I watched with a lot of interest this morning as the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform interviewed economists, mortgage lender CEOs, and other experts about the subprime mortgage crisis currently being experienced here in the United States, and particularly the outrageous compensation collected by current and former lending institution CEOs right in the middle of it all.
The committee was chaired by someone I consider to be a fair politician, but also a qualified leader in the ongoing congressional investigation into these issues. Chairman Henry Waxman [D – 30th District of California (West L.A., Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Bel-Air)] is an experienced legislator of over three decades, and has always proved to be a bipartisan voice in issues both domestic and foreign.
Beyond the cliché and oversimplified views on the subprime mortgage crisis brought up in testimony, however, something caught my attention: procedural matters related to real-life CEO compensation. It is something that I personally feel is directly applicable to our Second Life markets and public companies.
This is my disclaimer before I even start to write... "It is my opinion"
Well it has been a pretty hectic last month for most. Second Life was turned upside down once again, just when we all thought things were going smoothly. I dont really need to spell it out, but here it is - BANKING POLICY CHANGES... Yes that was an experience. Most of our readers would know that not only am I CEO of SL Reports.net, but I am also VP Investor Relations at SL Capital Exchange. Something I would like to share with everyone is my experience. From the onset of the policy change I have spoken with customers, been screamed at by customers, threatened by customers, lol even surrounded by customers (god bless them). So I know how it affected many. It is not an experience that I wish upon anyone. Lucky for me (or unlucky, I still need to work that one out) I had experienced a similar policy change in the past - the great old Casino policy change. When the change came in it was action time, no protesting or dwelling on the past, it was time move on. I must admit the majority of older Second Life residents understood that with this new policy change. Some did not understand the change or why it occurred, so they demanded, accused and made themselves heard. Forums became firing ground. Words were flying left, right and center and I made the mistake of using the word "Ignorant", bad choice of words in hindsight. My message did and did not get across, simply the message was not to sell yourself short. Did my message get across, to be truely honest I think only partly. It is far from over, but I see light at the end of the tunnel and slowly see a change in responses on forums. We are getting there and when we do, I wont be so bold to say "I told you so". Take hold of your hats ladies and gentlemen because the game has only begun!
(Please note that this is a blog post, hence the heading... not an article.)
Boy, oh boy! Talk about being knocked off your high horse back to reality! If – for one fleeting moment over the past 48 hours – I had started to miss my old involvement in Second Life, I was quite forcefully pushed back into a state of loving disdain last night.
You know, there are so many other... more serious... issues I could have blogged about over the past couple days: the power struggle over halted stock POW at CapEx, the ever-expanding deadline of the WSE reopening and 4.0 upgrade, the backlash over Arbitrage Wise's CTO equity partnership announcement, or... just in general... how the post-banking behavior on both customer and management ends just generally dumbfounds me.
Who in God's name would have thought for a single microsecond that reposting a publicly-available, "old news" announcement like Arthur Burma's claimed intention to file a class-action suit against BNT Financial would have brought me so much grief? Not me.
In response to a bit of my own sharp criticism about the proposed BNT Financial lawsuit, Mr. Arthur Burma has been kind enough to provide a response clarifying a few of his intentions with regard to possible upcoming proceedings.
For various technical reasons, Mr. Burma was not able to utilize the comments function of our website. I apologize for this inconvenience, and hereby provide Arthur's response to further expand on the BNT Financial lawsuit plans.
Xavier,
All good points… We pitch to an interested law firm in Palo Alto on 3/28. There is no case; there may be no case. We are simply organizing depositors. It has been interesting to know that so many other depositors were treated poorly - many for petty sums. So from a personal point of view, it feels good to know that at least I wasn't the only victim of BNT.
BNT wants to convert depositors to shareholders in some new business. We do not accept this conversion, and have started that clearly to BNT. The fiduciary responsibility an institution of any kind (especially one claiming to be a bank) has to a depositor is fundamentally different than one might have to an investor.
Seems we have another lawsuit threat on our hands with regard to Second Life finance. Arthur Burma, a self-proclaimed "significant depositer" at BNT Financial, has decided to band together with other BNTF depositors and sue IntLibber Brautigan six ways from Sunday.
Contact: Arthur Burma Eris Island
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INTENT TO FILE CLASS ACTION AGAINST BNT FINANCIAL
San Francisco, California, February 25, 2008 - Arthur Burma is a significant depositor in Meta Bank, then My Second Bank, later acquired by BNT Holdings with significant deposits in Linden Dollars. Subsequent failures of the bank to honour withdrawal requests and return accurate records of deposit continued until Linden Lab prohibited the operation of ad-hoc banking in Second Life.
I logged into Second Life today for the first time in over a month. In short, it was what it was. Quite simply... after coming to the self-realization that I have not used Second Life for a long time, with no immediate plans to return to my old SL schedule, I wanted to deposit what Lindens (L$) I had left on my avatar into my SLCapEx account, so that I could do a little stock-trading.
After updating my profile – for the third or fourth time this year – and logging off, I began thinking about my unfulfilled obligation to SL Reports... I have not written anything in a while... so here we are!
But, what does an ex-Second Life resident write about that could possibly be of interest to a diverse little milieu of SL stock traders, finance gurus, nutzo immersionists, and other people equally as screwed up as I am? It was difficult, but after a bit of contemplation, I decided to play copy cat to iVentures Volitant and look at a real-life issue.
For the last several weeks, I have been enormously concerned with an Internet-related issue... so much, in fact, that I am likely to begin lobbying my own state legislature for action in matters related to it.
Opinions 
