I think Robert Browning was a better poet than his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). I also think Robert’s "Meeting At Night" is not only a better piece of work than "How Do I Love Thee?" from a romantic perspective, but had an erotic element that the other doesn’t even hint at.
But what do I know? Everyone has heard of Liz’s masterwork and no one knows Bob’s It is therefore incumbent on a knock-off artist like myself to rewrite the better known number—which I do in the verse that follows.
Oh, by the way. If Nasdaq and other U.S. equity markets keep falling in the way I chronicle in the following verse, the US dollar will inevitably tumble as well, foreign investors will pull their money out of US markets, the Fed will have to intervene to protect the dollar by raising rates sharply, corporate profits will plummet and business bankruptcies will soar, a deep financial and economic black hole will open, and political chaos, already in its early stages, will slouch its way to you know where. And you can say you heard it here first.
Where Went The Nasdaq?
Where went the Nasdaq? Let me chart its fall.
It fell ‘cause stocks were sold for flaky deals
With concept hype, but profit futures slight
By hucksters reaching for a graceless buck.
It fell when folks woke to the lesson trite
That PE not BS, stock prices ignite.
It fell as dot.coms bombed, and etail sagged;
It fell when lenders balked, and gurus gagged.
It fell as political passions rose
And shocked investors lost their naive faith.
It fell on scary wave on wave of loss
That sell points crossed. It sucked out fortune’s breath
And prompted margin calls—and if, God forbid,
It goes on, it will scare me half to death.
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