They say there is too much $L in world...well that is because people are buying $L. The ammount of $L in world will not go down as long as people keep buying the difference that they need.
Unless people get this right then every comment they make about the money supply, exchange rate, inflation etc is meaningless and a delusion.
So I'll attempt a clarification.
No-one but LL can make or destroy L$. When you buy L$ from GOM you are buying them from another player, with whom they "put you in contact". When you buy from IGE, I believe you buy from a stock they hold, but this "holding" must be in the account of an SL avatar, and it has all been purchased from other residents.
In both cases you get the L$ from the hands of a chain of residents, the first of which must have got it from LL.
The L$ are continually passed from resident to resident, but the total amount of them remains the same except when LL is directly involved.
To stabilize the exchange rate and/or prices, the amount of L$ circulating inworld needs to be adjusted to match the value of the goods and services circulating in the opposite direction. These will change as the number of residents, or their buying fever, changes.
To make these adjustments (if it decides to) LL could actually come to GOM (maybe disguised as an alt) and either buy L$ which it then destroys (never uses again inworld), or create new L$ which it sells. But it has promised not to do this. And no wonder, because (at least in one direction) it would be risking real US$.
So it is reduced to manipulating the less direct "sources and sinks" for L$, that do create/destroy L$, thus changing the amount in circulation.
The most obvious of these are rating bonuses (about to be cut) stipends (not going to be cut for now) and L$ landsales which for some reason they have now abandoned except for first land.
So you see, its all a bit less obvious than it seems to the superficial glance.
However ridiculous it may seem, trading on GOM and IGE cannot affect the money supply, nor can any amount of credit card waving create a single L$.
LL have made it clear that even their new trading facility will be done the same way. No birth or death of any L$ - just helping residents to trade as easily as possible (invisibly) with each other, using the same old L$ created (perhaps) long ago. All GOM does is balance up the changing levels of demand (enthusiasm) for L$ or US$ to set a relative value at which they change hands. But the L$ which leave the hands of one resident always end up in the hands of another, so the total number does not change.
It may be worth pointing out that it is not a question of whether LL should interfere or not. It cannot help interfering. The very act of leaving things as they are is still interference, if only because nothing is static anyway. The continual growth of the population demands more currency, as the growth of a body needs more blood, so there shall still be enough to be pumped round it. It may look as though LL can leave things alone, because the stipend (extra newly created L$ which every new subscriber gets) does do a crude job of adding a bit of currency/blood just for each new arrival. But it is a crude job, and things will inevitably drift askew if that is the only growth/adjustment system in operation.
What do I mean - drift askew ?
Here is an extreme example which makes it clear:
Without this crude auto-adjustment through stipend, left to itself, when the population reaches a million (50x?) the exchange rate would be very roughly US$175/1000 and every seller would have been forced to adjust his prices frequently and laboriously during the long climb. No price could be less than 1L$ which would be useless because for many products that is too big, since it corresponds to a forced L$50 minimum today.
I hope I didn't get that the wrong way round - I'm getting sleepy !