The rich make for great reading. Except, perhaps, during a recession.
Even as the global wealth-creation machine grinds to a halt, and rich become scorned and scarce, books highlighting the wealthy are stacking up fast.
It isn’t as bad as “Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market,” the ill-fated [...]

Following Iceland’s banking meltdown, international financial markets have identified Hungary as another country potentially at risk of a crisis. Hungarian central bank governor András Simor spoke to Journal reporter Marcus Walker about why he thinks the market’s fears about Hungary are wrong.
WSJ: How vulnerable is Hungary to the global financial turmoil?
SIMOR: This crisis has led [...]

Crisis, schmisis. When super wealthy car freaks want something, money is no object.
According to press reports in London, Aston Martin already has buyers lined up for its entire production of the One-77, a 200-mph car that is expected to be launched next fall. Sticker price: $2.04 million. That blows past the Bugatti Veyron’s once-shocking price [...]

It is not all that long ago that the big credit crunch banks were being lambasted in some quarters for their plans to invest heavily in Chinese banks, and that at least one pundit was predicting “The Coming Collapse of China”. How things change! Now it is the titans of Wall Street and the City [...]

For the past year, I have been predicting (wrongly) that the art market will correct. It defied the financial odds in part because the crisis hadn’t reached the super-rich and because a fresh wave of oligarchs and Middle Eastern sheiks hoisted their bidding paddles to save the day.

Gerhard Richter’s “Claudius” displayed at Christie’s auction house [...]

Last week, Damien Hirst sold more than $200 million of pickled animals and splatter paintings in London. A unnamed buyer recently paid $28.5 million for a vintage Ferrari 250 GTO in a private sale, according to knowledgeable chatter on FerrariChat. A single bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Romanée Conti 1962 fetched $13,310 (against an [...]

Some business sayings contain more than a kernel of truth.
Family wealth is seldom permanent. It moves over time. There are many reasons for that change in fortune; They can be accidental or intentional.
1. My wife’s family started and owned the London-Petrolia Barrel Company during the middle of the 19th and early 20th century. They were [...]

The luxury economy doesn’t rely on just a few investment banks. And even Manhattan has proven fairly resilient to the shocks on Wall Street in the past year.
But the fall of Lehman Brothers Holdings and the inevitable cuts at Merrill Lynch, which has agreed to be bought by Bank of America, could be the big [...]

Photograph by labatata on Flickr

Gothamist went on the Wall Street roller coaster during a crazy week for financial institutions (bankruptcy, sale, bailout) and the county.
Phillyist analyzed the problem of hecklers at live performances.
Londonist eagerly anticipated the annual Open House Weekend, where for one weekend only, the public get to poke around some of the capital’s [...]