Why anyone would ask someone who never put a dime in a Second Life bank until the day Linden Lab banned them, and whose "experiment" with the Second Life stock exchange now has her stocks trading at less than 1/3 she paid for them, is beyond her. But Garret has been asked what she thinks. So here it is:

I never studied economics. I don’t portend to know more than a hill of beans about banking. As for banking in Second Life, all I can go on is a personal gut feeling.  And my gut always told me: “Not good.”

That doesn’t mean that “banking” in virtual worlds will always be “not good.” But right now and from what I saw over the last going on three years in Second Life, I believe that Linden Lab made a wise decision.  I can even understand why they didn’t make it sooner.  After all, Phillip’s vision of Second Life—“Your world. Your imagination”—is a motto I believe he really wants for this virtual space.  But “desires” cannot stand alone from “thought.”

The problem is: Virtual worlds do not inhabit utopia. They are a part of the world outside our door (remember wind on our faces and not windLight on our faces?).  Second Life is not Shangri-la, folks.  I am not commenting on any one person or any avatar in the specific, but let’s just say, I am certain that there are fleecers and scammers in Second Life, and some of them are in the banking business. I know this to be true because there are fleecers and scammers in real life.

I do worry, though, about Linden Lab. When one makes decisions on behalf of a company, one must not always make reactive decisions, and I seem to see that happening perhaps a bit too much.  Thus, while I can’t prove it, I feel almost certain that the decision to close banking as we now know it in SL was made based on some outside pressure.

However, my point is not to cast a critical eye on Linden Lab. Rather, the night LL laid down the banking hammer, I stood for several hours in a couple lobbies of SL financial institutions.  I spent most of my time clicking on the profiles of those demanding, pleading, begging or asking politely for their money back.