Quote Originally Posted by lasscriqua View Post
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35, 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, only monkeys everywhere!
Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.'
This reminds me about how foreign aid works.

After the Second World War America agreed to provide food aid to the Far East and discovered that the islanders wanted sardines.

America provided serveral hundred tons of sardines and the people didn't starve. Unfortunately this diminished the supplies of sardines and the market price increased dramatically. The people soon found that it was better to sell their free sardines back to the Americans and use the money to buy cheaper food. Naturally the people had to keep the supply of free sardines in order to maintain the economy. So they hoodwinked the Americans into believing that they were still starving and, of course, the Americans bought up all the sardines on the market and gave them straight back to the people.

The people behind the scam made a fortune while the poor people managed to survive and Americans believed they were saving the islanders.

This is how foreign aid works.