The World's Largest Ponzi Scheme
Posted on September 23rd, 2009 by Derek McBurney in Economics, Rants, Sustainability
So, another week at CalgaryUrbanite, another revelation I have to share with everyone. Last week I mentioned how we are all driving the Oil Sands business whether we like developing them or not. Well this week I drop an even bigger bombshell (We are entering the Fall sweeps season after all). Forget the latest Ponzi-Scheme bust in Calgary, we are part of the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
The Ponzi scheme according to Wikipedia (so yes, there might be a few swear words vandalized into the definition) is:
A fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned.
So basically the first "investors" get massive returns on their "investment" by being given the money from the newest investors who are convinced that the whole thing is for real. When the whole system implodes, the newer investors never get their investments back, and people's lives are destroyed. We like to think we're smart enough that we will never be duped into such a scam, but the scary thing is, you and I just invested in one.
