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tristan Eliot
Say What?!
Join date: 30 Oct 2005
Posts: 494
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11-23-2008 03:35
Yeah it isn't a question. Just an interesting article. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27846252/ |
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Blot Brickworks
The end of days
Join date: 28 Oct 2006
Posts: 1,076
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11-23-2008 06:50
Neither a borrower or a lender be.
_____________________
 Blots Plot @ THE OLD MERMAID INN http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dunbeath /206/85/26 http://phillplasma.com/2009/05/01/blots-plot-the-old-mermaid-inn/
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Marybeth Cooperstone
Registered User
Join date: 18 Nov 2008
Posts: 138
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11-23-2008 08:36
I have had several discussions, on this forum, in SL, and in RL, about when RL and SL are not separate places.
This is a good example. But I don't know that it was due to the current economic problems but due to a faulty business model. The high interest rate the bank paid on Linden dollars was higher than anyone could make in RL.
But the economies are linked, and the economics on SL will operate like the economics in RL. The free market will behave like a free market, both in good ways and bad ways.
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Felix Oxide
Registered User
Join date: 6 Oct 2006
Posts: 655
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11-23-2008 09:31
I think the point of the article was that unregulated financial systems are doomed to failure and the unregulated "banks" in SL could have been a great case study as to why this is the truth.
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Aminom Marvin
Registered User
Join date: 31 Dec 2006
Posts: 520
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11-23-2008 14:56
If anyone thinks that the US and world economic system is anything approaching a free market, they are kidding themselves. Markets and companies have huge subsidies, corporations are given bailouts right and left, and the tax and regulatory structure vastly favors the large over the small. Supply and demand are manipulated through short selling (especially naked short selling), leveraging, and the use of derivative instruments to sell assets that don't even exist yet. Our monetary system is based on nothing but debt, with banks and the fed able to create money out of thin air with no real value backing it.
Just look at the gold market. This year, and especially this quarter, there has been completely unprecedented demand. Since August it's been almost impossible to actually purchase physical gold, with delays measuring in weeks or months. Premiums on gold range from 40-70 USD an ounce and higher. The Perth mint recently announced that it would stop taking orders, and work 24/7 for months just to fulfill current orders for gold bullion. All this time, the gold spot market price has declined, do to manipulation in the Comex paper market.
The reason for the gold manipulation? So that investors, who are fleeing the stock market en masse, will flee to the USD (and thus buy US debt) to keep the entire system from collapsing. Of course, our debt can only be purchased in such a mass way before it collapses on itself. At that time, investors will flee to true save havens- hard assets such as Gold.
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