It was against this backdrop, that a few entrepreneurs and religious figures in Egypt and in Pakistan established what they called: "Islamic banks". These banks refrained from either paying interest to depositors - or from charging their clients interest on the loans that they doled out. Instead, they have made their depositors partners in fictitious profits - and have charged their clients for fictitious losses. All would have been well had the Islamic banks stuck to healthier business practices. But they offer impossibly high "profits" and ended the way every pyramid ends: they collapsed and dragged economies and political establishments with them. The latest example of the price paid by whole nations due to failed pyramid schemes is, of course, Albania 1997. One third of the population was heavily involved in a series of heavily leveraged investment plans, which collapsed almost simultaneously. Inept political and financial crisis management led Albania to the verge of disintegration into civil war. But why must pyramid schemes fail? Why can't they continue forever, riding on the back of new money and keeping every investor happy, new and old? The reason is that the number of new investors - and, therefore, the amount of new money available to the pyramid's organizers - is limited. There are just so many risk takers. The day of judgement is heralded by an ominous mismatch between overblown obligations and the trickling down of new money. When there is no more money available to pay off the old investors, panic ensues. Everyone wants to draw money at the same time. This, evidently, is never possible - some of the money is usually invested in real estate or was provided as a loan. Even the most stable and healthiest financial institutions never put aside more than 10% of the money deposited with them. Thus, pyramids are doomed to collapse. But, then, most of the investors in pyramids know that pyramids are scams, not schemes. They stand warned by the collapse of other pyramid schemes, sometimes in the same place and at the same time. Still, they are attracted again and again as butterflies are to the fire and with the same results. The reason is as old as human psychology: greed, avarice. The organizers promise the investors two things: (1) that they could draw their money anytime that they want to and (2) that in the meantime, they will be able to continue to receive high returns on their money.