Foie gras, the future of the Fed, freedom and the French-Canadian prime minister

What do foie gras, the future efficacy of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) and the political success of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have in common? In a single-word cliche: Freedom. Our story starts in western Spain and the secret to the best foie gras in the world.

Chef Dan Barber told the story of an innovative way to "harvest" foie gras (geese liver) in a TED talk years ago. The gist of the talk is that the world's best foie gras comes from a Spanish farmer named Eduardo Sousa who raises geese "naturally" instead of force-feeding them. He does so by "hosting" them on a free-range farm surrounded by plentiful vegetables and fruit trees. Not only do the "domesticated" geese not leave, but they attract wild geese flying south for the winter. So content are the geese at Sousa's farm that they adopt it as their new home and live out their lives gorging themselves on the richest foods a geese could possibly desire. Ultimately Sousa "harvests" the geese and sells their fatty livers - where the French term "foie gras" originates - that Barber describes as being the only true foie gras in the world.

Over the weekend, a video of a Canadian children's choir went viral. The melody sung by the middle school children during their school's Christmas pageant was titled "Alhamdulillah," Arabic for "thank God." The melody used the words of perhaps the most famous Islamic song, "'Tala' al-Badru 'Alayna," sung by the people of Medina to the people of Mecca who were led into the city by the Prophet Muhammad. The first Muslims escaped religious persecution by the rulers of Mecca and found refuge and religious freedom in Medina. Islam flourished in Medina and had spread thousands of kilometers within a few decades from southern France and Spain in the west, across North Africa and as far east as India. Islam was spread largely by promoting religious freedom, the same freedom the earliest Muslims experienced in Medina. Christians and Jews living in many of these Muslim-controlled lands continued to freely practice their religion for 13 centuries and preserved their way of life. Later in the 15th century, Muslims and Jews would be persecuted in the Andalusian lands of Eduardo Sousa - killed, forced to convert or exiled. The Ottoman Caliphate would save thousands of Jews from the wrath of the Spanish, making Istanbul the center of Sephardic Jewry for many centuries. This multi-century act of religious freedom is lost on many self-proclaimed "Islamic states" today as they promote their own self-serving, uneducated and ignorant interpretations.

So, the choice of song sung by the children is especially poignant with the announcement by Canada that it will accept some 25,000 Syrian refugees. Although there is some debate as to whether or not the singing of the song was a coincidence, the move was an unintentional public relations coup for Canada nonetheless, bringing millions of Muslims to tears of joy. Preceded by Prime Minister's Justin Trudeau's personal greeting given to the first flight of Syrian refugees that arrived on Friday via a Canadian government plane, the timing was impeccable. It should be noted that Turkey currently hosts a hundred times the amount of Syrian refugees that Canada says it is willing to host. The inability of the Turkish government to promote the altruism of its citizens may stem from humility or lack of PR savvy. Whatever the reason, the government's inactions have skewed global perception to one in which "the West" is seen as doing all the heavy-lifting in terms of helping the former French colony, Syria.

Whatever the facts maybe, the freedom of religion promoted in Anglo-Saxon countries - the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, Australia - is unparalleled globally. The United States used to top this list but with recent calls by front-running politicians, religious persecution and internment camps maybe resurrected by fear-mongering leaders in the near future. The injustices suffered by Native Americans and later Asian-Americans - primarily Japanese-Americans - may await American Muslims.

The strength of the dollar and the Fed lies at the heart of this conversation. The geese are productive because they are free. They can fly away whenever they like, yet they choose not to. People value dollars because they believe the U.S. embraces freedom. Many countries have powerful militaries, nuclear weapons and massive standing-armies, but this is not what people value.

The incremental rate hike that will be announced this week, now a foregone conclusion, is already priced into markets. What is not yet priced in and is the largest source of uncertainty in the world is how the U.S. will continue to respond to an ever-changing world. Will it embrace the practices of the Ottoman Turks in 1492 and continue to promote religious freedom, or will it emulate the practices of the underwriters of the exploration of the Americas launched on the same day that Columbus sailed, albeit unwittingly, for America?