Life imitates Virtual Reality?

Did Second Life predict the current banking crisis? (MSNBC) It's a story possibly made more interesting because my brother in law works at Linden Labs. That said, I doubt the underlying argument made, that the crisis is because of the lack of regulation. There's quite a big difference between what was almost a ponzi scheme in Second Life, and the current financial crisis caused in no small part by government shenanigans (Time). Nevertheless the idea of using virtual communities as simulators is a cool idea. It's still on my list of to do's to build out a primer on the financial crisis to counter a small part of the ideologically driven journalistic idiocy out there.

Update: MSNBC link fixed.