Dance Casa

Also, what the fuck happened at the art sales this week?!? Excuse me for swearing three times in three posts within this hour, (I'm sorry, I got bored and stopped paying attention for three weeks worth of trading days) but $25,842,500 for a 28 inch forearm/hand by Giacometti???

Felix Salmon had an excellent post a few weeks ago. He suggested that works of art produced in limited multiples had a higher value than a unique work of art. That the cache derived from the narrative surrounding the provenance of the sister pieces would speak to the sophistication of the new buyer... to brutally paraphrase his excellent article.

But the fact of the article was that a huge Giacometti had just sold for something like $50 million dollars.

So here we have: the beginnings of bond vigilantism in the European Debt markets, the beginnings of a"1930s U.S. depression style" overproduction thing happening in China, massive surpluses of oil and basic industrial commodities, shortages of rare earth metals and soft commodities (such as coffee, cocoa, orange juice), a severe long term shortage of oil, a short term shortage of coal, Japan done and borrowed twice its GDP, excellent harvests several-years-running depressing the prices of agricultural products, and a tiny fucking Giacometti selling for half the price a monumental sized Giacometti sculpture.

Again. What is going on???

Here's the deal. We are, luckily, not going to have a post-banking system collapse how the fuck do we pay the police if the ATMs don't work kind of situation. But things are very bad. Terrible in Europe. Terrible in New York. Terrible in China.

Less than perfect in L.A., Austin, Brazil... but go to any of these places if you need to. There is oddly enough work.