Fire sale
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by RJJensen (talk | contribs) at 18:17, October 13, 2008. It may differ significantly from current revision.
A fire sale is an emergency sale of assets at unusually cheap prices, because the owner desperately needs cash.
In science fiction and the movies, a "fire sale" is a computerized attack on the government, the transportation network, and the economy by computer hackers. The logic is that terrorists have decided "everything must go!"
Originally the term meant a sale at very low prices of damaged goods when a store had a fire. They would have a sign saying "Fire Sale: everything must go!"