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SBR
9,3
310
Received 30 July 2014
Revised 30 July 2014
Accepted 31 July 2014
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Society and Business Review
Vol. 9 No. 3, 2014
pp. 310-319
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1746-5680
DOI 10.1108/SBR-07-2014-0036
Shall we dance?
A Shakespearian reading of the
subprime crisis
Yoann Bazin
ISTEC, Paris, France
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to open a dialogue between academic accounts of the subprime crisis and
The Life of Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare.
Design/methodology/approach – Andre Orlean’s analysis of the crisis published in 2009 is closely
examined to trace the ways in which it echoes this seventeenth-century play on issues of debt, gift, trust
and belief.
Findings – Shakespeare’s play provides an astonishingly relevant description that can account for
and provide a new reading of most of Orlean’s (2009) detailed and in-depth academic analysis.
Originality/value – Following the chronology of a literary piece, this article opens a dialogue with the
academic literature to allow for gaining a particular perspective, namely, beyond specific elements, the
underlying dynamics of the subprime crisis are sadly classic in terms of trust and beliefs. As we will see,
Shakespeare had already seen everything […].
Keywords Financial crisis, Belief, Shakespeare, Financial markets, Subprime crisis
Paper type Viewpoint
Poet: Good day, sir.
Painter: I’m glad you’re well.
Poet: I have not seen you long. How goes the world?
Painter: It wears, sir, as it grows.
In a Financial Times interview on July 10, 2007, Chuck Prince, Citigroup CEO, dismissed
any risk of economic recession following on from problems in the real estate market:
When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But, as long as the
music is playing, you have got to get up and dance. We are still dancing.
A strange statement from the leader of one of the biggest banks of all time, who is
supposed to make decisions based on documented and rational analysis. Instead, he
appears to focus on markets’ atmosphere, intuition and fashionable beliefs. Is that Wall
Street’s secret for success? If everybody dances, then we shall dance […].
Orléan, in his 2009 book From Euphoria to Panic, underlines that, during the
subprime crisis, major financial institutions, from banks to regulators and rating
agencies, appeared completely unprepared and unable to face the burst of real estate
and mortgage bubbles, followed by banking and financial ones. Public power had to
intervene to avoid the collapse of the whole system. Its very structural core had been
weakened, if not compromised, and even business leaders seemed overwhelmed.
The author thanks Maja Korica for her benevolent, yet rigorous, remarks and suggestions.
 Although it is now established that they were informed before the rest of the public, Shall we dance?
the entire financial system seems to have been completely out of control for a while.
Orléan (2009) goes further: “the crisis cannot be reduced to its economic dimension,
it is intellectual and ideological as well”. To him, damages were both physical and
spiritual; it is an entire belief system that has been shattered. Indeed, the very
conceptual framework that rendered the neo-liberal turn (financialization,
privatization, deregulation and securitisation) fell like a house of cards, exposing the 311
overly confident faith in financial markets.
Fascinating similarities exist between the tragedy of the subprime crisis and the
theatre play The Life of Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare. In this
seventeenth-century play, Shakespeare presents an Athenian noble whose wealth
is unquestionable and unquestioned; its belief is unshakeable. He constantly invites
and organizes sumptuous parties, borrows enormously but also lends a lot. All his
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creditors are reimbursed beyond expectations; the same logic applies to gifts that
are followed by far more costly presents, despite the many protests of Flavius, his
intendant and servant. However, the belief in this wealth slowly parcels out when a
few start doubting his solvency and realize that he simply borrows to reimburse.
The wealth only existed as an illusion: a faith, a belief.
Timon: My hand to thee; mine honour on my promise.
Timon’s tragic destiny will be accelerated by the disappearance of this blind trust.
Shakespeare develops in this minor but dense play a remarkable analysis of what is at
stake in debt, gift, trust and trade. His view on the notion of value could help us
understand today’s financial system; all the more because it appears to be surprisingly
close to Orléan’s (2009) three-phases approach: euphoria, blindness and panic.
Similarities in three acts[1].
First act: Euphoria
Timon: Sir, your jewel hath suffer under praise.
Jeweller: What, my lord, dispraise?
Timon: A mere satiety of commendations. If I should pay for’t as ‘tis extolled if would
unclew me quite.
Jeweller: My lord, ‘tis rated as those which sell would give; but you well know things of like
value differing in the owners are prized by their masters. Believe’t, dear lord, you mend the
jewel by the wearing it.
Trade values in general and market values in particular are arbitrations, outcomes of
negotiations in which actors believe. Consequently, for Orléan (2009), the only way to
really understand the blindness of financial market actors before bubble bursts and
crises is the euphoria that reigns. On this, the subprime crisis is not exceptional in terms
of functioning, in that it has unfolded just like many other crises before it: the burst of a
real estate bubble closely coupled with a credit one. As often, the very notion of value
was abused and disappeared behind complex market mechanisms; it is “the same old
story, only the players have changed” (Bordo, 2007).

Scene 1: a seemingly endless melody

Alcibiade: Sir, you have saved my longing, and I feed most hungrily on your sight.
 SBR Timon: Right welcome sir! Ere we depart, we’ll share a bounteous time in different
pleasures. Pray you, let us in.
9,3
Shakespeare’s play opens on a gallery of characters who take advantage of Timon’s
wealth and generosity. From artists selling “master pieces” to “friends” in need,
everybody visits him to pay their respect. Even Athenian lords who are more than
happy to bring presents because “no meed but he repays sevenfold above itself; no gift
312 to him but breeds the giver a return exceeding all us of quittance”. Only Apemantus, a
misanthrope, remains sceptical and refuses to engage in this dance.
At the origin of the subprime crisis lies a real estate bubble, the biggest one of all time
(Reinhart and Rogoff, 2008). With prices in constant rise between 1997 and 2007 (!150
per cent to !200 per cent in the USA and Europe), real estate had become a very
profitable investment. Contrary to classic regulation mechanisms, the increasing prices
stimulated demand instead of lowering it (Orléan, 2009). Consequently, a speculative
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bubble emerged, in which actors had every interest in seeing prices continue to increase,
without connection to the intrinsic value of products. At the same time, the portion of
buyers acquiring real estate for purely speculative reasons increased as well. The rise of
prices had therefore no stabilising function on markets and its constant accelerating
rhythm announced the beginning of the dance.
Timon: They’re welcome all. Let’em have kind admittance. Music, make their welcome! […]
Apemantus: Hey-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way! They dance? They are
madwomen […] We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves, and spend our flatteries to
drink those men upon whose age we void it up again with poisonous spite and envy […]. I
should fear those that dance before me now would one day stamp upon me.
Financial institutions that were providing banking credits did not try to calm down the
speculative euphoria of this first bubble. As for Timon, the music seemed endless and
everybody wanted to enjoy it as long as possible: individuals, banks, loaners, public
powers, insurance companies, etc. Why not believe in the faith of an endless growth and
follow everybody in the dance? Let’s all dance!

Scene 2: a necessary weakness

Timon: Flavius.
Flavius: My lord.
Timon: The little casket bring me hither.
Flavius: Yes my lord. (Aside) More jewels yet? There is no crossing him in’s humor, else I
should tell him well, I’faith I should. When all’s spent, he’d be crossed then, an he could […]
What will this come to? He commands us to provide and give great gifts, and all out of an
empty coffer; nor will he know his purse, or yield me this: to show him what a beggar his
heart is, being of no power to make his wishes good. His promises fly so beyond his state
that what he speaks is all in debt, he owes for every word. He is so kind that he now pays
interests for’t. Hos land’s put to their books.
It is shown, early in the first act, that Timon’s wealth only rests on beliefs: promises,
appearance, gifts and loans. Each spending is a debt and beneficiaries are not all dupes.
But as long as there is music […].
Mirroring the real estate bubble, it was necessary to supply debt capacities and this
dramatic growth of mortgages was extremely profitable for some. But the consequence
 was for more and more households to go into debt […]. Consequently, from 2001, one can Shall we dance?
see a continuing deterioration of criteria for mortgage credits, allowing formerly
ineligible households to borrow, and borrow substantially (Orléan, 2009). Mortgages
handed to the riskier ones in terms of defaulting are created, called subprime loans.
Therefore, a very aggressive commercial policy is put into place to find new borrowers
and, between 2001 and 2007, the number of subprime mortgages is multiplied by 7
(Artus et al., 2008). By the end: 313
[…] in many respects, the subprime market experienced a classic lending boom-bust scenario
with rapid market growth, loosening underwriting standards, deteriorating loan performance,
and decreasing risk premiums (Demyanik and Van Hemert, 2007).
To maintain the dance, Athenians lent to Timon and played the game. Everybody was
benefiting from it, and not participating in the general enthusiasm was seen as
suspicious or even despicable. This was the case for Apemantus:
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Timon: O, Apemantus ! you are welcome.

Apemantus: No, you shall not make me welcome. I Come to have thee thrust me out of
doors.
Timon: Fie, thou’rt a churl. Ye’ve got a humour there does not become a man; ‘tis much to
blame. They say, my lords, Ira furor brevis est […].
A Guest: Go, let him have a table by himself, for he does neither affect company nor is he fit
for’t, indeed.
Indeed, it was difficult for financial institutions to refuse this source of wealth. Not
taking advantage of it was a guarantee to seeing clients leave for the competition, whose
profitability was benefiting from the double bubble. Everybody had to dance […].

First aside: an intense deregulation

This intense creation of wealth was made possible only by the removal, stone by
stone, of all regulatory dams of the markets built during the twentieth century
(separation of credit and investment banks, limitation of financial products and
their complexity, nationalisation of public services). This deregulation considerably
accelerated the pace. Financial institutions had less and less constraints and limits.
They were authorized to offer products that were more and more profitable, but also
more and more risky and complex, a dangerous cocktail producing both euphoria
and blindness (Orléan, 2009). That being said although everybody plays the game,
some are inevitably less short-sighted and start having doubts. In other words, shall
we really keep dancing?

Second act: doubt and blindness

From the very beginning of the second act, Shakespeare shows how beneficiaries of
Timon’s generosity, who are also his lenders, start having doubts regarding the health
of his estate. They consider recovering their money. Slowly but surely, their belief
crumbles and the dance is disrupted.

Scene 1: conscious accomplices

Senator: And late five thousands. To Varro and to Isidore he owes nine thousands, besides
my former sum, which makes it five-and-twenty. Still in motion of raging waste! It cannot
 SBR hold, it will not. If I want gold, steal but a beggar’s dog and give it Timon, why, the dog
coins gold […] No porter at his gate, but rather one that smile and still invites all that pass
9,3 by. It cannot hold. No reason can sound his state in safety.
Starting to doubt Timon’s solvency, Athenian lords send their servants to recover their
money before others do as well. And they have to hurry because they are all accomplices,
and participate, directly or indirectly, in Timon’s fraud, of which he might very well not
314 be conscious himself.
In the subprime case, every actor’s interests were converging toward a constant
increase in prices, and according to Orléan (2009), “the bubble results in the end from the
coordinated actions of buyers and sellers”. Yet, many seemed to have lacked
clear-sightedness, not only regarding the increase risk of default, but also the possibility
of the real estate markets reversing on their growth; blind or, just like Athenian lords,
voluntarily looking elsewhere, as long as profits were piling up. For Orléan (2009), the
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explanation lies in the very nature of markets, where often euphoria appears to reign,
instead of rational (or even simply comprehensively informed) analysis and decisions.
If all Athenian lords had interest in participating in the game of loans, debts and gifts
with Timon, none of them was duped. Thus, Varro and Isidore, two notables, quickly
send their servants to be reimbursed. At this stage, the question is how and when to get
off the dance floor without alarming the others […].
Senator: Get you gone. Put on a most importunate aspect, a visage of demand, for I do fear
when every feather sticks in his own wing lord Timon will be left a naked gull, which
flashes now a phoenix.

Scene 2: the power of belief, even when facing doubt

Varro’s servant: ‘Twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six weeks and past.
Isidore’s servant: Your steward puts me off, my lord, and I am sent expressly to your
lordship.
Timon: Give me breath. I do beseech you, good my lords, keep on. I’ll wait upon you
instantly (To Flavius) Come hither. Pray you, how goes the world, that I am thus
encountered with clamorous demands of broken bonds and the detention of long-since-due
debts, again my honour?
Flavius: Please you, gentlemen, the time is unagreeable to this business; your
importunacy cease till after dinner, that I may make his lordship understand wherefore
you are not paid.
When beliefs crumble, risk appears, and the first ones to be informed (or inform
themselves of this realisation) want to get out of this dance; Timon’s “financial
package” starts to be unveiled. One could however still think him creditworthy: he
would simply be, at this stage of the play, short on liquidity to be able to face his
creditors. This is often the case for whoever works in the leveraged investment and
loans business […].
Similarly, the same euphoria during the first act of the subprime crisis resulted from
a demand made by the entire financial, banking and real estate systems. It was palpable,
tangible and stimulating – not to forget very profitable – and everyone wanted to
participate; whatever the cost and consequences. Even banks that were producing these
structured products were massively buying them. Displaying overconfidence in the
 markets liquidity, every actor thought they could get rid of these products in case of Shall we dance?
doubt (Orléan, 2009). As long as music was playing, nobody had an interest in sitting
down. The trick was to get out of the market dance before the others […].
Timon: To Lacedoemon did my land extend.
Flavius: O my good lord, the world is but a word. Were it all yours to give it in a breath,
how quickly were it gone […]. Feast won, fast lost; one cloud of winter show’rs, these flies
are couched. 315
Timon: Come, sermon me no further. No villainous bounty yet hath passed my heart.
Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. Why dost thou weep? Canst thou the conscience lack to
think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart.
Timon is right, he is not alone; far from it. Although him being rich in friends is
questionable, it is true that he was not alone. Playing this game requires a lot of people,
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and is a form of collective blindness. How can all these Athenians have followed Timon
without asking any questions?

Second aside: complexity, a stimulant for beliefs

In the subprime crisis, exotic products created by investment banks became so complex
that very few people were able to understand their mechanisms. Indeed, many of the
CEOs and top managers were themselves abashed by their own packages. Just like
Timon, they were lost in the dance […].
Timon: You make me marvel wherefore ere this time had you not fully laid my state before
me, that I might so have rated me expense as I had leave of means.
Flavius: You would not hear me. At many leisures I proposed.
Timon: Go to. Perchance some single vantages you took, when my indisposition put you
back, and that unaptness made you minister thus to excuse yourself.
Flavius: O my good lord, at many times I brought in my accounts, laid them before you; you
would throw them off and say you summed them in my honesty […] I did endure not
seldom nor no slight checks when I have prompted you in the ebb of your estate and your
great flow of debts. My loves lord – though you hear now too late, yet now’s a time – the
greatest of your having lack a half to pay your present debt.
Timon: Let all my land be sold.
Flavius: ‘Tis all engages, some forfeited and gone, and what remains will hardly stop the
mouth of present dues. The future comes apace. What shall defend the interim, and at
length how goes our reck’ning?
Euphoria and complexity provide beliefs with such a strong weight that their inertia
triggers a long-lasting blindness. For example, in The Age of Turbulence published in
2007, Alan Greenspan states, regarding the variations in real estate prices: “although we
certainly cannot rule out home price declines, especially in some local markets, these
declines, were they to occur, likely would not have substantial macroeconomic
implications” (sic!). Greenspan’s position is a good representation of the doxa’s
profession: at the beginning of 2007, whereas many observers already started to worry
about the situation, very few publically raised their voice regarding the possibility of
mortgage and real estate markets crashing. Timon was not alone in his bubble;
everybody also believed. Thus, everybody danced […].
 SBR This blindness could appear as a paradox, but to Orléan (2009) it is unsurprising, as
he considers that the actual objective basis of financial markets (i.e. default probabilities,
9,3 revenues previsions) tends to be extremely weak. By the end, to predict a bubble burst,
one would have had to establish a spread between market values and actual value of
goods. But how could one establish this “real value”? Without “scientific” arguments,
general opinion reigns: the belief that the majority must be right, that one cannot be right
316 against the crowd. Facing the inherent uncertainty of market valuation, crowd
movements and exponential earnings easily convinced everybody (Orléan, 2009).
Coupled with a faith in the “wisdom of the crowd”, this movement won; just like Timon
was praised and respected by all Athenians before going broke and being dishonoured
and rejected. Galbraith, in his Short History of Financial Euphoria, identifies a classic
mechanism explaining this phenomenon:
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[…] in all free-enterprise attitudes there is a strong tendency to believe that the more money,
either as income or assets, of which an individual is possessed or with which he is associated,
the deeper and more compelling his economic and social perception, the more astute and
penetrating his mental processes.
Orléan (2009) finds the same idea in Keynes (1988):
(investors) are concerned, not with what an investment is really worth to a man who buys it
“for keeps”, but with what the market will value it at, under the influence of mass psychology,
three months or a year hence.
When all major institutions dance, when everybody dances, then you have to dance as
well.
In faith, doubt is not allowed, and will then laboriously arise. Every actor involved in
the subprime crisis had an interest in the situation lasting and did not want to doubt
themselves. The game was all the more distorted by the complexity triggered by
securitisation, rendering any global understanding almost impossible. Overwhelmed by
it, most actors relied on others, without seeing that the end of the dance was arriving fast
(for an excellent detailed description of this end, see Sorkin, 2010). But the music rarely
stops suddenly; instead, it slowly loses intensity, rhythm and harmony, step by step.
Facing weak signals, the main question becomes: are sceptics paranoid or are they
visionaries? When doubt finally imposes itself, and beliefs crumble, it becomes hard to
go backward. Trust is lost and might only be slowly rebuilt, eventually. Faith has a
strong inertia, but when it crumbles, everything collapses.

Third act: panic and settlement

Lucius: Who, the lord Timon? he is my very good friend, and an honourable gentleman.
1 Stranger: We know him for no less, though we are but strangers to him. But I can tell you
one thing, mu lord, and which I hear from common rumours: now Lord Timon’s happy
hours are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him.
Lucius: Fie, no, do not believe it. He cannot want for money.
2 Stranger: But believe you this, my lord, that not long ago one of his men was with the
Lord Lucullus to borrow so many talents – nay, urged extremely for’t, and showed what
necessity belonged to’t, and yet was denied […].
 Lucius: True as you said: Timon is shrink indeed; and he that’s once denied will hardly Shall we dance?
speed.
At the beginning of 2006, the real estate market started to slow down and subprime
mortgages were first to be impacted. The accumulation of analyses finally found a
voice, and subprime default statistics started to worry more and more people. Rating
agencies sped up the process by suddenly diffusing and amplifying these worries on
the market: some products rated AAA were re-rated as junks (Orléan, 2009). 317
Uncertainty started propagating, mainly because of the disappearance of any
collective economic convention regarding what products were worth: the common
reference point or belief accepted by all actors on markets as the definition of value.
The loss of landmarks that followed had dramatic consequences, far superior to
initial real damages regarding specific products that were downgraded. Indeed, the
questioning of the values of CDO rated AAA bonds triggered doubts about other
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unrelated AAA products, and consequently on all products circulating on the

market (Orléan, 2009, p. 58). It was a case of excessive euphoria, followed by a
general distrust; a time for panic.
In Athens, facing doubts, no one wanted to lend to Timon anymore. In the panic,
creditors demanded to be reimbursed as soon as possible, and none of them wanted to
wait any longer. Timon lost his fortune, and much more […].
Lucius’ servant: You must consider that a prodigal course is like the sun’s, but not, like his,
recoverable. I fear ‘tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse; that is, one may reach deep
enough, and yet find little.
Timon’s wealth vanished as quickly as the belief disappeared, much like the one created
around the market euphoria for subprime loans. And, just like many American
households, Timon faced the risk of being homeless.
Timon’s servant: Now all are fled save the gods. Now his friends are dead. Doors that were
ne’er acquainted with their wards many a bounteous year must be employed now to guard
sure their master; and this all a liberal course allows: who cannot keep his wealth must keep
his house.
In other words, once the music stops, dancing becomes pointless. One then starts
looking for people to hold to account, sometimes forgetting that one was also paying the
same game […].
Flavius: Ay, if money were as certain as your waiting, ‘twere sure enough. Why then
preferred you not your sums and bills when your false masters ate of lord’s meat? Then they
could smile and fawn upon his debt, and take down th’int’rest into their glutt’nous maws.
You do yourselves but wrong to stir me up. Let me pass quietly. Believe’t, my lord and I
have made an end. I have no more reckon, he to spend.
In the subprime debacle, citizens started looking for people to hold to account, and
sometimes sought clear scapegoats. Thousands of households, in the USA as in Europe,
suddenly found themselves ruined and homeless. To Orléan (2009), the real estate
market is a particular one: its fundamental good is an absolute necessity. Bankers were
held responsible for the entire system and all its drifts. Although they were the main
actors (its architects, players and referees), how could one forget that they were not the
only ones on the dance floor? Just as in Athens, the dance was only made possible
because many were there and just as many were willing […].
 SBR Timon: Not nature, to whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune by the contempt of
nature […]. Who dares, who dares in purity of manhood stand upright and say ‘This man’s
9,3 a flatterer’? If one be, so are they all, for every Greece fortune is smoothed by that below.
The learned pate ducks to the golden fool […] Yellow, glittering, precious gold […] thus
much of this will make black white, foul fair, wrong right, base noble, old young, coward
valiant […] place thieves and give them title, knee, and approbation with senators on the
bench […] Come, damned earth, thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds among the
318 rout of nations; I will make thee do thy right nature.
The fundamental faith in the system crumbled during this episode: primacy, efficiency
and liquidity of markets, benefits of privatization and securitization, rigour and honesty
of investment banks, etc. The episode was cosmological: nothing seemed stable,
everything was crumbling.
3 Servant: Yet do our hearts wear Timon’s livery. That see I by our faces. We are fellows
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still, serving alike in sorrow. Leaked is our barque, and we, poor mates, stand on the dying
deck hearing the surges’ threat. We must all part into this see of air.
Yet, beliefs have this particularity that the existence, disappearance and rebirth are all
built without rational analysis. In Shakespeare’s play, Timon finds gold outside of
Athens and, when the word spreads, old friends become new ones. According to Orléan
(2009), actors just have to believe again to calm the panic, start finding a rhythm and
begin to dance again […] And before you know it, even euphoria can come back.

Epilogue
Painter: As I took note of the place, it cannot be far where he abides.
Poet: What’s to be thought of him? does the rumor hold for true that he’s so full of gold?
Painter: Certain. Alcibiades reports it […].
Poet: Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends?
Peintre: Nothing else. You shall see him a palm in Athens again, and flourish with the
highest. Therefore ‘tis not amiss we tender our loves to him in his supposed distress of
his. It will show honestly in us, and is very likely to load our purposes with what they
travail for […]. Promising is the very air o’th’ time; it opens the eyes of expectation.
Performance is ever the duller for his act, and but in the plainer and simpler kind of
people the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and
fashionable. Performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in
his judgement that makes it.

Note
1. The structure of this text follows the chronology of Shakespeare’s play.

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to Save The Financial System – And Themselves, Penguin Books, New York, NY.
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unpublished manuscript, 28 sept. 2007.
 Reinhart, C. and Rogoff, K. (2008), “Is the 2007 US subprime financial crisis so different? An Shall we dance?
international historical comparison”, American Economic Review, Vol. 98 No. 2, p. 339.
Artus, P., Betbèze, J.-P., de Boissieu, C. and Capelle-Blanchard, G. (2008), “La crise des subprimes”,
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319
Corresponding author
Yoann Bazin can be contacted at: yoannbazin@yahoo.fr
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