"Ridiculous" defined

The roulette wheel was rotating. I bet £500 on number 10. The ball dropped on number 5. I lost the money.

To get my cash back, I put in another £500 on number 10 again. The ball dropped on number 8 this time. I lost £1000 in total!

I went on to raise my bet to £1000 on number 10 again. Same thing happened. Now I lost £2000 in total.

It was a losing streak for me. On my 10th bet, I have accumulated a loss of £256,000.

Everyone knows I didn't have that kind of money. So I borrowed money from people who trusted me but heck, no one knows I can't repay that kinda sum!

Now people are recalling their cash and I don't have any to repay. Because people can't get their money back, they can't do the things they want to do.

Now they ask Mr CashCow for help. They said if he didn't bail me out, they won't get their money back. Mr CashCow who gets his money from his own people decided to do something.

If he bails me out, alot more people will be affected by this loss.

But if he doesn't bail me, not only will the earlier group of people lose their money, I will lose my job, my house, my everything!

Mr CashCow conceded that he should bail me out. So he paid me £256,000. Guess what?

I put in a bet of £256,000 on the 11th game. I lost and this time, the loss has doubled!

As a high roller and crazy risk taker, I am rewarded with 256,000 loyalty points into my card which I can exchange for cash later on. For every £100 that I bet, I get £1 in return. So that's £2,560 into my pocket.

In the end, I am being rewarded for my guts but I have lost everyone's money including those who trusted me. Do I care?

No, because I have not only recovered my money but also rewarded £2,560! So, why should I bother? If I did that for 100 times, I would be £256,000 richer!

As long as I have someone bailing me out everytime I lose, I should be doing fine.

Sounds familiar? Or sounds corny? Who would be so silly, right?

But that's exactly what's happening in the financial world today! At least from how I understand it.

Bankers are rewarded with huge bonuses for their reckless behaviours. They incur extraordinary losses at the expense of the company and everyone else in the world gets the stick. While their bonuses are still secured, the governments are saying, "unless we bail them out, the bankers will lose their jobs and we won't get enough taxes to run the country. This will spiral out into a recession and it would be painful to everyone. We have to help them to help ourselves".

Excuse me, when I last checked, I don't remember banks were the panacea to poverty!

What I do know about banks is that they only offer the umbrella when the sun is shining and take it away as soon as it rains.

I don't know about you but I think this whole financial crisis and bailing out of banks are absolutely ridiculous!