the BIG Short by Michale Lewis

I've just spent two days gripped by this great book on the economic crash of 2008. Boggled by the sheer arrogant stupidity of the Great & Bad of Wall Street as they staked the whole financial system of the USA on one mammoth bet on house prices and how a few mavericks made a fortune betting against them

Putting the book down and lying back in my bed I began to wonder what was the current equivalent financial madness.  I've long been a bear of London house prices but although they may be over valued by 40/50% that's not in quite the same leagues table as the US mortgage backed securities which went from being worth 100cents in the dollar to being worth zero.  No the biggest bubble I think is the Contemporary Art Market.

The annual report of the European Fine Art Fair estimated that the total value of the art market in 2015 was $63.8 billion. This is a boggling amount of money especially as most of it couldn't be called 'Fine' by any stretch of the imagination. . Whose buying?  Well need you really ask? Quite a lot of the buyers are the same idiots who nearly bankrupted the World economy in 2008 -bankers.  Today we laugh at the stupidity of the Dutch three hundred and fifty years manically investing in tulips and bidding them up to ridiculous heights. Future generations will I am sure view the Contemporary Art boom in the same light.