MSNBC News: "Second Life Bank Crash Foretold Financial Crisis"

Even MSNBC Jumps onto Bad Analogy Bandwagon

For SLReports.net Sunday Front Page

In a November 21st, 2008 article for MSNBC.com, journalist Jeremy Hsu asserted that the collapse of Ginko Financial foretold the US Subprime Credit Collapse and resulting bank failures and stock market plunges. It is easy to draw broad analysis to the situations, and perhaps more appropriately, the recent Linden Lab's Openspace Policy Change to a collapse of the US Housing Bubble, but Hsu was happy with using only web-searchable information that is over a year old.

"A string of bank collapses prompted Alan Greenspan, U.S. economic guru and former head of the Federal Reserve, to admit last month that lending institutions could not always be trusted to regulate themselves. He could have taken a cue sooner by looking at the 2007 collapse of Ginko Financial, a virtual investment bank in the online game "Second Life."

"Virtual economies in games such as "Second Life" and "EVE Online" may seem trivial, but they actually can provide real-life lessons on the patterns of free markets and unfettered capitalism. Researchers and self-described virtual economists have observed how virtual entrepreneurs establish themselves and compete, as well as how a lack of self-regulation can lead to dramatic banking failures, scams and even corporate espionage."

Echoing sentiments made by most CEO's and Private Company Owners in Second Life who have seen any amount of success, Robert Bloomfield (SL Name: Buyers Sellers), host of the widely popular weekly sl television show Metanomics, and in Real Life an accounting researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told MSNBC, "I don't view 'Second Life' as a game, I view it as a market space."

A great portion of Intlibber Brautigan's Octoboer Metanomics appearance was given to this same topic.