A Pound Of Flesh

Greek Crisis: What Bankers Should Lean from Germany's Weimar Republic (Guest Post)

Back then government employees were demanding their wages, unions were on strike, the coffers were empty, and the government of the day chose to inflate away the problem. That is one of the options presented to Greece today--they can leave the Euro, default on the debts, and inflate away the cost of the commitments made by previous governments to unions, pensioners, and government employees. The first is austerity, although it’s getting harder to do the austerity thing these days, now that it’s considered politically incorrect to shoot at rioters with live ammunition, which wasn’t an issue in 1923. The other way is to sell up the assets of the country; which was an idea the French came up with when they occupied the industrial heartland of Germany in order to convince them to “honor their obligations”. Outside of the detail that French and German bankers can’t occupy the tourist hot-spots of Greece and kill any protestors who object, there are two problems with collecting proxies for collateral that was never offered. The second is that in any case the full resources of the joke which passes for the fragmented European “defense” capability is currently engaged doing, I’m not quite sure what, or for what objective, in Libya. Although, it must be said, Germany elected not to participate in that Charlie Foxtrot…so perhaps they were saving themselves up for a spot of asset-stripping? Financial Bubbles are all about profiting from someone else’s misfortune, that’s because they are zero-sum. In aggregate no wealth is created; for everyone who wins, someone else must loose; hence the mantra that used to be rolled out as a clever in-joke on Wall Street, “The value of something is what you can sell it for to someone dumber than you”. Therefore “someone” should be punished. Money was lent, so money should be paid back, with interest; and if not the stupid population which voted that stupid corrupt government into power, in “democratic” elections, should be made to lie down and have pounds of flesh cut out of the part of their chest closest to their hearts, until such a time as they “learn” better.

Pound of flesh « John's Blog

87,215 Iraqi civilian deaths . A chart comparing the cost of our revenge to the toll inflicted by the terrorists is show below; in short, our revenge has killed nearly twice as many Americans as the terrorists did.

And that brings us to the central question – if the killing of 4,000 innocents in America led us to start these wars, then what reaction are we provoking by killing 90,000? If we must spend ourselves into bankruptcy for our revenge, how have we “won”? And if our revenge is deadlier to us than the original attack, then why should we pursue it? Even if we ignore the thicket of how the reaction to the attack has made us both less safe and less free, it cannot be denied that, as was the case with Shylock, all that our pound of flesh has brought us is ruin.

John [1] This is the play that gives us the title of this post, as Shylock demands a pound of flesh from Antonio in repayment for an usurious loan. Shakespeare was indulging in a bit of word-play here, as pound was a common type of currency back then (typically, a pound of silver, or 240 silver pennies), thus a pound of flesh was being exchanged for a pound of money.

I’ve been thinking a bit about this general topic lately. Last month I bought Ken a copy of America: The Story of Us which we’ve been watching. I found it very interesting that their description of the Revolutionary War and it’s impact on England had such strong parallels to this situation. England had the good sense to recognize the futility and expense of fighting us and chose to go home after only 8 years. Too bad we aren’t as smart.

*shows up in the jumpsuit, a few clumps of hair still wet* Ready to take your pound of flesh Ember?

it's a pound of flesh / but it's really a ton / i've got 99 problems / but a bitch ain't one - jay-z

let out a quiet sound~left me shaken left unbound~my ever rooted flesh of pound~the world is not round

Plenty. Sins of the piano man; Pound of flesh; she gives me religion to name a few

do think Russia will xtract a bigger pound of flesh than pakistanis if US were 2 use Russian route 4 logistics?y is US reluctant?

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