Weird News: Latvians Pledge Souls for Loans
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
As the world economy plummets further (yes, the media's late green shoots are poorly crafted fables), it's not as easy to get credit. Particularly in countries like Latvia, where government resources are not as abundant to pump into institutions "too big to fail" for the sake of keeping the debt web strong and sticky. Now, however, some particularly ghoulish financiers have raised the stake by offering loans to borrowers willing to pledge their immortal souls to the banking daemons of this world--and perhaps others. While this probably draws on old superstitions as a clever deterrent to defaulting on the loans, it's hard to imagine even the most rational spendthrifts feeling wholly at ease when agreeing to these otherworldly terms.
