http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/03/the_bard_of_the.html A very good mapping of Merchant of Venice onto the current financial crisis beleaguering the US economy. When all Antonio’s "argossies" reportedly wreck at the same time — a wildly improbable event predicted by none of Antonio’s complex statistical models and, as we have seen, completely discounted by him — his over-leveraged balance sheet sends him spinning into bankruptcy and ruin.
