Most who believe the end is nigh are mere curiosities, disappointment their shared reward. In contrast, Islamic terrorists know precisely when their world will end and they murder on their way out.

Empathy doesn’t help me understand these terrorists. Economics and ethnology do. The explanation has less to do with money than with culture and perceived time to eternity. I see an important lesson in a recent bank failure in Ephraim, Utah.

I once was an anthropologist and studied disparate cultures. Some claimed unique knowledge of God’s dictates and directions. Yet, I’ve never been comfortable with dogmatic fundamentalists, even these relatively minor oddities in the desert of southern Utah. Here’s their story.

The collapse of the 99-year-old Ephraim bank came from the bizarre behavior of a sect that splintered from the Mormons. This polygamist group of 9,000 souls believed civilization would soon end. Hence, they borrowed as though there was no reckoning of balance sheets. Since they have a monopoly on received wisdom and are the elect of the earth, why shouldn’t they borrow from the gentiles? Apparently, they believed God would handle the final audit and their accounts would clear.

America’s founders understood the dangers of granting power to those claiming direction from correspondence with God. Exercising and justifying behavior on this theological basis is quintessentially un-American. The bank’s story suggests why.

Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints took out a series of poorly conceived loans. One was for a watermelon farm that raised no watermelons. Another was to convert abandoned army barracks into motels and housing. The bank neglected due diligence and failed to discover that these ex-military buildings were contaminated with lead paint and asbestos. It made a loan to a construction company that so underbid city contracts it could not even cover material costs.

These bad loans, plus $5 million embezzled by the head cashier, forced the FDIC to close the Bank of Ephraim. Shareholders and depositors independent of the sect lost millions, although for years the bank profited from high-interest loans to sect members.

According to the bank president, Keith Church, sect members vowed to borrow the maximum to prepare for civilization’s collapse. Loan collateral was weak, e.g., the right to use church land for business purposes. This borrowing behavior helps explain the economics of Islamic terrorism.

There is no central authority in Islam, no Pope, no “President, Revelator, and Seer,” no bishopric. Essentially, there are religious freelancers with competing visions and pronouncements. While they may and often do violently disagree with one another, each claims a lock on pronouncing the Koran’s truth.

Included in their several versions of the truth is the proposition that force is a legitimate, indeed God-sanctioned means of advancing and protecting the one true faith. This implies that infidels are fair game. Not only may they be killed with impunity, there are rewards in heaven for doing so if one dies in the process.

The fundamentalist Mormons of Ephraim believed that civilization would soon end. Hence, if the world as we know it is passing, the future consequences of present behavior are highly discounted and may be ignored. Armed with this knowledge, they could borrow large sums, some $18 million, with impunity.

The “Fundies of Ephraim” didn’t know exactly when their world would end. Time and the relentless logic of compounding interest caught them up. We’re not so fortunate when dealing with Muslim fundamentalists.

Islamic terrorists select the time of their departure by detonating the charge. When it goes off, they immediately go to heaven and collect their rewards. In addition to a substantial settlement to family survivors, 72 virgins are among the payments to males. Economics cannot tell us the value to place on this reward. That is largely a cultural artifact and surely idiosyncratic.

Devout Muslins see the repugnant aspects of western liberty. And when church and state are tightly linked, fanatics have a moral advantage. They seek the presumed religious perfection of the seventh century -- and domination in our twenty-first. This is impossible, for their culture peaked in the eleventh. In frustration, some explode themselves, killing innocent others.

Take heart. Be vigilant. Our responsibility is to minimize damage as we witness the Muslim fundamentalists’ death rattle of obsolescence and decline.