French Bronzes

French Bronzes - From the Renaissance to the Century of Enlightenment @ the Louvre until January 19, 2009. Stunningly beautiful. Don't miss it.

Useful links:
www.louvre.fr
www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/20/arts/melik20.php

The Real Price Of Gold

The Real Price of Gold: Brook Larmer's story of gold + other viewpoints @ http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/01/gold/larmer-text was educational and insightful. Gold drives everybody crazy, really. Thanks Brook.

Useful links:
www.nodirtygold.org
www.newmont.com

One Million $ Black Caviar

Hublot's One Million $ Black Caviar with black diamonds = Elegant art

Useful link:
www.hublot.com

Frugality = India

For tips on frugality, look to India
www.anand-g.com

Anand Giridharadas's opinion piece was brilliant.

Jewelry Retail Stores + Plunging Economy

What’s in the Cards for Credit?
The old no-money-down, take-two-years-to-pay model of jewelry consumption financing is likely a thing of the past. What will debt-dependent jewelers do to coax spending in a credit-starved economy?
http://www.colored-stone.com/stories/jan09/future-of-credit.cfm

Thanks Jordan for the insightful report. I completely agree with you. Jewelry business worldwide is in dire crisis because of credit culture/negativity. Some are doing okay, but many will have to start all over again, differently.

Random Thoughts

Word comes today that the SEC was informed about Bernie Madoff’s miscreancies several years ago, but engineered a neat solution to let him off the hook. I hate to say I told you so. But I told you so. Look at our economy as a gigantic brain, and the regulatory part that governs all the others has mouldered since, like, 1980, hanging like a withered appendix off the powerful other portions of the organ instead of doing its job. And so people like Bernie Madoff were allegedly allowed to grow and fester. If the charges against Mr. Madoff are true - and we hasten to add that in our system everybody is innocent until proven guilty! (or gets off using a variety of other strategies) - he was one of the greatest confidence men in history. Confidence men bilk money from other folks by establishing just that: confidence. Mr. Madoff was the head of NASDAQ. He was a man above reproach. He looked peerless in a suit. There was every reason to have confidence in him. But confidence can’t be established if its seeds fall on infertile ground. The garden in which it grows, located deep within each of its victims, must be tender and soft, turned gently over by the need to believe. It must be watered by greed and warmed by the sun of jealousy and competitiveness. And as we now see, the entire garden itself must be left to sprout whatever it will, untended. Bernie Madoff told people that he would guarantee their money. Now we look at the poor losers on which he feasted - the charities, the elderly shuffleboarders in Miami, the guys with McMansions in Greenwich whose future now perches on the head of a pin, and we marvel. How could they have been so credulous? Didn’t they know that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is? Look in the mirror. None of us are any better. Some of us are just luckier. Each of us believed in whatever portion of the system in which we had confidence, and are now being punished to one extent or another. The only ones who are making out all right are the shorts who never trusted in anything in the first place. It’s a pretty grim world where those are the guys who turned out to be the winners.

- Stanley Bing
http://stanleybing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com

Bing, I completely agree. You were spot on. Thanks for the insightful advice.

Worshiping Women

The Glory That Was Greece From a Female Perspective
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/arts/design/19wome.html

Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens @ Onassis Cultural Center
December 10, 2008 – May 9, 2009

Useful link:
www.onassisusa.org

Thanks Holland.

Masterpieces Of Ancient Jewelry

Masterpieces of Ancient Jewelry: Exquisite Objects from the Cradle of Civilization at Field Museum, Chicago, USA
February 13 - July 5, 2009

Useful links:
www.fieldmuseum.org
www.metmuseum.org
http://artmuseum.princeton.edu
www.english.imjnet.org.il
www.nationaljewelryinstitute.org

Don't miss it.