Credit crunch (again)

Now, I don't usually just republish things on this blog, but I was just sent something by my good friend 'Chicken Jon' which was so good that 'I want to share it with you'.

(I learned, to my intense displeasure, while captive in an airport bus in Los Angeles, that the phrase "I have something I want to share with you" is often the preamble to a sales pitch delivered, on behalf of some crappy pyramid selling organisation, by someone with terminal halitosis and no personality. I suppose its better than being informed by a one night stand that you now have 'crabs', but not much. Anyway, this one, you will like... I promise).

A modern Aesop’s Fable.

Once upon a time...
in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared 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. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.
The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.
While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each 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. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once more there were monkeys everywhere.
Perhaps now you have a better understanding of how banking and the stock markets work!