Quote Originally Posted by Bilbo View Post
Ok I admit I'm as thick as pigshit when it comes to the economy but I've never understood it.

I mean how can the world suddenly go into recession? Short of money just print more. I know there's a reason why it doesn't work like that but like I say I don't understand it.

Money is a sense doesn't exist anyway it's just a way to set a value to items to faciliate barter and trade, I don't understand how it can get all of kilter sometimes and can't be corrected with a couple simple recalculations or something.

It seems like modernisation and beureucracy complicate matters.

I can't envisage the native American indians for example having a sea shell crisis or the value of beads dropping against the value of buffalo horn?

Does anyone understand the economy and can explain this in idiot terms?
Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for £10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

As they were simple villagers in the mold of Kid Thunder, they had to borrow £2 per monkey from the man to get cages to transport the monkeys to him, as they had never done this before.

The man bought thousands at £10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at £20 each.

This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to £25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at £50 each! However, since he had to go to the USA on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at £35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for £50 each." The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion pounds. The expected profits windfall caused the richer villagers to buy the monkeys from the other villagers for £40 as they thought the man would give them £50.

So confident were they that they went out and secured further loans on the non-existent £10 per monkey. They invented a word with big juju for this .... they called it 'equity'

The debt owed on the monkeys was therefore more than the monkeys were actually worth. The chain of debt is so complex that most people owe money without actually owning anything at the end of it.

The man came back, announced he would not be buying any more monkeys and pointed out that not a single villager had actually repaid the initial £2 loans for the cages. The assistant informed the shell-shocked villagers that they all owed him £35 per monkey.

= our current situation