-553 (+20 minutes)

by Sean Carroll October 22, 2008

 


 

 

 

at Madame Tussauds Monday

via breitbart

 

There’s twenty minutes until the end of the trading day in New York and it’s not looking good. 20 minutes of freefall. As one guy on TV sed "Buyers have just dried up". The recent Frieze Fair was not so pleasant I hear, and not just for substandard partying. Despite the New York Times’ shrill bellwether, the The Post-Materialist and ARTINFO are still full of examples of decadent fashion and sales with lots of zeros on the end. But the wheels are definitely turning. Judd Tully tosses out a foreboding scene:

"One also sensed at the fair a shift in the seller-buyer relationship.
One roving dealer, bidding on behalf of a bottom-fishing client, made
an offer on a painting by a famous contemporary German artist
represented by a major American gallery at the fair. Although the
asking price was £375,000, the dealer [who prefers to remain anonymous]
made a deliberately low-ball offer of $200,000.

“The gallerist almost fell off her chair,” said the bemused dealer. “I said, ‘When you get realistic, call me.’”

“In six months that painting will be $100,000,” predicted the dealer."

 Tully also talked to someone at Gagosian :

“We’ve sold very well so far, surprisingly well… for everything at the $500,000-and-under level.”


“Everyone’s been worried, but it’s business as usual… I don’t subscribe to this
fatalist attitude, because if you panic, it becomes a reality.”

 

 

 

Well, it’s been twenty minutes and the market closed down 512; so I guess that means that 533+(20 minutes)=512. At least it wasn’t a freefall. And hell, what does that guy on TV know anyway .

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