Dire Straits School of Business

And you thought our economy was inefficient.

Yesterday, America Online reported a 90-minute server outage in which all e-mail traffic was halted. This was a crushing blow for all those foolish enough to still surf the internet with the training wheels on. AOL is an excellent tool for beginners on the information superhighway; but at some point, it’s time to move on to the big boy bike, no? Maybe this was God’s way of telling people stupidity has a price.When the 90 minute glitch was resolved, the system sprung back to life, blasting an estimated 45 million emails into cyberspace. An independent study (read: Condon with a dartboard) showed that 4% were business-related, 12% were family correspondence, 22% was junk-spam, and the other 62% were economic proposition document e-mail from…Nigeria.

Viagra and refinancing aside, one of the most common e-mails in your inbox right now is the age-old scam e-mail from this African nation. The rouse is simple. A wealthy Nigerian businessman, government official or doctor e-mails you with a simple and humble request for assistance. You see, there are these funds. They are ‘trapped’ deep in the bureaucracy of Nigerian politics. A former corrupt regime stockpiled cash in fake ministries, and the new and decent regime has decided to release this funding into the economy to teach them a lesson. However, Nigerians don’t like money for reasons the e-mail fails to provide, and needs your help. Now as I said, the current regime is “decent,” and they would like to stay that way. Checks from the bank in their name for this loose cash would look “indecent.” That’s where you come in. (Assuming you don’t share a name with a high-ranking Nigerian official)

And you thought “import/export” sounded sketchy.

Hoax-killer Snopes.com goes on to say that this has been a highly successful ploy for scam artists, as millions of dollars in “expedition costs” have been paid by stupid Americans to grease the wheels of such a lucrative investment. (AOL users, no doubt.)

But what if this WAS how Nigerian economics worked?

Yeah, just think about it. This e-mail promises large sums of money to a partner who is willing accept cash and the write a check of their own back to the one who promised, as a sign of thanks. Sure, we know there’s no way that would work in the States, but I’ve never been to Nigeria, and neither have you, so who are we to say that this isn’t possible and true? It would be an economy built on a rock-hard level of trust. Everyone trusts everyone else, or else. If an economy is built on trust, then how could it possibly fail?

Let’s say you’re getting ready to watch a soccer match between Nigeria and Togo. Your buddies come over and after twenty minutes, decide they are very hungry. No problem, you’ll order them a pizza. The pizza guy comes, and you hand him $320 dollars. He hands you the pizza. And you trust that 2 hours from now, the pizza guy will come back and hand you back $305 dollars. Does it make perfect sense? It does in Nigeria. That’s trust for you.

I wonder if in the business district of Abuja, there’s a Wall Street-esque floor where frenzied transaction action takes place. In the States, it’s a simple deal despite all the chaos. Investor contacts broker with intent to buy or sell. Broker buys or sells shares in company. Simple. But if this were Nigerianomics, it would be way different. A buyer would give cash to his broker on the market floor. The broker would then load the cash into one of those guns they shoot t-shirts or hot dogs out of at sporting events. He’d then fired it out the window of the exchange, where the companies in which they invest collects the money as it floats down to the city street. They then walk in the door of the exchange and hand the broker a percentage of that money.

The investor then e-mails an American about an abundance of t-shirts and hot dogs from the former corrupt regime.