Bard of The Financial Crisis

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.