It's a bit awkward since "poisonous" usually refers to things you eat, and sandboxes or their contents are generally not eaten.
If you want to continue the sandbox metaphor, which I do like, "playing in the Fed's sandbox until the bottom fell out" might work. Or even "toxic sandbox".
I was thinking somewhere vaguely along the lines of easy credit as something like heroin addiction/withdrawal, that's where poison came from. I guess it is awkward
I liked it. Also because the markets have become decoupled from reality/fundamentals/value - like a sandbox - at this point. Also liquidity and fungibility of the money supply/sand =)
I quoted from Wiktionary, feel free to update the definition there (with sources) if you disagree. Note that the "Synonym: toxic" appears underneath the second (figurative) definition, and in my opinion is perfectly correct; in figurative use poisonous and toxic are used in the same way.
I think it works, toxins can transmit into the body not just through the ingestion route but also skin absorption among many other routes. So if there's toxins in the sand of the kind the skin is vulnerable to then that sandbox would be poisonous to the occupants.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/skin/default.html#:~:text=D....
> If you want to continue the sandbox metaphor, which I do like, "playing in the Fed's sandbox until the bottom fell out" might work. Or even "toxic sandbox".
All toxic substances are poisonous. A toxin is a poison produced by a living cell or organism.
Poisonous Sandbox was elegantly simple, pithy even, and quite appropriate.
While "toxin" refers specifically to a poison produced by a living cell or organism, "toxic" does not -- it's a synonym of poisonous, directly derived from the Latin word for "poisonous".
"Toxin" is a newer invention, derived from "toxic" by adding the biochemistry-related suffix "-in" to indicate toxic substances of biological origin.