A Day In The Life Of The Bouncy Banker-LIBOR suction

From Designer Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich

bankrupt monopoly game

Letter to the Bank Manager #91 (cheap fishing nets—another plastic hell)

My Dear Friend,

With the start of a New Year, we, on a personal level, begin a new era. As I have repeatedly insisted, I’ve made great effort to remain polite at all times and have struggled in my attempts to not yield to the baser aspects of my nature during my dealings with you, the financial sector, the banks, the money people. You are a money person—that must make you feel good—better than being—as 99% of us apparently are—un-monied people. The speed with which the un-moneying is taking place is terrifying and yet it continues to behoove you to act as if everything is just fine. Optimism is now a euphemism for don’t look and don’t see, and it is a euphemism you insist on resorting to every day on the radio, the internet, wherever experts are making utterances about the state of the economy.

I no longer feel the need to throw my full weight at the machine as, thankfully, there are many of us now watching and recording the falsities and untruths as they unfold. You cannot pick up a paper or listen to the radio without hearing the innate contradictions built into the system. When it come to understanding how foreclosures happen, what the nature of debt is, how financial instruments are built...well we are getting as good at this as you and we are watching.

I am going to be concentrating my efforts this year into writing many more letters to you, letters I might actually put in the mail. My goodness! It isn’t as if the Post office couldn’t do with any help we might offer! Besides if I don’t send them I cannot complain about your failure to respond can I? That this has only just occurred to me after posting these missives on an obscure blog for the past—four years is it?—is another matter. I never said I was more intelligent than you. I simply have more heart. The gaping hole in yours is what I shall focus on and perhaps, to end on an upbeat note, an optimistic note, we might together fix your problem and thereby fix the problems of the majority, the 99%, which is basically everyone I know. We lie floundering in the bottom of your boat, trying to breathe as you throw out your cheap, easily replaced nets (ever indifferent to the environment) to make room for more fish. We are no longer small fry though. The plastic not only piles up on the bottom of the ocean, and on beaches everywhere. It also gathers in draws or gets shredded in those wonderful shredders that will destroy credit cards in a blissful second. We have discovered we can breathe on land, give voice to our grievances, avoid your temptations and even quash fees that you might be tempted to impose. This is great news. We’ll come en masse into your banks, and we’ll show you where you went wrong, and we will help cure you of your failure to feel and will teach you to grapple with scruples, and fix our own problems in the process! Simple right?

Yours you’ll never know how sincerely,



Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #81 (Your Illness Is Cureable)

Dear Bank Manager (maybe Mr. Bullrider still works for you or maybe he does not! No matter! You’re hypothetical anyway though I continue to yearn for the human connection),

Do you see how the nature of these letters has changed over the years? When I first began writing to you I was reaching out to you on your raft—rather your gin palace, as my father would’ve called it—a drowning man desperately in need of salvaging. Salvaging seems to be the appropriate word. Saving always smacked of conversion and that was not what I was seeking. I only wished to get my own house in order. I had no desire to become you with your fine yacht and padded bank account. I hoped only that you might aid me in the complicated work of making my financial life more secure and less mind numbing. I was asking you to make my money work. I still believed, had faith that that was the job you were hired to do.

Now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to throw you a lifeline and, given your overall arrogance, beg you to take hold of it. I’m saying: Look! Look! Look! We’re not trying to push your head under! We are trying to get you to change your ways. That is it. They are unhealthy. They do none of us any good. Your practices may appear self serving but they are eating away at you from the inside. Because the erosion is from within and you are not one to stare at your own belly button (as my mother would put it) you fail to see it. Whereas once upon a time you were my financial therapist now I am your life coach. You are dying. If you do not change your ways your life force will ebb out and trickle down (there’s that expression again!) the drain. I’m urging you to change your ways. You drink too much. You must cut back on your meat consumption. You have to stop throwing so much money at agribusiness and the factory farms they prop up. Instead pour it back into the world where it can do the most good—before you get melted down, a victim of financial global warming.

These letters may at times appear aggressive. They are intended as fair warning. Warning can also appear to be an aggressive word. I’m struggling to get through to you. Sorry but you are so thick skinned it requires the greatest of fortitude (and a physical strength I do not have) to not pick you up (metaphorically) and shake some sense into you. I know your notion of sense: The more money I have the better off I am. Your wrong. You are living for all the wrong reasons and making that clear is, apparently, going to be the work of a lifetime.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

PS—You are not as yet terminal! You still can save yourselves. A fine Canadian institution called Adbusters, has a wonderful proposal:
On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax  on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

I am sure, for you, this medicine has a bitter taste, but I promise in the long run you’ll feel much, much better. Now unclench your fists, and breathe slowly. Rest in the assurance that Mother Theresa and Robin Hood are working on your treatment.

PPS—In my letters as you can attest I have always refrained from calling you names or resorting to crude language in any form. I’m not out to put your back up! Getting through to you is my goal. If you close your ears and leave the table I’ve failed in my work. I do however beg of your restraint when it comes to some of the imagery I apply to these letters. Understand they serve as an emotional outlet and/or a visual counterpoint to the restraint I in turn apply to our continuing dialogue with you.

Why Occupy Wall Street?

Thanks to huffington Post for use of this banner image from their Occupy Wall Street coverage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-protests-new-york_n_989221.html

An elderly group leads a march up Broadway towards Police Headquarters, Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, in New York. (Louis Lanzano/AP Photo) http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-protests-spread-across-the-country-bloomberg-calls-them-misguided/

http://rogueoperator.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/police-crackdown-on-left-wing-protesters-on-wall-street-right-should-not-be-pleased/

http://notmytribe.com/date/2008/09

I was cheered this morning by a Nicholas D. Kristof opinion article in this weeks New York Times Sunday Review. You can access his video on line. He mirrored some of my own thoughts on the topic of rage without clarity, fury without direction. I’m all for primal screams but it is thrilling when these feelings, in all their forms are captured effectively. Kristof decided to provide some well articulated and definable goals for the growing, passionate but as yet ill defined Occupy Wall Street movement. Thanks to people getting out on the streets some of the huge but hard to articulate frustrations of the 99% are beginning to be formulated. Personally I thank them for beginning to build an archive of grievances that stand in contrast to those of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party may well be clearer in its demands but the demands of the Tea Party appear to be infuriatingly simplistic: “Let me keep my money/no taxes,” “Smaller Government”, and “Why should I pay for your bridge building?” The Tea Party is all about wanting what the bankers have—an abundance of riches which they’d rather not share.

Images are appearing from all over the blogosphere—each credited and sourced back—and from corners with hugely varying responses to the protesters i.e. all over the political map. More to come.

One image (Eat The Rich) here is from three years ago. The only difference is the fury is beginning to have traction and build a clearer message.

The First Great Bank Run of 2011

Letter to the Bank #72 (Being Jacked and the Beans Talk)

Dear my very own (all mine I tell you! Mine! MINE!) personal, assigned to me, focused on me, concerned only for me and my particular situation vis-a-vis...money—Mr.Bullrider, my Bank Manager,

Guess what? I’m uncovering vats, hoards of letters I’ve written to you over the past few years that never saw the light of day. Writing to you became an obsession, one I might add that has worn off of late as the wisdom, brilliance of my magical thoughts on finance become common currency. What is remarkable is how relevant the same things stated over and over again remain! Each letter more or less repeats the essence of the previous one only in a slightly different way. Writing them feels like polishing and organizing the arsenal so that it will be ready the day we need to bring out the big guns—the perfect sentence that says it all—that sort of thing. I’m sure you’ve missed them so here goes—one such letter with some spontaneous additions. More to come later:

“Dear BM,

Just to be clear now—it is not your piñada I’m bashing when I get all vitriolic and mad at the banks. I’m the first to admit to a terrible habit of conflating all institutions and/or individuals who make obscene amounts of money using cruel, sharp and vicious financial instruments and outrageous numerical methodologies. Smells like middle aged angst! I’d suggest that is perfectly appropriate on the 20ieth anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind.

I’m all too inclined to roll the whole kit and caboodle into one big bundle: The Banks (commercial, corporate, community), Wall Street, Hedge Funds, Mortgage Brokers, I could go on and on and on. To me they are all Bouncy Bankers. They all started with somewhat imaginative career aspirations as chemists, philosophers, dancers and even poets but then saw no money (anywhere—not what they’d cal money) so switched to finance and gleefully fell into that big black hole where greed festers and white swans never see the light of day. In that underverse they thrive! They even float. Indeed they fly. Pop them they patch themselves back together with ease. Bash them with your pitchforks and clubs until all the candy falls out, they’ll still find a way to syphon it all back in and fly. Their balloons cannot be popped. They may wobble but, as I have noted before, they will never fall down. The basic assumption is that somebody has to handle the money preferably an expert who can make it grow. These days these magicians will not give you magic beans for your scrawny cow. They prefer to throw the beans through the window and reap the rewards to be found in the giant’s castle for themselves. They might lack the courage or the cunning but they don’t need either. They have massive unregulated instruments to work with, financial tools so big they can even make a giant feel small and, because they are unencumbered by scruples, they can come at him from behind and stab him in the back with small print that proves the chicken that lays the golden eggs belongs to them and take everything. Criminal right? They argue before Congress that they are being unjustly maligned. They look aggrieved and are affronted by a public that fails to comprehend the burden they carry but somehow the pain in their eyes carries no weight.”

Again I should stress that as you are my bank manager I keep coming back to you and I trust (as I must) that you are one of the sensitive ones. Why else would I trust you with my finances, you who are in essence the mortgagee of my children. And why else would I share with you my magical financial thinking?

Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

Evil Evil

Resignation Letter

Official Resignation Letter




Dear Financial Engineers, Money Guys and Bank Managers,

I am formally resigning from my position as Concerned If Numerically Dyslexic Artist/Citizen/Observer of the Ongoing Financial Meltdown (OFM), or Continuing Monetary Tsunami (CMT). My letters to you all—henceforth to be referred to as the Void—have met with virtual silence. I like to read this as your possible embarrassment at truths skillfully revealed by yours truly but suspect you all have simply been laughing yourselves silly and slapping your thighs all the way to the bank. My outrage is your fodder for fun, my economic innocence is risible, my infantile hope that you might be more considerate to those you are supposed to serve, is nothing but a joke! That I remained shocked by your infinite ability to suck blood from a stone, reap rewards, bonuses and slaps on the back for what is in essence criminal behavior, must be very amusing for you all. Or I can can only imagine you are able to defer all blame onto others in your industry, or redefine your industry in such a way as to make it plain it wasn’t you guys but those guys; or your job but their job. You can stop right now blaming the Consumer. You asked us to consume and we did because you are the Experts. You are expert consumers and you showed us all how it was done. You are even consuming us. Thank you for all your advice over the years. Thank you for dismantling Trust in this: the society I live in.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

PS—No longer required to write absurdly naive letters to the Bank I shall now concentrate on the far more important work of creating Art, Art that you the people with money must eventually Own.

Remember this:
•Art is worth more than Money
•Our relationship is deeply symbiotic
•Your lives without Art are worthless

Letter to the Bank #58

Dear Financial Engineer,

We do not expect this to make sense, or for you to understand as I—no fan of banks—do shower down upon you a hail of incomprehensible ponderings on the subjects of money and art, art and poverty, wealth and acquisition, greed and patronage of the arts. As one of your clients I do expect you to sit there squirming, suffering through my abstract tirades, my obscure assaults on your wrong headed approach to life, the Universe and everything. Clearly those whose lifetime pursuit of money finds them sitting pretty must feel  that their chosen path is somewhat justified. They have all the stuff of their dreams and can only hope to acquire the one last item on their list—intelligence, or something that approximates depth. Perhaps there is an outrageously expensive machine that can inject the sum of everything into the brain, a time saving educational device that in much the same way money saving devices like collateralised debt bundles need no further input once turned on to churn out profit, will provide infinite wisdom whilst requiring no book learning or essay writing, no work in fact.


You might detect a hint of frustration in my writing. As an artist I have no interest in trying to grasp the intricacies of your grasping ways and am determined to maintain my oblique tangent on life but I do resent the way once you have money you can with little thought churn out more and more of the stuff. My approach to trying to get through to you is patently absurd and that is the way I like it! I am baffled by what you do and hope you are equally baffled and shut out by the meager but honest meanderings of a creative mind such as my own. The frustration you detect is based on the fact that I would also like to have a money machine at my bedside that required no input from me as it churned out a living, enough at least to keep our family at some distance from fear of starvation.  I'm not interested in the pursuit of money. It bores me. You see I can think of a million things to do with my time. I'd make art. I'd  be ever fascinated by the effort to contribute to the big essay of life. I wouldn't find taking and taking and taking that satisfactory. I only want enough money to fend off constant worry. I understand that is a highly mutable amount but do believe if I were confident I could secure enough to support our basic needs we'd be inclined to send the extra toward the helping of others. My most basic need is peace of mind. If only we could secure peace of mind for everyone. So much human capitol is wasted on worry. Freed of anxiety humans would produce so much more effectively be it in the arts or indeed in industry where a happy employee would surely be happy to work if they were confident that they and theirs could rest secure in the belief they'd be provided for. That may be the kernel of this letter, the core of this thesis.


Your response to this: 
1.—Hmmmm! Perhaps we should spread the wealth? Perhaps having the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority is wrong!
2.—Hmmm! Clearly we are dealing with a liberal/populist/socialist/communist/atheist and anti-plutocrat! Ah! His address is on the envelope!


Yours sincerely,

Kristian Stillwitherkay

Letter to the Bank #56

Hello Bullrider,

Finally another letter!

Funniest thing is writing these letters is such hard work but I keep doing it anyway. Finding a moment to sit down, getting comfortable (so hard to do when your ceiling is leaking), finding a pen that works, finding a stamp for goodness sakes!

Fortunately I am a patient man and so I go to this effort for you, my bank manager.

Funnier still is the fact that you are, frankly, the last person I wish to write a letter to but here I am, pen in hand, doing just that.

Feel free to explain!

Foolish Harry here certainly has no idea what is going on.

Frankly though I keep writing in hopes an explanation will be forthcoming.

Felicitous greetings aside why do the rich feel so entitled?

Falling stocks, crumbling edifices, collapsing DOW and they keep partying?

Fold your newspaper under your arm and join me for a drink.

Face to Face perhaps we can figure this thing out together.

Ferocious cold aside I think you should touch base with your real clientelle—those like me with nothing to offer but the shirts off our backs because we’ve given everything else.

Sincerish regards,

Kristian Witherkay

PS-To keep things lively I might start a series of letters whereby every sentence begins with the same letter—a madcap creative exercise guaranteed to infuriate my BM (you!) and keep me on my toes and out of  oh I dunno—Debtors’ Prison. Oops! I forgot! I'm already in Debtors' Prison! My own home! I exagerate only a little. Fond of it though I am it is a ball and chain around the neck. 

I’ll work my way through the alphabet in no particular order starting today—it would appear—with F.

Letter to the Bank #49

Letter to the Bank 50


Dear Bullrider,

Art here. That is what I’m sticking with these days, Art.

Kristian, my first name, despite being spelt with a K, feels too burdensome, too high fallutin’, even a little dishonest. Though I do put you through the ringer on all that moral stuff like having scruples and actually using them I never pretended to be perfect myself. But I am just an artist. What I do effects nobody. I can be immoral because I can be ignored. You cannot. If I mess up my finances I now understand it is my problem and the ripples caused will barely register on your radar. What you do or don’t do has consequences for everybody and these days, don’t argue, you are causing pain. I’d call you a sadist except I’m still not sure you see it. I’m not convinced it is intentional. You’re just callous, blind. I’m Art. I see all so watch it. I’m everywhere but so elusive. Just when you think you have caught up with me I disappear around the corner. Go ahead. Foreclose on me. My home is in my heart. Trouble is that is also where you’ll find my family. That is where you get to me. You hurt the children. This is why I can’t let down my guard. I might lash out. This is why I must bone up on finance. I warned you about this in my last letter because I am never anything but upfront. I’ll read “Investing For Kids”,and Money For Dummies” and then I’ll come play with you! I can’t let up but I can be lighter. Light interests me so much more than the darkness of your turgid world, the darkness I refuse to let you pull out of me.

I may not write many more letters to you because I can safely say that the only letters I ever receive from the bank are the least poetic, least enjoyable correspondence I ever have the misfortune of receiving. I had hoped you might respond with real advice. I hoped you’d make human your institutions, accessible your world but honestly we are all shut out who do not spend a quarter of our life times joylessly balancing our check books. It is only because I feel I’d be in a position to act on your conscience if (having relentlessly chipped away at your cold granite facade) I eventually find something in you I can relate to. Then I can hold you to account. I write to you as a last act of defiance, defense and hope.

My time would be so much better spent writing to the people I admire in this world, the people who truly make this world a better place. Just the act of writing to them would be uplifting. This would surely be a better use of my time.

Yours sincerely,


Art (Witherkay)

Letter to the Bank #48

Dear Bullrider,

As a self confessed financial neophyte I must confess this letter writing campaign of mine has been good for me, if nobody else. The feedback has been nonexistent. There is something to be said for getting things off one’s chest but this has also become for me a crash course in understanding the world of finance. I am becoming (lord save us) a self taught financial expert. There are many more like me out there—people who barely knew how to balance their check books, had no understanding of how to finance a mortgage, and certainly no comprehension of what caused the Big Meltdown, or what those big, strange words you all used meant—who are now waking up to a new and frightening reality: A multitude of us now see  there is no safety net to speak of any more and that pursuing any interests besides those of acquiring money (by any means necessary) is an ass’s game. Painting for example, who needs painting? Who needs Art or creativity? Workers? What are they? Machines are easier to deal with so the machines will come. So now we are joining your game. If that sends shivers up your spine it probably should though our expertise may prove no more dubious than yours in the long run. Frightening for you is the possibility that we may even attempt to exercise good judgement, fair practice, and mat attempt to make our transactions ethical. Our arrival presages a change of language in the banking sector. Gaining real Trust might make a come back as a winning formula. Aware as we now are of the condescending viewpoint of the bankers on high we’ll tread warily. Given that they tend to regard us all as poor fools I do think it rather kind of me to point out this thing they may not have noticed: A flood, a tsunami of self taught financial wizards is pouring onto the trading floor because, with rising joblessness, and most available jobs failing to pay enough to even cover basic health insurance costs, a tide of humanity is betting on one last great gamble—playing the bankers at their own game. Armed with creativity and a willingness to work, actually work, who knows? Some of them might just find a crack in the system through which to squeeze and so be in a position to unseat the unscrupulous souls at the top.

Yours sincerely,

 Kristian Art Witherkay, financial neophyte

Letter to the Bank #46

Dear Mr. Bullrider,


I'm going to lighten up! My middle name is Art. Did I ever tell you that before? This is my latest attempt to get more intimate. There are so many barriers that exist between us, between you the guy with his hand on the purse strings, and me the guy with his hands in his empty pockets. 

Have you ever noticed how those who do not have to worry about where their next paycheck is coming from, (or, for that matter if a paycheck is coming at all seeing as they are sitting on cushions so soft their paths throughout their lifetimes will be smoothed and swept before them) prefer not to talk about their finances. I suspect this might in part be due to a certain kind of shame or guilt, a feeling that perhaps they should be sharing the wealth. Meanwhile those with nothing obsess about money and needs must talk about it otherwise they slide into deeper and deeper debt. How can two such diverse approaches to this substance that is so essential to us all ever see eye to eye on the topic? The rich do not get why the poor are so upset by their stratospheric earnings. They cannot understand the failure of the poor to make more money! But the fact is the poor are always penalized for having nothing and the rich are always rewarded for having something. I'm not saying this situation should be reversed. I'm just just suggesting people get payed for their hard work. You shouldn't be paid a lot for playing squash and once in a while tweaking some numbers. This certainly doesn't warrant a bonus. Meanwhile the single mother putting her kids through school and working two jobs to get food on the table should be making a decent wage.

Yours sincerely,

the ever elusive Art

PS-do you know he even eludes himself sometimes, fails to get on with his painting, obsessed as he is with his own inability to create wealth. Creating paintings, making Art, (because that is what Art is doing in essence, making Art-he is growing himself) must seem like such an absurd thing to do with a life when there is money to be made. I've tried but I can never figure out how to perfect that watermark. Tips please! You are my bank manager after all!

I call the painting enclosed Score or Underwater. I haven't quite decided yet. I show you this just to confirm in your mind that I'm truly getting up to no good.

The Arts and the Economic Crisis, A Symposium

Overview - Lewis Center for the Arts

It is difficult to find funding for the arts in the best of times, when the economy is comparatively robust; in a time of recession, it is even more difficult. The aim of this symposium is to explore the current state of the arts in our country and to consider how most effectively to manage our increasingly limited resources. As the role of the university in the arts becomes more and more significant, we think it appropriate that a university provide the forum for this discussion. Our hope is that we will come away from this occasion with a clearer sense of the "ecology of the arts," a sense based on the perspectives and insights of artists, artistic directors, arts administrators and arts advocates. We are confident that the better we understand the problems, some of them inextricably tangled up with the nation's economic and political systems, the better we will be able to find ways to solve them.  Paul Muldoon                                 Chair, Lewis Center for the Arts

Art and Finance, do they go hand in hand?

As I settle down all too comfortably to read The Twelve Million Dollar Stuffed Shark, The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, it quickly becomes apparent that the answer is a resounding Yes! This is a book for all Art World skeptics and artists of the outer salon, le Salon Des Refusés, which, though it originally took place in 1863 (and can be read about in Wikipedia, naturally, if you want to know more) is alive and well in 2009.

Did you you know for example that if you are painting in an outer suburb, a small town, a village, you are essentially off the map! It is time you moved to NEW YORK, or LONDON, or ...BEIJING. You can do that or change your name to Jeff Koons or Damien Hurst. This is called rebranding. Hopefully I spelt both their names wrong. You might run into copyright issues if you call yourself by exactly the same names, but then again this could be construed as a creative act and it would fit nicely into the whole debate of collage, and sampling, and recontextualizing, almost like taking a kitschy toy and having it built (by Italian artisans) on a grand scale. THEN what you do is open an auction house and call it Sothebie's or Cristy’s. Use my spelling because who can afford the boringly inevitable lawsuits that would ensue if you were to be so foolish as to call yourselves say: Sotheby's or Christie's. Anyway the point being once you have become a brand you can do ANYthing and call it ART! Its GREAT! That’s what I do! Trouble is nobody appears to be aware of my brand! I have not been successful in selling my brand to the broader public. That is a battle for another day. I am planning my method of attack, because it is a vicious game. Perhaps I’ll break a painting on the walls of the Academy in some public act of defiance/stupidity and by so making it public gain...notoriety, or, at the very least, a little publicity.

Read any book on Contemporary Art these days and a vast percentage of the wordage is taken up with issues of branding, selling, finding the right buyers, snubbing the right people, withholding the right number of artworks so as to not saturate the market or, conversely, saturating the market and making that very act ones brand. So it goes. Very little seems to concern itself with issues of quality, or intelligence, depth, ...spirituality, or ... philosophy, ...humanity, ...feeling, ...meaning...(snooze)
What? What? Oh, so sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. It is hard isn’t it—you know—deciding which Art is good? So much easier to be told by your financial consultant the best Art to buy. Don’t trust your instincts. They are outmoded, outgunned, and definitely unable to come up with the kind of funds that buy influence in the Contemporary Art Market. Trust you financial advisor instead.

Financial Advice From a Numerically Dyslexic Artist-2

Ever with an eye for the main chance my latest advice for fiscally embarrassed artists everywhere:

Make Art! Why? Because, and I know we all forget this at times, Art is worth more than money. Hope this was helpful.

Steve Bell on art and the financial crisis | From the Guardian | The Guardian

Steve Bell on art and the financial crisis |
From the Guardian |
The Guardian

The Art of Finance

The Art of Finance by Harold James
Project Syndicate
Excerpt:
"...Some modern artists and their patrons explicitly point to the parallel between contemporary art and new financial products. Deutsche Bank, Europe’s most prominent art-collecting bank, published the view of academic experts to the effect that customers, the broad public, were “extremely conservative, boring, lack imagination, and don’t know their own minds.”

After financial implosions, such as the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000 or the sub-prime meltdown of 2007-8, such views appear arrogant. The parallel between bewildering and apparently meaningless art and unintelligible financial products is damning rather than reassuring."

Arts, Briefly - Leibovitz Faces Suit and Loan Deadline - NYTimes.com

Arts, Briefly - Leibovitz Faces Suit and Loan Deadline - NYTimes.com

Annie Leibovitz, a great photographer and artist, is facing bankruptcy and the loss of rights to her output.