- A horrible crime at a New York art gallery…
- Price vs. value…
- 🧨 “New money” chases fleeting stock market wealth. But “old money” invests in “real” assets — assets like real estate.
Dear Reader,
I am a native of the New York city metropolitan area.
At times I return to my native habitat — which I did a few short weeks ago for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Despite grim reports of amok criminality, I summoned my courage… and took to New York’s lawless streets.
Strolling the upmarket precincts of SoHo, I chanced upon a ghastly scene from which I have yet to recover.
I have simply been unable to reflect upon it without instant rebellion of my faculties.
Yet an adequate parcel of time has elapsed. And I am at last able to tell this woeful tale.
I mentioned New York crime. Yet what I witnessed that day was not a criminal act. Not precisely anyway.
I would label it a theft — yet it was not a theft in the literal sense. It was more a theft in the figurative sense.
What was it?
The “Crime” Scene
I observed a young, voguish couple in an art gallery. There they were, at close quarters with a square of canvas hanging from a wall, gazing into it.
On that canvas was a carnage of what appeared to be paint.
I suspected at once that a gorilla had broken loose from the Bronx Zoo… stumbled onto the gallery by way of the 5 train… and discovered the combination of paint and canvas.
He thereupon set to work with an abandon that can only be labeled violent.
In respect of decorum and the creative processs… I will nonetheless label this visual atrocity “art.”
But to proceed…
A tall, slim man in a dark suit stands off to one side of the gallery. He is studiously indifferent to our young voguish couple… as if their presence was merely so much in the day’s work.
Yet he fixes them with furtive yet pointed glances every 30 seconds or so. No. Perhaps 20 seconds.
Are these two actually considering buying that thing? I ask in semi-shocked silence.
Answering my own question:
- No, no, they must be simply looking for the shock value, much like passersby at a road accident… or a child gawking a fellow who is missing an ear or a leg. Nobody in their right mind would actually —
Then the makings of a figurative theft began to take shape.
The Heist
The couple approaches the man in the suit, who pretends to be startled by their approach.
The couple wheels about, indicating the obscenity on the far wall.
A few moments of animated conversation ensue, spiced with hand gestures and head nods.
The female component of the couple adds a word of comment. It is followed by a bellowing laugh from the man in the suit.
Then smiles. Then handshakes.
I look on in gobsmacked silence as all three protagonists approach the counter. A hand — belonging to the male component of the couple — reaches into a rear pocket.
It emerges with a wallet. From that wallet it lifts a smallish square of plastic… which is offered to the man in the suit.
The man proceeds to guide the plastic square through what appears to be a payment processing device.
I steal a voyeuristic glance at the price tag hanging from the simian assault upon the visual senses.
The cost? The cost? I am tempted to say… yet must refrain in decency.
You simply would not believe it if I told you.
I glance back at the counter. More smiles. More handshakes.
The heist is complete.
Homo Economicus Is Irrational
Feeling somewhat dirty, as if emerging from a show of burlesque in the small hours… I set out to hunt a desperately needed drink… reflecting on the foregoing.
“Can you believe they just spent that… for that?”
Homo economicus can be the most splendidly irrational creature sometimes.
I refer you to the tulip craze of 1637. I refer you to the housing craze of 2008. I refer you to the stock crazes of 1929, of 2000, of 2025.
Finally, I refer you to art.
That is why I believe the greatest economic insights will always elude the dead hand of the numbers-obsessed analyst.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” as Hamlet reflected.
Or in your economics, he may have added.
Price vs. Value
What compelled our young couple to venture upon such an atrocity this blue day in New York City?
I will never know. Nor do I know why a man would purchase a stock when it trades at record-high valuations and is nearly certain to lose him money — as many stocks presently trade.
Yet it is not my place to know.
Oscar Wilde famously scolded those “who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Am I among them? I am alert to that very possibility.
For the sake of this youthful couple, I hope so. For the sake of present investors, I hope so.
Yet I fear it is unlikely.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
