Dark clouds that have hovering over the world's financial places since the beginning of August 2011 have not prevented speculators from finding ways to make up for their losses and the surest means to do so has been to push the price of gold at its highest level.
Gold has always been considered as a refuge value notwithstanding the fact that the precious metal becomes less interesting to keep when the economy is booming. Like gold art is another safe way to avoid losing money in times of dire crises and now everything has been pointing in the direction of heavy speculative purchases in that domain as soon as the market resumes during mid-September.
Naturally, only the rare and much sought art pieces will become the target of speculators eager to make profits after deserting the much fragile financial places as one can be assured that average quality pieces will once again be neglected.
Good Old master, Impressionist, modern and contemporary paintings will again go up under frenetic demand meaning that paintings by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtentsein, Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko and several important artists will yield price increases of over 10% within six months.
In view of the bad results recorded throughout the planet, the present economic crisis is not due to end rapidly while several economists fear things could get worse. As a result, the art market will again be considered as a safe heaven however as long as the world will keep avoiding a general recession, which will affect all domains.
Now the question is to know whether the art market will be capable of sustaining a spate of heavy increases, which in the end are likely to endanger it when offers will far exceed demands at a time when the world's tycoons will find themselves short of cash to keep up their standards of living.