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A Night At The European Opera
Submitted by Mark Grant, author of Out of the Box
A Night At The Opera
Some days it seems like an eternity. Other days it passes in the glimpse of a blinking eye. Most days it ekes out like a sore oozing infection and so the tragedy of Europe continues and lengthens and stretches as moments come and pass and as many await the defining moment where some kind of curtain descends and ends the Act or perhaps the play. This has been the way of it for the past two years but the muddling has become bumbling and the depth of the sorrow deepens and the possibility of escape is now all but impossible.
“One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.”
-Gioachino Rossini
The amount of capital being used and the ability of anyone to pay for what now must be paid or, if not, what cannot be paid is now like an anchor firmly strapped to the neck of the beast and the stumbling increases with the weight. Promises of a 120% debt to GDP ratio for Greece, grand visions of firewalls meant to protect the Continent and fervent and constant reassurances that this firewall would protect both Spain and Italy at a minimum now decry hopes and prayers that, in time, proved to be lies and deceptions. The debt to GDP ratios for Europe, never real but a manipulated formula for disaster are proving to be just that as contingent liabilities become present tense liabilities and as double and triple counted assets remain what they always were; pledges to fund that were never funded but now the promissory notes are coming due.
Promised pension cuts in Portugal were just declared unconstitutional and promised funding for the ESM may be declared unconstitutional by the German Constitutional court. Pleas for immediacy on an ESM decision were just rejected in Germany and it is likely ninety days before a ruling is declared. In the meantime the one Stabilization Fund in existence is a scant $65 billion from its outer limit and the refusal by Berlin to cough up more money resonates down the court hallways of Brussels. The echoes are becoming louder, hallower and the effects on the markets less pronounced. Believers are streaming from congregation and the remaining parishioners are quickly losing faith that the prophecies will come to pass. It is rather like a secular religion disappearing as the people once wooed by the words of the Evangelical Minister are not credible enough any longer to provide the hope for an entrance to Heaven or to deter them from turning towards Hell. Europe has entered Purgatory at the end of a long road to perdition and those willing to tithe to support the scheme are declining so that the offering plates passed around, once full, now only have enough to fill a small saucer and the church improvements can no longer be funded.
“Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once.”
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
It is the ring of the auction house; “Going, Going Gone” as the final bang of the auctioneer’s gavel is about to fall. It is the awful sound of the woosh of the guillotine manned by the Lord High Executioner that will fall upon ears and eyes wide open. It will be the final night of a failed play and the melodrama of the Operatic tragedy that will be documented in history books and perhaps recorded in some literary masterpiece that is yet to be written.
The economic conditions in Europe are deteriorating with an alarming speed and the affects, coming to the United States in this quarter, will be worse for the balance of the year. It is to be recession there, recession here and some measly cup of porridge for all. Those expecting Prime Rib for dinner are about to be disappointed as it will be gruel and the Petrus wine of last year will be Annie Greensprings poured from a plastic box.
“As to the play itself, I will only add that it is offensive in its morals, corrupt in its teaching, and revolting in its brutality, and yet everyone who admires acting is bound to see it.”
-Cecile Howard writing about La Tosca
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BUY SILVER !!!
"I'm going to kill the wa-bbit!"
and Ammo primers...
http://youtu.be/Q4oWsLuXGXI
Wow. MG can afford Annie Greensprings. Must be a day-trader.
Day traders go for MD 20/20 ...
Tristan und Isolde. Fängt trist an und ist länger als sie sollte. ("starting rather derpressing and takes longer than it should have been.)
I think I hear The Fat Lady singing.
She'll be screaming before too long.
She has become quite deafening...and can be heard on both sides of the Atlantic!
Auction off Monti to Hell.
don't cry into your gruel
[/twist]
"Pleas for immediacy on an ESM decision were just rejected in Germany and it is likely ninety days before a ruling is declared."
wrong again. The preliminary decision whether the law can be signed into existence at all (as in "can the effects on the German people and their constitution be undone if it is later on decided that the law was unvonstiotutional") before the court made a final decision about the law itself will take up to 90 days. The final decision will follow, maybe years later.
EU meet Rope. Said rope is tangled up around your neck and you're looking a little blue. Eeeeeyew!
EU+Rope = Tragedy
Give politicians a long enough rope and enough time....
ori
My wife and I once went to a opera in Italy.
we stayed like 20 minutes...
when we came out we said to each other: what did you think of it?
Both: It sucked!
both: So why didn't you say that so we could leave more early?!?!
both: I thought you liked it so I stayed and shut up....
A bit like our economics. Everybody stays because all the others are staying in but they all rather leave. Untill one who they know leaves...
You can speak Italian? If you couldn't, definitely the opera would have been a disaster to you.
I can order pizza and spagetti and beer with ease.
All the rest is mombojumbo to me :)
And those friendly Italians just refuse to talk english also :)
In the case of Italians ... they aren't refusing, it's more that they can't speak English. Ma d'altra Parte, anche tanti Americani non possono parlare inglese ... ;-)
They're nice to the kids and for some reason also to my wife. That's why we like to go there.
SATURDAY ===>>> VIAREGGIO HERE WE COME!
most folks just suffer through it in their nice duds, drink enough wine during the intermission, and pretend they liked it, even if they didn't understand one word.
(Actually, I don't want to knock the opera, really ... some of them are pretty good)
it's like dying slowly...
It's the movies that make you belief you should like it. And I'm a cultural man but opera... jeeeeeezzzzzuuuuuusssss cccccchhhhhhrrrrriiiiiiissssttt man!
And even if you speak the language I bet you can't understand it. Half of the stuff is spoken with a high pitch tone!
The only reason you would go to an opera is to get laid by a rich classy girl.
and 99% of the girls over there think the same of picking up a rich guy :)
Just go for the woman with the lower IQ's!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pmDlw5UXx8&sns=em
One can always improvise. "Im too drunk to drive my Ferrari, lets take a taxi."
Was that an opera too?
My wife is a trained Opera singer.
Svelte, not fat.
Two for one.
I think I will attend under cover of day light.
Nice prose Mark.
I admire good acting so I am bound to see it.
"Ecco, il medico. Un bacio!"
Il bacio di Tosca.
http://youtu.be/K7ghElp-NGw