Squeezing the Rich

The Great Crash has started to hit those who thought they were sitting pretty and exempt from the shock waves. The argument used to be that the quite obscenely rich
would always be insulated from the trials and tribulations which hit lesser mortals.

So if you’ve got priceless paintings on your wall – the odd Damien Hirst pickled cow greeting visitors – your cellar stuffed with fine wine and your wife used to sporting diamonds as big as plovers eggs – you’d still be, as one used to say, as safe as houses.

But not anymore. Art – especially the contemporary stuff – has gone off the boil in a big way. At some big time auctions lately a number of offerings, horror of horrors, have actually failed to reach their reserve. Art had been turned into a market – with everything judged in monetary rather than creative terms – so a crash was inevitable.

Does it really matter? Not really. The art being sold was hugely over-valued. It had become such a bizarre and vulgar market, driven by advertising people and their ilk,
that most buyers might just as well have framed the cheque and hung that on the wall.

And high class plonk? Reports are coming in from across the world about its falling value. Cellars are being turned in to bomb-shelters. It’s probably better to guzzle the lot. It might help blot out how awful the real world has become. Supermarkets report that sales of their better wines – anything over a tenner – have also tailed off.

There is a smidgeon of good news. Sources in Somerset report that police are trying to cope with a marked rise in cider apple scrumping, there has been a big leap in sales of home-made nettle wine, and in the Glasgow area several stills have been discovered.

People who make high-class handbags, jewellery, champagne, shoes with heels so high they’d give you vertigo – the sort of stuff bought by Celeb types, IT girls and WAGS – all species of which are quickly running for cover for fear of causing riots among the unemployed – are in trouble. Even Abramovich has made big cut-backs at Chelsea.

A psychiatrist in Germany said: “ For most people knowing that the really rich are beginning to hurt is a morale booster for ordinary people. So their plight is good news for most of us. Schadenfreude becomes evident in straitened times.”

As for sparklers - the boss of the World Diamond Centre in Antwerp – was gloomy. But he hoped the price of top quality rocks would hold up. The lesser stuff was predicted to fall in value by up to 40 per cent. It would be intriguing to know what Hirst’s pitiful diamond-saturated skull might be worth, or not. The real problem is that you can’t eat diamonds. Oh, and the price of quails’ eggs are in freefall as well …