Bankers, traders, analysts, lend me your toxic assets!

Mayor Richard M. Daley declared Thursday “Talk like Shakespeare Day” in Chicago on account of the dramatist’s 445th birthday. But what can business and finance professionals learn from the brilliant bard’s couplets, sonnets and self-searching monologues?

“So much of what we do in business today has to do with language,” said John Simmons, an editor of “The Bard and Co: Shakespeare’s Role in Modern Business,” a compilation of essays by business writers comparing specific plays to aspects of corporate life.

In one chapter, Ezri Carlebech, who works in communications, draws connections between the forced marriage in “The Taming of the Shrew” and mergers and acquisitions.

Jamie Chauncey, who with Simmons runs a program called Dark Angels that takes corporate types on creative writing retreats, was assigned Romeo and Juliet.

“There’s loads in the play, for start you have the Montagues and the Capulets, immediately you have the possibility of competitive brands,” Chauncey said.

He stressed the value of discourse that the play evokes, noting that Juliet’s death is the result of a complete lack of communication.

Unlike the other authors in the collection, Chauncey went to see the play with one of his clients, Scottish and Newcastle Brewers Inc., and structured the piece around their responses.

“We all went to see the play together, flew down from Scotland,” Chauncey said.

“The person I gave Mercutio to wrote a very moving piece about a laid off drayman who worked on the wagons that take the barrels of beer around to the pubs. She had taken this story of someone who’d been laid off and he was very bitter about it, she turned her story about the character of Mercutio into this guy. It was about the importance of treating people well.”

Professor Michael Gorham of the Illinois Institute of Technology‘s Stuart School of Business sees parallels between the linguistic innovation that Shakespeare spearheaded and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s regulatory measures to deal with the financial crisis.

“Before, Bernanke and Geithner used to just fiddle with the federal funds rate,” Gorham began.“Now they’ve gotten involved in trying to revive the commercial paper markets. In the same way that Shakespeare continually innovated to achieve his dramatic purpose, the heads of our regulatory bodies have been innovating to deal with this relatively unprecedented financial crisis.”

While Shakespeare’s work may not hand investors the skinny on how many shares of Microsoft Corp. stock to buy or serve as a primer for the options market, his words can counsel caution and serve as a general philosophy of buying and selling.

Phil Flynn, energy analyst with Chicago-based Alaron Trading Corp., quoted Polonius’ famously confusing advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” Flynn said, before quickly adding his free-market touch, “unless you can pay back the loan.”

Flynn, who recently circulated a memo to clients entitled “To be bullish or bearish, that is the question,” went on to say that in Shakespeare the characters are always risking something, just like traders.

“The market takes my pound of flesh from time to time,” Flynn observed.

Simmons isn’t putting Shakespeare down any time soon. In his new book, “26 Ways of Looking at your Blackberry: How to let Writing Release the Creativity of your Brand,” he includes what he calls Shakespeare’s “coming-out-of-recession” sonnet.

Our latest winter has now come and gone,
Another time to make account. We see
The harvest bounty yet so newly won
Laid safe in store to wait whate’er might be.
Though droughts or storms are yearly forecast still,
Our voice is strong above the sounds of gloom,
We shout our needs and sow the seeds that will
Soon grow to flower in banks where fortunes bloom.
But yet; my restless mind allows no peace,
By day and night my thoughts still fly to you.
I long to speak for speech will speed release
And fill my heart with sounds and pictures new.
The spring draws near, ideas are on the wing,
The world’s before us, let new voices sing.