In uk.finance Ronald Raygun wrote:
> M Holmes wrote:
>> In uk.finance Mike_B wrote:
>>> In message , M Holmes
>>>>Well, except a kidney...
>>> Only because the law forbids it I suspect, otherwise they'd be
>>> hiring surgeons as we type.
>> You know, it's unfair to people not to permit them to get secured
>> loans against body organs. Surely nobody would deny that such organs
>> are clearly their property, nor that they're valuable.
> Perhaps that's what's *really* behind the ID card scheme. The govt's
> personal details database can act as a mortgage register wherein
> charges against body parts can be recorded. Without such a register,
> people could pledge their organs many times over. Can't have that,
> can we?
> With houses, we have the Land Registry. Also with houses, lenders
> require borrowers to insure them against risk of damage. What would
> they do in the case of organs? How do you insure against wilful
> destruction by the owner (e.g. of the liver by immoderate throughput
> of alcohol)?
Hmmmm. Liver Default Swaps anyone? Their price could vary with someone's
alcohol intake of a given night.
> What did people do to keep tulip bulbs safe?
I'm guessing they really did keep them in safes. There is a story from
(I think) Charles Mackay's "Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
in which a sailor mistakes a very expensive tulip bulb being imported to
Amsterdam for a small onion and uses it to garnish a meal. He got six
months in jail.
I suppose those who had particularly valuable bulbs had to post guards
on their plots when trying to bud them.
They also had to invent Tulip Bulb Futures so that people could buy buds
from a bulb of known pedigree which would be grown by the next season.
Of course there was a certain risk in buying any bulb because nobody
knew whether it would "crack" or not and produce the much-desired colour
and flame effects (we know now that this was a virus infection).
Undoubtedly futures prices varied with the estmated skill of the grower
to achieve this.
Bulb traders would be recognised by many of the players of credit and
housing markets today. Of course they had importers who would bring fresh
bulbs from the wilds of Turkey. They had futures dealers who acted as
agents for contracts between growers and prospective buyers or
speculators. They had what we'd call "flippers" who would option to buy
a bulb but planned to sell before its production. They had wholesale
dealers and dealers who specialised only the the rare and expensive
bulbs. Many simply loaned money at interest for others to buy and
speculate.
All were for a time acting rationally (even the man who sold a house,
brewery and multiple acres of land for a single bulb) because for a
while demand for the bulbs was huge in western Europe and anyone might
get lucky with any bulb and produce flowers of just the colours needed
to become rich (by budding the bulb). After all, prices could only go up...
Naturally when the bubble collapsed, too much credit had to be squeezed
into too little cash and not all could recover their money. A mad
scramble for cash began and of course lending stopped dead. The country
was buried in lawsuits as people tried to sue creditors into paying what
they had no means, or willingness, to pay. The fact that there was a
British, rather than Dutch naval empire may owe not a little to the
damage this did to the Dutch economy. Our turn wasn't to come until the
South Seas Bubble.
What's interesting is that there were four subsequent, though smaller,
flower bulb bubbles in Holland. Unfortunately I've been unale to find
any further information on these.
FoFP |