Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Monkeys and the Market

Once upon a time in a village, a man appeared and told the villagers, who were farmers, that he needs monkeys. The villagers laughed at him and never minded about what the man told. Later the man announced to the villagers that he would pay Rs.10 each monkey that the villagers catch for him. The villagers have seen a lot of monkeys in the nearby forest that used to raid their villages too, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought every monkey at Rs.10 and the villagers made a good deal. Soon the supply
started to diminish, the villagers thought that it was not worth the effort, so they stopped catching monkeys.

The man further announced that he would now buy each monkey at Rs.50. This villagers thought that it seemed to be a good deal, started catching monkeys again. And again, the supply diminished even further and people stopped the monkey business and started going back to their farms. Now the offer rate increased to Rs 75 and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catching it.

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at Rs.200 per monkey! However, since he had to go to the city on some urgent business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him. In the absence of the man, the assistant placed a deal with the villagers. "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at Rs. 125 per monkey and when the man returns from the city, you can sell it to him for Rs 200". The villagers found it to be promising squeezed up funds from all their savings to buy the monkeys at Rs. 125 per monkey. After that they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!!!

Welcome to the Global Market!!!

So long until the next post...

3 comments:

ThndrKiss said...

i think this is your best post of all :). Really amazing !

Anonymous said...

Good monkey business :D

R. Prabhu said...

Thanks Anon