Do you know your myths?

Michael Turner delighted me this morning with his comment to the blog post End of the beginning, which links to a Reuters article in which someone states, "Even though the Fed has done everything it possibly could to support the banks it seems like they are rolling a rock up a hill."

Mr. Turner subtly highlights the sad state of cultural literacy indicated by the speaker referring to the punishment of Sisyphus without actually mentioning Sisyphus. In his comment, he offers a number of other statements that allude to mythology yet avoid clear references (that might confuse those who know nothing of mythology). See if you can match up the mythological figure with Mr. Turner's descriptions:

• "Treasury, in opening a massive liquidity conduit last year, was diverting a river in the hope that it would clean a lot of horseshit out of a huge stables."
  
• "Phil Gramm et al., in deregulating the banking sector, opened up this box that held a whole lot of bad things on wings that then flew out all over the world, plaguing everyone."
  
• "If Ben Bernanke applies the wisdom accumulated from his deep study of the Great Depression, and somehow saves the day, the way he saves it will leave him so hated by certain Powers That Be that they will chain him to side of that mountain down which that rock rolled and smashed those stables (which then got swept away in splinters in that river). And he will lie there, struggling, helpless, in agony, as his ever-regenerating liver is torn in perpetuity by flying Republican attack monkeys."

Did you get them all?

posted by Schaz @ 11/21/2008 10:57:00 AM