Empire of Debt
Chapter One
Dead Men Talking
Tradition is the democracy of the dead.
-G. K. Chesterton
One of the nicest things about Europe's cities is that they are so
full of dead people. In Paris, the cemeteries are so packed that
the corpses are laid down like bricks, stacked one atop the other.
Occasionally the bones are dug up and stored in underground ossuaries
that are turned into tourist attractions. Thousands and thousands of skulls
are on display in the catacombs; millions more must be spread all over
the city.
In Venice, a dead man gets-or used to get-a send-off so gloriously
sentimental he could hardly wait to die. There is barely room within the
city walls for the living and none at all for the dead. Cadavers were
loaded onto a magnificently morbid floating mariah-a richly decorated
funeral gondola, painted in bright black with gold angels on her bow and
stern. Then, as if crossing the river Styx, the boat was rowed across the
lagoon to the island of San Michele by four gondoliers in black outfits
with gold trim.
How American versifiers must have envied one of their own, Ezra
Pound, when he took his last gondola ride in such fabulous ... read full excerpt from Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis ebook
