Neither a borrower nor a lender be

Words of advice from Polonius in Hamlet.

Here we have a world of borrowers and lenders.....and a very problematic, morally sketchy society as a result.

Shakespeare clearly pandered to his audience with Shylock, but I wonder if his real target wasn't Jews but the idea of a society that has to float on credit. In other words, this world was the beginning of our modern economy. The US government is 16 trillion dollars in debt but since no one is coming to claim a pound of flesh, we kind of ignore the problem and pay our annual $200 billion in interest on the debt and forget about it. Of course someone MIGHT claim their pound of flesh--in the form of stopping buying out Treasury bonds. Then we're f---d.

But Shylock now runs the universe. I don't mean Jews, I mean banks. Banks are usurers who jump start our entire economy through issuing loans. In other words, debt profiteers just like Shylock.

Modern audiences should stop obsessing over whether this is anti-Semitic and maybe take a look at this play as an ugly reflection of our world today viewed by the more skeptical eye of Shakespeare---more skeptical because he lived in a world where considering usury immoral was a mainstream idea when it's now very much a fringe idea. Usury has been so ingrained in us that we consider it part of the natural order of life.