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[bellinghman]

BBC: Billions stolen in online robbery

Space trading game Eve Online has suffered a virtual version of the credit crunch.

One of the game's biggest financial institutions lost a significant chunk of its deposits as a huge theft started a run on the bank.

Comments

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Ah, but one of the things they do with EVE is study virtual economies (our former Dean jumped ship to do just that).

What makes you think that if the real-world Icelandic bankers can get away with effectively the same trick, the executives of EVE-world banks shouldn't be able to do the same thing? That would be entirely at odds with the entire Icelandic approach to business and banking. :D

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat lost for words here, and can only assume you haven't got any clue whatsoever how a bank (virtual or real) is run, what this player did, or what the Icelandic bankers did.

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

No, I don't do banking, but I'm in an excellent place to watch how a group of people who believe that they are untouchable on the banking and business front have managed to ruin an economy.

For instance, is it generally considered good banking practice for members of a bank's staff to be given huge loans in order to buy shares in that bank, thus inflating the bank's share price, and then to have those loans written off when the bank collapses? I don't think so... but as I'm not a banking expert I may be wrong.

More and more of the 'sharp practices' in the Icelandic banking sector are coming out on a week-by week basis. And, from what I've seen, it's not only Iceland that's affected. I'm simply not surprised that people in virtual worlds will find ways to exploit the system in the same way that people have been exploiting the real-world system.

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

My apologies, in that case it sounds like some Icelandic bankers did write themself a huge cheque from the banks accounts (which effectively is what the EVE player did).

I haven't paid attention for a few months, and thought it was 'just' a matter of huge risks taken with other people's money, overinflated expectations of eternal growth, and blinkered incompetence.

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

No offence taken. I wasn't sure just how much news of the emerging fraud and corruption investigations had got off the Rock.

But you're right, it certainly did involve massive risks, unrealistic expectations and astonishing incompetence.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

So long as there's eternal growth, a lot of sharp practice never gets spotted.

When the economy goes into reverse, a lot of interesting things pop up. In the wider world, Madoff is the prime example, but it looks like Sir Allen Stanford may also be finding chickens coming home to roost.

(What actually is that idiom about? Why is 'chickens coming home to roost' a bad thing? Would anyone want them disappearing forever?)

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

The sense of the phrase exists in Chaucer's The Parson's Tale

And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest.

and seems to suggest that evil deeds will come back to haunt you, much as chickens always return to their roosts.

With thanks to www.phrases.org.uk :)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Ah, one of those really old metaphors which has lost its flesh over the centuries.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

As a lecturer at one of their Universities, I suspect sharikkamur has had some contact with the Icelandic banking system, and is (like much of the rest of the Icelandic population) rather rather unhappy at it.

(Of course, she's not bfrb, so mayn't have quite the same inside knowledge.)