Street, too volatile to trust, too entertaining to look away.

Donald Trump is on YouTube saying, “I only care about one thing… will we be number one in crypto?”

Nemesis came for the Trump family too.  According to the November 19 edition of the New York Post:

Trump Media & Technology Group, the crypto and social media company controlled by members of the first family, has seen its stock price plummet to all-time lows – wiping out more than $5 billion in wealth for the Trumps as cryptocurrencies continue their slide.

Shares of Trump Media, which trades under the ticker DJT, have fallen nearly 70% this year – 34.6% of that just the past month, according to Barron’s. …

The family’s holdings, which were worth nearly $6.5 billion at their peak in mid-May 2024, have lost more than $5.3 billion in value since then, according to Barron’s.

The company’s nosedive is tied to a broader meltdown in the crypto market.

Cryptocurrencies have taken a big hit since Trump Media said in August it bought $2 billion worth of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin prices on Tuesday briefly dipped below $90,000 for the first time in months – wiping out the asset’s gains for the year.

Could even the Trumps be narcissists?

If so, Nemesis awaits.

In free markets, the “others” stand in for Nemesis.

As Sartre told us: L’enfer, c’est les autres – “Hell is others.”

Other market players are not docile subordinates waiting for instructions.  They have free will and independent power.  They decide what’s best for themselves.  They need not follow the herd or succumb to trendy delusions about what the future holds.  They set prices with their decisions to buy and sell.  They can foreswear “irrational exuberance” and cause markets to crash.

This is morality in action – consequences imposed for being out of line.

The formation of monopolies and cartels attempts to drive this free-thinking morality from markets by controlling supply or demand and so setting prices.  But such collaborations, in time, also fall prey to Nemesis.  Others – innovators, creative destroyers – find workarounds to devalue what is controlled.

Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. – Proverbs 16:18

Since the Caux Round Table begin its study of the covenants given by the Prophet Muhammad to respect and protect Christians and Jews, I have, from time to time, reported to our community insights and historical facts which have emerged in our study of those covenants and discussions of their contents and what their terms imply for our times today.

Recently, the interim president of Syria, a country long burdened with brutal repression and civil war among its citizens, met with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X.  The patriarch showed the president a recension of a covenant given as a work of grace by the Prophet Muhammad to Christians.  The document dates to Ottoman times.

Here is a picture of the two with the recension:

Our colleague, Ahmed El-Wakil, now at Oxford, who has contributed so much to the finding of recensions of the Prophet’s covenants and to our understanding of their terms and of the circumstances in which they were given and received, has sent me the following email about the meeting, which I wish to share with you:

On Sunday, 26 October 2025, Syria’s transitional president, Aḥmad al-Sharaa, visited Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X Yazigi at the patriarchal residence in Damascus – a gesture that carried more than diplomatic weight.  It was his first official visit to a church since taking office and it unfolded as both reassurance and reminder that Syria’s plural identity, frayed by war, still had roots deep enough to hold.

During the meeting, Patriarch Yazigi presented al-Sharaa with a copy of a manuscript of the covenant of the Prophet Muhammad housed at the Monastery of St. George al-Humayra, which promises protection and freedom of worship to Christians.  This particular document was studied by Ibrahim Zein and Ahmed El-Wakil in chapter 3 of their book, The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad: From Shared Historical Memory to Peaceful Co-existence, who identified it as a copy of the covenant the Prophet gave to the Christians of Najran, whose text was faithfully transmitted until the Ottoman period, to which the manuscript belongs.  By invoking it, Yazigi appealed to a moral memory within Islam itself – one that links faith to justice and protection, not coercion.

Al-Sharaa responded in kind, writing in the patriarchal guest book a verse from the Qur’an describing Christians as “nearest in affection to the believers” and adding in his own words that Damascus is “the cradle of the first coexistence known to humanity.”  His inscription framed coexistence not as political rhetoric, but as a duty inherited from the city’s own past.  The moment thus echoed older gestures of mutual recognition, such as the one embodied in the Najran covenant preserved at the Monastery of St. George al-Humayra before the war.

Seen together, the patriarch’s presentation and the president’s response wove history into hope. They recalled that the idea of a just order in Syria has never rested solely on conquest or power, but on an older moral claim: that peace endures only when protection is shared.

Kind regards,
Ahmed

What are we to make of Donald Trump from the perspective of moral governance?

A couple of weeks ago, lots of Americans – some estimates put their number at 7 million – turned out in crowds to express their animosity towards Trump for his kingly analogy in his style of putting America to right, as he alone sees the right.  Their demand was “No Kings”!

A decision to do away with kings was made by the English House of Commons in 1649 as follows:

And whereas it is and hath been found by experience, that the Office of a King in this Nation and Ireland and to have the power thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burthensom and dangerous to the liberty, safety and publique interest of the people and that for the most part, use hath been made of the Regal power and prerogative, to oppress and impoverish and enslave the Subject; and that usually and naturally any one person in such power, makes it his interest to incroach upon the just freedom and liberty of the people and to promote the setting up of their own will and power above the Laws, that so they might enslave these Kingdoms to their own Lust; Be it therefore Enacted and Ordained by this present Parliament and by Authority of the same, That the Office of a King in this Nation, shall not henceforth reside in or be exercised by any one single person; and that no one person whatsoever, shall or may have, or hold the Office, Stile, Dignity, Power or Authority of King of the said Kingdoms and Dominions or any of them, or of the Prince of Wales, Any Law, Statute, Usage or Custom to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.

Now, in somewhat regal fashion, Trump is “Trumpifying” the White House:

The White House is demolishing the entirety of the East Wing to make way for President Trump’s $200 million ballroom, a construction project that is far more extensive than he initially let on, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

The tear-down should be finished by this weekend, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plans.

And then he has personal attorneys seeking damages from the federal government to compensate him for losses in defending cases brought against him by the Biden Administration.  If successful, he, himself, might have to decide whether or not to pay himself several hundred million dollars of taxpayer’s money.

President Donald Trump acknowledged to reporters Monday that he’s seeking up to hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from the federal government for its scuttled investigations and prosecutions of him.

“As far as all of the litigation, everything that’s going to go, yeah, they probably owe me a lot of money,” Trump said when asked about a New York Times report that he’s filed administrative claims seeking $230 million in damages from the Justice Department.

Asked about the $230-million figure, Trump said, “It could be.”

“I don’t know what the numbers” are, Trump said.  “I don’t even talk to them [the lawyers] about it.”

He also said he’d ultimately be the person approving the payout and that, if he granted it, he’d “do something nice” with the money.

“And you know that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.  In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you’re paying yourself in damages?  But I was damaged very greatly and any money that I would get I would give to charity,” he said.

He also said he could give money “to the White House while we restore the White House.”

“We’ll see what happens,” he said.  “I guess they owe me a lot of money.  I’m not looking for money.  I’m looking for really, it’s got to be handled in the proper way.  We don’t want it to happen again,” he said, before adding, “You have to ask the lawyers about that.”

To put Trump in a perspective not widely discussed, we might consider Confucius’ distinction between the Junzi  (君子) – the “lordly one,” the honorable man of good temper and correct behavior and the Xiao jen  (小人) – the “little, small, mean man” who “struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. … a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Now, let’s translate Confucius into Trumpese: the lordly one we will call a “winner” and the little man a “loser.”

Confucius proposed that:

See what a man does.  Mark his motives.  Examine in what things he rests.  How can a man conceal his character?

He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.

What the winner seeks is in himself; what the loser seeks is in others.

The mind of a winner is conversant with righteousness; the mind of a loser is conversant with gain.

The winner acts before he speaks and afterwards speaks according to his actions.

The winner is not a partisan; the loser is a partisan.

The winner thinks of virtue; the loser thinks of comfort.

The winner is satisfied and composed; the loser is always full of distress.

As I have reported previously to our global network, thanks to the initiative and kind assistance of Sayyid Kashmiri, representative of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Washington D.C., our Caux Round Table study group was invited to visit Kufa University and noted seminaries in Najaf, Iraq and discuss with Shi’a leaders, clerical and lay, the Prophet Muhammad’s Constitution of Medina and his covenants with Christians and Jews.  The visit was most engaging and successful.  It was so informative to us.

I had never learned the teachings and theology of Shi’a Islam.  We visited the holy shrines and held several round table discussions with noted imams on the Shi’a vision of peaceful co-existence.

We saw the proclamation put in public for the visit of Pope Francis and his meeting with the Grand Ayatollah: “You are part of us; we are part of you.”

Professor Tahseen Fadhil Abbas, holder of the UNESCO Chair at Kufa University, was our gracious and most informative host.

After our visit, Prof. Tahseen wrote an important book in Arabic, now with an English translation, The Role of Shia Muslims in Peaceful Coexistence, available on Amazon.

For me, his book builds on our learning in Najaf about the Shi’a tradition from its founder, Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.

Prof. Tahseen importantly makes the case for a charismatic Shi’a tradition of prophetic mercy and compassion.

I am very grateful for his intellectual leadership and his sharing of his learning with a global audience.

I most strongly encourage you to order it and read it.

With a ceasefire achieved between Israel and Hamas, the shooting and bombing in Gaza has stopped.  But is that peace?  Given its 1988 charter, a covenant by its own terms, Hamas is at perpetual war with Jews.  That covenant with Allah says:

Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another.  The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates.  When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion and so on.  Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason and cursed be he who does that.  “For whoso shall turn his back unto them on that day, unless he turneth aside to fight or retreateth to another party of the faithful, shall draw on himself the indignation of Allah and his abode shall be hell; an ill journey shall it be thither.” (The Spoils – verse 16).  There is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion.  The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values.  Let every person know that he is responsible before Allah, for “the doer of the slightest good deed is rewarded in like and the doer of the slightest evil deed is also rewarded in like.”

The Islamic Resistance Movement considers itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road.  The movement adds its efforts to the efforts of all those who are active in the Palestinian arena.  Arab and Islamic peoples should augment by further steps on their part.  Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should also do the same, since all of these are the best-equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews.

Thus, it would seem that as long as there are Jews in the Holy Land, once ruled entirely by Muslims (as Hamas notes in its Covenant), Hamas will fight them as a religious obligation not to be avoided.  This is not a vision of peace.

But the Hamas interpretation of the will of Allah is not the only one.

The Prophet Muhammad made covenants with the children of Israel to respect and protect them. He did this as an agent of Allah.

A colleague of ours, Recep Senturk, dean of the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar, has written a book with a stunning proposal.

He points to the passage in Qur’an that affirms the equality of all descendants of Adam: “I am, therefore, I have rights and duties.”

Recep draws conclusions from this verse that a moral standard of Adamiyyah – equality among those who carry the DNA of Adam – applies in our time everywhere there are descendants of Adam.

The book is available on Amazon here.

Please buy a copy as soon as you can and read it.  Consider for yourself the implications for reconciliation between Palestinians and the Jews of Israel if both peoples would accept the premise of Adamiyyah and therefore learn to accept the other as worthy and respectable and not an enemy.

Two Wall Street Journal reporters (David Uberti and Jack Pitcher) just wrote on the dramatic market rush to buy gold – an inert metal that pays no interest.  Is this a judgment on Trump- managed capitalism?

They write:

Investors worried about the future of the dollar and other major currencies are piling into gold, bitcoin and other alternative assets, powering what has become known on Wall Street as the debasement trade. …

Most-actively-traded gold futures on Tuesday surpassed $4,000 a troy ounce for the first time. On Wednesday, gold rose further to settle at $4,043.30 a troy ounce.

The gold rally of 2025 is unusual in that it hasn’t been fueled by a financial meltdown.  A 52% gain in futures this year is on track to outpace similar surges during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2007-09 recession, trailing only the inflationary shock in 1979.

These days, investors are pouring money into precious metals such as gold and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin at the same time President Trump has pledged to juice the economy through tax cuts and traders have pushed stocks to records with a fervor for all things artificial intelligence.

As investors make increasingly speculative bets that the boom will continue, they are also looking for ways to shield themselves from potential fallout of U.S. policy dysfunction, including widening budget deficits and the current government shutdown.  That is pushing them into assets not denominated in dollars.

Wall Street has pointed to this move as evidence that ballooning debt and uncomfortably high inflation are disrupting the outlook for currencies underpinning the global financial system.

“We’re seeing a tug of war,” said Joe Davis, chief economist at Vanguard Group.  “You’ve got the S&P 500 pricing in an AI supernova and you’ve got the gold camp saying, ‘We’re going to have structural deficits, we have fiscal pressure in the U.S., and I need to manage that risk.’”

Gold prices have risen for years … Trump’s promise to upend the global trading system in 2025 added momentum by pushing the U.S. dollar by one measure to its weakest first half in more than five decades.

What do you think?

As a fan of Adam Smith – the writer of both An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments – I want to share most of the recent commentary written for the Wall Street Journal by former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm and a colleague on how President Trump’s obsession with tariffs is a very bad, long term growth strategy for our national economy and is incompatible with successful free markets and creation of the “wealth of nations.”

Gramm’s argument validates one of the Caux Round Table’s Principles for Business:

Principle 5: Support Responsible Globalization:

-A responsible business, as a participant in the global marketplace, supports open and fair multilateral trade.
-A responsible business supports reform of domestic rules and regulations where they unreasonably hinder global commerce.

Here is Gramm’s essay.

Consider these quotes and reflect on this question: In thinking about his place in our world, does this man (Donald Trump) have a reassuring grip on reality?

“And I don’t mind making the speech without a teleprompter because the teleprompter is not working.  I feel very happy to be up here with you nevertheless and that way you speak more from the heart.  I can only say that whoever’s operating this teleprompter is in big trouble.”

“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up, stopped right in the middle.  If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen.  But she’s in great shape.  We’re both in good shape.  We both stood.  And then a teleprompter that didn’t work.  These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

“… the guns of war have shattered the peace I forged on two continents.”

“One year ago, our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close.”

“Under my leadership, energy costs are down, gasoline prices are down, grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down and inflation has been defeated.”

“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world.  We had the best economy ever, history of the world and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time, it’s actually much bigger and even better.  The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”

“My administration has negotiated one historic trade deal after another, including with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and many, many others.”

“… in a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars.  They said they were unendable. … No president or prime minister.  And for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that and I did it in just seven months.  It’s never happened before.  There’s never been anything like that.  Very honored to have done it.  It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.  And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them.”

“I’ve also been working relentlessly stopping the killing in Ukraine.  I thought that would be, of the seven wars that I stopped, I thought that would be the easiest because of my relationship with President Putin, which had always been a good one.”

“I’m really good at this stuff.  Your countries are going to hell.  In America, we’ve taken bold action to swiftly shut down uncontrolled migration.”

“And I’m really good at predicting things.  They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat.  Trump was right about everything.  And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true.  I’ve been right about everything.”

“He liked me.  I liked him and I only do business with people I like.”

In reflecting on his words, consider this summary from Google AI:

“Grandiose overt narcissism is a subtype of narcissistic personality disorder characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a need for constant admiration and a lack of empathy, all of which are displayed outwardly.  Unlike more hidden “vulnerable” narcissism, grandiose narcissists are often charming, outgoing and appear highly confident, using this persona to achieve their desires for power, prestige and control.  While they may seem successful, this facade masks a fragile ego that relies on external validation and their behavior often involves arrogance, entitlement and a tendency to manipulate others.”

Key characteristics:

-Inflated self-importance: A grandiose sense of self-importance, believing they are superior to others and destined for great things.

-Need for admiration: A deep need for excessive admiration and praise from others to validate their perceived superiority.

-Lack of empathy: A profound inability to recognize or care about the feelings and needs of others.

-Charismatic and outgoing: Often possess superficial charm and charisma, drawing people into their orbit, especially when they want something.

-Sense of entitlement: A firm belief that they deserve special treatment and automatic compliance with their expectations.

-Arrogance and haughtiness: Exhibit an arrogant or haughty demeanor and behavior.

-Manipulation and exploitation: Willingness to lie, cheat or manipulate others to achieve their goals.

-Fragile ego: Beneath the outward confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that requires constant external validation to maintain.