Subprime mortgage crisis
"rein GOLD" is cast in dialogic form at the opening of which Brünnhilde diagnoses her father Wotan to be a victim of capitalism because he, too, has fallen into the trap of wanting to own a castle he cannot afford ("This happens in every second family."). In a stream of consciousness the narrator touches on a number of events from the days of the Nibelungen Saga to the recent international financial crisis caused by the U.S. Subprime mortgage crisis and the role of banks therein.