Archive for May, 2009
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
The Flight to $28,300,000 Chairs
So how is our overclass faring in this Third Depression? Per today’s New York Times:
“There’s still plenty of money,” said John Keith Russell, a dealer in Westchester County, N.Y., who specializes in Shaker goods and is president of the 100-member, invitation-only Antique Dealers’ Association of America. “We obviously have seen a slowing in the market, but we have not noticed any weakness in the highest end of the market. The commitment by collectors is still as aggressive as it was two years ago.”
Wealthy buyers are still attending prestigious events like the Winter Antiques Show in Manhattan and making major purchases, said Mr. Russell. He cited a recent buyer from Philadelphia who said she had felt uneasy about investing in real estate or stocks but purchased two significant pieces of furniture. High-end antiques, dealers like to assert, tend to hold their value and can sometimes appreciate enormously over time.
This ugly-ass armchair here is apparently one example of the entrepreneurial stratum’s current sense of where the world’s still-abundant economic surplus might be best utilized at this late date in history. It just sold to an anonymous buyer for $28.3 million.
Louis XVI would have heartily approved. Now, all we need is a few sans-culottes….
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
When Old is New
Tellingly, the news was commented on by the Agriculture, not the Transportation, Secretary:
The money can also be used to “create opportunities for producers, to receive assistance to produce new cellulosic crops and products,” [Secretary of Agriculture] Vilsack said.
So, this is the big game plan — to send Wall Street more money, restructure the car-making corporations, and subsidize moonshine for gas tanks.
To the extent it’s anything more than a subsidy to vested interests, this is a squarely three-cornered [yes, I said squarely three-cornered] plan for failure. The working and middle classes are maxed out, and will not be buying many new cars in the foreseeable future. Peak oil renders each further day of cars-first transportation a an armed robbery from our children. And “alternative” fuels? Not only are they not alternative, they’re also not new.
If you doubt this, I suggest you investigate the concept of energy-return-on-energy-invested, or EROEI, then take a tour of reality, starting here.
For its part, the falseness of it all seems rather well grasped by at least some of the folks who manage the biggest corporate players in the field. As quoted in Business Week for February 5, 2009:
[Exxon CEO Rex W.] Tillerson told reporters in January that Exxon isn’t investing in existing alternative energy technology because “we think these technologies are old. If there is going to be a fundamental shift” away from fossil fuels, the technology “hasn’t been discovered.”
Tillerson allows that a shift from fossil fuels is coming, but not for decades. Exxon forecasts that oil and gas will continue to supply 60% of the world’s energy needs through 2030, and that a “game-changing” shift to alternatives will begin only after 2050.
More change you can believe in…
