>>But that's how (I imagine) the air was pumped into the bubble. My major gripe with the system as it is is that there are just too many places where this imaginary (aka expected aka future aka estimated) value counts as real, and is sold as real. Then when confidence artists sell all the confidence that can be sold and there's none left in stock, most of that imaginary value vanishes. I'd somehow trust a good value theory more than this. Which is also a reason I'm not putting my money into that game - because it failed to produce confidence.
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>It is totally fantastic scenario. Generally, shares are not accepted as collaterals so company could not even get simple loans based on it, not even mentioning your long-stretched ideas.

I wasn't talking about getting a loan. About giving one. If the so-called "leverage" was 20:1, i.e. for every dollar of assets they were emitting twenty dollars of loan - how much of these assets was in imaginary value? Will we ever know?

> However, it is true, btw, that in some exotic places of Eastern Europe loans were really extended on these conditions causing periodic crashes.

Last I remember, the leverage factor there was 2:1, but that was before the transition. Then they came with all possible pyramid schemes, but not with loans - they were promising exorbitant interest on savings, and for foreign currency too. And the inflation was so high that nobody dared loan to anyone, at least no longer than a week.