Reader question:
In this headline – Buffett: Bank woes are 'poetic justice' – what does "poetic justice" mean?
My comments:
Let's read the story first. It is as follows:
TORONTO (Reuters, February 7, 2008) – The woes in the US financial sector are "poetic justice" for bankers who designed and sold complex investments that have since gone sour, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said on Wednesday.
The head of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc group of companies also played down worries about a credit crunch by saying that recent interest rate cuts mean low-cost funds are readily available... Buffett, one of the world's wealthiest people, appeared to see irony in the fact that many of the banks who marketed complex investments which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout.
"It's sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end," he said.
...
Got the picture?
Now, definitions. First, justice. Justice in the ordinary sense means eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth revenge or punishment. In the court of justice, for example, when the judge sentences a murderer to death, we say it's justice being served.
Poetic justice, on the other hand, is the sort of karmic view of events by the artist. Or simply, it is justice in literature – in which good conduct is usually rewarded with good while evil is rewarded with evil. In The Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
Anyways, the idea of poetic justice originates from Aristotle's Poetics, in which the Greek philosopher explains is view that poetry should be superior to history in that it show what should occur (what's morally right to have happened) instead of merely what does occur (what actually happened).
In short, what Buffet was saying was this: Those maverick bankers who had created an environment that led to the sub-prime loan crisis are now forced to drink their own poison. They are being punished for their own crime, figuratively speaking, of course. They deserve it. It serves them right.
Or still in other words, what goes round comes round.
上海牛津版一年级英语下册Unit9 Revision第二课时教案
沪教牛津版小学英语一年级上册 Unit3 period2教案
牛津版一年级英语上册教案Unit4 My bag第一课时
牛津版小学一年级英语上册Unit1 Hello教案
上海牛津版一年级英语Unit2 Small animals第四课时教案
沪教牛津版一年级英语上册教案Unit1 My classroom第二课时
一年级英语上册教案Unit1 My classroom第一课时教案
一年级英语Module1 unit6 Mid-Autumn Festival教案
沪教版小学英语一年级下册教案unit1课时6
沪教版小学英语一年级下册教案unit1课时2