At the verges of a global crisis, which, in some ways, heterogeneously involves the several social classes, for everybody it is perhaps coming the point of no return, where we will wake up from a long dream (or nightmare) and we will found ourselves with money without any value, thanks to a people awareness made possible by the new media.
The rich leaders and the henchmen of the financial, institutional and governmental world, by now are enjoying a superior wealth thanks only to their higher autonomy granted by the speculative bubble that they have built, but soon or later the crisis created by them will fall upon them back in an apocalyptic way; for this reason some potentates tend to dissipate as more as possible their own monetary “opulences”, guzzling and dissipating as in the orgies before an imminent end of the world, because soon it will be no more possible, after the house of cards will have collapsed.

In the later years, and always more dramatically until today, in the world’s most famous auction houses, artworks are sold one after the other with amazing new record prices never reached before.
After the announcement of the new record for “No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)” by Mark Rothko sold by Sotheby’s for more than 75 millions of dollars, today Christie’s hits the record for the biggest sale of modern and contemporary art of all times, earning more than 412 millions of dollars, beating the as much amazing sale of the day before made by Sotheby’s for a total of 375 millions.
Six artworks sold for more than 20 millions each, and 55 artworks in 67 have all surpassed one million dollars.

As seen that the museums are mostly ailing and contemporary art is living the most difficult period since after-war, these millionaire buys can’t be motivated by the meagre economic returns given by the exhibitions of that artworks; let alone by the love for art from bored busybodies of economy who see it just as a source of investment.

The true reason for we are seeing this frenzy for buy even at enormous prices by who has that monetary capacities, it is simply to get rid as fast as possible of the money that indeed it is virtual (90% of circulating money is not covered by real values whatsoever), converting it in material goods, in a tangible value, this is to say, converting the ripe of the monetary speculation before that, being in the edge of a financial global collapse, it will become waste paper; and when for a financial institute it may be just usual conversion into a real value of money that is indeed false, for the common people it will be a matter of not losing all those small savings laboriously earned.

Many may know well my dissent against who sees in art only a market phenomenon, or trendy, or a way to make investments, but it is not possible to deny the absolute value that an artwork represents indeed: the human expression is a cultural value, all along the culture creates knowledge, salvation and skills, and the artwork is the tangible manifestation of it. All along the work of human intellect has represented something that can be even exhibited as a symbol of one’s own acquired cognition, be of a power as of a personal chord, as they were for example the recherché Livre d’Ore in the ancient times.

After the sub-prime mortgages crisis, even the big financial institutes are desperately searching for store values other than the “brick and mortar”, now fallen into the speculative bubble too, with which to convert their dangerously unstable money. The watchword is buy!, buy!, buy! Getting rid of money is right enough.
Also the small collectors should perceive these badly dissembled signals from who is driving the world of economy, and acquire artworks (or other goods) according to their capabilities, perhaps profiting the crisis to pre-empt artworks from new artists at reduced prices.

One could only risk to escape the economy collapse.