Mortgage anyone?

Yes, I know the real estate boom is over, and, no, I am not trying to find myself a niche outside Lebanon as a loan broker. I just decided to add Google search and Google ads to my blog (did anyone notice the bright green hit counter on the right?). And the first Ad they served up was entitled "Islamic Mortgage"! Hah! As if! My view on interest rates is that they they are a handy mathematical short-cut for communicating how much people want to spend now if someone gives them a hundred dollars adn how much they want to spend tomorrow. In the case of some American stay-at-home spouses, it's more how much you want to spend now out of the money your working spouse did not give you yet, if you have until the end of the month to pay it off, but that's another topic. So Islamic finance is just a sneaky way to communicate the same information using a contrived long-hand so as not to use the dreaded word "interest rate". I might get some sort of kick coming up with clever, novel, long-handed way to do this, but as a consumer, I have not interest. Still, since Google bans me from clocking on the ads they put on my site, the act of looking it up has a certain allure. I'll have to figure out how to parse out the URL minus the identifying information in the link. Maybe later, after I finish sending in my latest paper.

By the way, nothing new whatsoever in or on Lebanon - but if you do not trust me follow some of the links on the right.