Ray and Dave Davies performing together is not a Kinks reunion. Mick must be there! Pete, unfortunately, cannot participate.

NIRP demands it

Is the end nearing for the 500-euro note, beloved of gangsters, money launderers and tax evaders?

The likelihood that the valuable bill could soon be struck out of the euro family may be rising after Benoît Coeuré, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, told French daily Le Parisien that arguments for keeping the €500 bill are becoming “less and less convincing.”

“We are actively considering the question and will take a decision shortly,” he said in the interview. “The competent authorities increasingly suspect that they are being used for illegal purposes, an argument that we can no longer ignore given the importance of the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.”

Because only crooks and terrorists use cash.
That argument will eventually come to America.

Once a century meltdown

To appreciate just how bad things are, consider this: Brazilian courts granted more than 5,500 bankruptcy filings in 2015, the most since 2008, according to Sao Paulo-based credit rater Serasa Experian.
Brazil’s deepest two-year recession in more than a century and plummeting commodity prices are leaving businesses in industries from steel to air travel among the most at risk of default, according to Fitch. And more pain is looming in Latin America’s biggest economy as borrowing costs soar, predicts Bormann, who oversees a team of 60 analysts responsible for rating more than 500 companies in the region.

“It’s legitimately a credit crisis,” he said.

No Brazilian company has raised financing in overseas bond markets since June as an unprecedented corruption scandal at the state-owned oil producer and ratings downgrades have prompted investors to shun the nation’s financial assets.

... usually I never dream, but this morning I found myself for the first time in my half-sleep wake-up minutes, thinking may be I should go to Berlin, the city where I studied, my son was born, my former husband ran into me and my life turned around. Why not revisiting and just see what it does to me emotionally over there. With these thoughts lingering confusingly too long in my mind, I turned on the TV and flipped to Deutsche Welle TV (Amerika)

I caught on with a young lady reporter talking live from Berlin about the Berlinale film festival and a movie that just got introduced, called "Alone in Berlin". (hmm how fitting, as I would surely feel "alone in Berlin", if I were to go there.) /s

One of those movies that tell a story of the "little people" in Berlin during WWII and their small ways of personal resistance against the Nazis, a film adaptation of Hans Fallada's book "Jeder stirbt fuer sich allein" (Everyone dies alone). The book was translated by
the independent US publisher Melville House. (thanks for that).
True story of Nazi resistance premieres at Berlinale.

Although the book has seen acclaim in Germany, with a resurgence in sales in the 1970s and again in the early 2000s, it wasn't until Dennis Loy Johnson, founder of Melville House, an independent US publisher, commissioned a translation into English that it saw international success. Released as "Alone in Berlin" in 2009 in the UK and in the US under the title "Every Man Dies Alone," by Melville House, the book quickly shot to the top of bestseller lists in the English-speaking world, with more than 400,000 copies in print by 2010.

This reminded me about a book Resistance of the Heart Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany among others.

So, when the reporter said that this movie had an unexpected reaction among part of the audience, being not so happy that this film was produced in English and plaid by very beloved and acclaimed british and english speaking actors. "Only the bad guys, the Nazis, were plaid by Germans". The anticipated and purposefully targeted English-only speaking audience doesn't like to read English under-titles, so the decision was made to produce the movie in English.

Apparently some in the audience found it a bit "strange" to listen to Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson, who put on a "fake German accent". That made me listen up, because I think that reaction shows me that the Germans do not accept as easily anymore an "English or American interpretation" of how they imagine Germans would talk and act like. I was reminded about the complaints a I read about on the gos by writers who followed movies of the American Indians and the way Hollywood chose white Americans to play Native Americans and it seemed to them always as a bit offensive. I thought, ok, the time has come, where Germans voice some little resistance to "foreign" implementation of German Nazi-time stories in movies. A generational shift, I believe.

I will watch the film and see if I would have the same reaction, because I can't believe that Emma Thompson would not be an excellent actor and handle that role brilliantly.

See here how they praise the film and here you can see some excerpts of the film and the press conference with actors and producers. You can't help but love Emma Thompson's smiling hints of sarcasm.

I can't find the clip of the reporter I saw this morning. May be Deutsche Welle has cleaned up ... those little "irregular" comments by the audience ?

Anyhow, it's not important, but I thought I just tell you my morning musings ...

Have a good day, all.