The Rich Splurge on Recession-Created Bargains
The recession gripping the country has left a broad swath of Americans agonizing over $60 gas fill-ups, ballooning grocery bills, and homes lost to foreclosure. But for the region’s class of superrich, downtimes have made for a bonanza of deals on luxurious pleasures, from sports cars and yachts to pieds-a-terre and airplanes.
more stories like thisAt the Rolls-Royce dealership in Wayland, the Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead is sold out into next year, and orders are still rolling in. Ferrari Maserati of New England in Foxborough notched more sales in April than in any of the previous 14 months. Boston Yacht Sales of Weymouth last week closed on three boats valued at a total of $1.6 million, helping to push business up by 9 percent over last year. Business has been so brisk at Shoreline Aviation in Marshfield that the wait time to purchase a sleek Cessna Citation jet is two years. Million-dollar condo sales, far from stalling like some other sectors of the real estate market, have continued at a pace about like last year’s.
In all of those things, dealers say they see no signs of a slowdown in coming months.
“If I had five Rolls-Royce Phantoms, they’d be gone the next day,” Paul Downey, sales manager of Herb Chambers Rolls-Royce Motorcars of New England and Bentley Boston, said of the convertible that retails for $440,000.
For the class of rich who make more than $1 million a year and have several times that in the bank, the time is right for indulgence. Falling interest rates have made luxury goods cheaper to buy, and the items, which tend to be considered investments because they retain their value, are proving attractive alternatives to the volatile stock market. There is also the foreclosure factor: A growing number of high-end boats, cars, and homes have been foreclosed upon by banks and can be had for cut-rate prices.
“Ultrahigh-net-worth individuals are looking for bargains with which to invest their money,” said Karl Hahn, managing director of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in Boston, who advises “high-net-worth individuals” on their investments. “Their spending habits have not changed, but their mindset has changed.”
Recent purchasers of high-end baubles were reluctant to speak on the record, particularly at a time of economic woe for so many, and in a region where flaunting one’s wealth is not always viewed kindly.
One executive, who asked not to be quoted by name, said that as a business owner, he is not immune to the economic downturn, which has cut into his company’s profits. Like many Bostonians, he said, he is watching his spending habits and has cut back on dining out and is traveling less. But that didn’t stop him from recently purchasing a Ferrari.
“With a Ferrari, that’s the car I like, and that’s the car I drive . . . so the economy is not going to affect that,” he said.
Luxury dealers across the region report that they have seen fall-offs in sales of their slightly more down-market items, such as smaller boats. They attribute the declines to their increasingly skittish upper-middle-class clientele, often midlevel executives earning $100,000 to $500,000 a year, who are scaling back and trimming unnecessary indulgences from their budgets. But dealers say that their superrich clients have not been deterred, and sales of luxurious indulgences have ticked upward, more than offsetting any losses.
“The economy is on everyone’s minds,” said Michael Myers, of Boston Yacht Sales. “But the consensus is that there is a much greater upside to this, and [my clients] are trying to take advantage of the lower interest rates and the buyer’s market.”
“Racetrack Rick” Scourtas, general sales manager of Ferrari Maserati of New England, said his customers - many of whom are venture capitalists or entrepreneurs - are natural risk-takers, and thus undeterred by the economic climate.
“These are movers and shakers, and they are positive people,” he said. “So a little downturn, they power right through it.”
There are signs the economy is affecting some local luxury markets. At the exclusive clothier LouisBoston in the Back Bay, overall sales remain strong but menswear purchases have declined slightly, much as they did after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and at the start of the Iraq conflict in 2003, said Debi Greenberg, LouisBoston owner.
Still, from the vantage point of some of the region’s wealthy residents, doomsayers have overexaggerated the economy’s weaknesses. Jonathan Bush, president and chief executive officer of Athenahealth Inc., a Watertown-based medical billing and electronic medical records firm, took his company public last year and said the outlook is sunny.
To that end, he said he has donated money to nonprofits that he said he has wanted to support for many years, and he recently purchased a house in Cambridge’s Hubbard Park. The price was $3.1 million, according to the Middlesex Registry of Deeds records.
Bush, a cousin of President Bush, said he’s not a car guy, and has no immediate plans to purchase other big-ticket luxury items. But, he said, “Maybe the materialism is waiting to punch through.”
© 2008 The Boston Globe
Get this, at over 18 feet long, almost 7 feet wide and weighing in at almost 3 tons, this vehicle only seats 4 people. I don’t know… maybe when you are this self absorbed you don’t have more than three friends?
This sustained luxury in the face of crises in democracy, wage value, health care and unemployment sounds a lot like Chile under Pinochet. As the Chilean dictator’s Chicago-trained economists tightened the “free”-market noose around the neck of the population, rich Chileans drove luxury cars imported from Europe with very low tariffs. Meanwhile, curfew violations meant street execution. Purported leftists were rounded up to be tortured before meeting the same fate.
All that happened with our governments’ complicity.
Thinking that wealth does not contribute to happiness might quell any regret that I might feel at not being a part of the privileged bubble. Of course, they’re just in a smaller bubble within my own–the white, male, lower-middle class U.S. of A. It is easy to say that wealth does not equal happiness when even my $800 a month salary (with health insurance) places me in the top ranks of world bread-winners.
As our buying power goes down, foreign manufacturing will dump goods and we will keep buying them. Cash Flow!
All assets will be revalued and life goes on. This is the buffer that keeps everything from crashing.
Buy low! Sell high!
Self-absorbed myopia is pandemic among the ruling class in a sandbox culture that plays empire. Luxury is a condition that fosters numbness and sleep walking — often over other people who do not reside within that grand bubble. Life’s ride for these people is so smooth that this becomes the least capable grouping of people to face or handle bumps in the road for themselves, others or the society they live off of.
I have heard many 1920’s and 1930’s Great Depression stories that the “well to do” found that “event” a keen opporunity to take advantage of basement bargain sales.
Let’s not forget that to make those RR’s, Citations, and 125′ Boats are skilled craftsmen putting bread on the family table
Earl Simmons wrote: Let’s not forget that … skilled craftsmen putting bread on the family table
An interesting comment, because today, skilled craftsmen are a dying breed. They are being replaced by mass-production techniques and mind-dumbing, soulless conformity. I believe it is true to say that only the rich can afford the talents of skilled craftspeople, so in one sense, we need the rich.
Where can I join?
Wow…what a shitty article. Reading about a bunch of greedy corporate stooges hoarding their jets and Rolls Royce’s? No relevant news here to speak of. I often wonder about the I.Q. of Common Dreams editors, as they often choose some terrible articles for folks to read. This makes for simply depressing reading–and nothing more. Nothing redeeming whatsoever. In a sick, twisted masochistic fashion the article invokes the hatred between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. The author even tosses in a token Bush relative at the end: predictably, he’s making millions and gloating about his future indulgence in a “big ticket item”. Nice. The author clearly knows everybody hates Bush, so she couldn’t resist tossing this asshole in at the end of the article so as to incite further resentment and scorn of all things Bush by the alienated, disenfranchised readers of the mediocre Boston Globe. Perhaps one of the worst articles I’ve ever read at Common Dreams. Pathetic, really. Journalism in USA keeps going from bad to worse….to even worse…to…(sound of a toilet flushing)….
Econ 101 teaches that there is a limited money supply and the more some have the less others can get. That it seems like we can all get rich if we want to is a testament to the power of propaganda. This system is a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid, plain and simple.
With gas prices soaring . . . and . . .
While every day more in our military are killed, and many more innocent Iraqi citizens are slaughtered, Congress sets aside part
of its day to honor FRANK SINATRA with a special day rather
than attend to gas prices, not to mention upholding the US Constitution . . . and charge Bush-Cheney for
unlimited crimes agaist The United States, its citizens, and humanity
in general.
Not surprizingly that ‘honor Sinatra day’ coincides with the month-long
promotion to market Sinatra recordings and movies, including TCM’s
SINATRA Month. With such priorities America and its honest, hard-
working citizens are doomed to oblivion.
This is like moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic…. simply for a better view… unmindful of the crew scurrying around in the engine room or the lower deck.
But how long can the party last?
Who cares? This sort of thing goes on everywhere.
“Oh my goodness, people in America have so much junk that they spend hundreds of dollars a month to keep their excess junk in storage buildings a few miles away from their home”, says the farmer in India that subsists on an income equivalent to 2 dollars a day raising a family of three.
It’s all relative…
“Let’s not forget that to make those RR’s, Citations, and 125′ Boats are skilled craftsmen putting bread on the family table”
Isn’t that always the excuse of the “excessive consumers”. Perhaps we should find a way to run the economy without excess and conspicuous consumption. I mean, when the only way politicians can see to get the economy on track is to borrow money from foreign governments to give to people and then tell them to go out and spend it, really doesn’t speak well for the future of this country or this society.
This is the society that the Clintons gave us
with Nafta. They helped the Bush Cheney group
squander our industrial base to China.
Hope the Clintons get on the Barnum & Bailey
Circus Train never to be heard from again.
The country may never recover from this episode
of corruption.
Zamboni,
Thank you so very much for your useful and brilliant contribution.
That said, i think many people misunderstand what Common Dreams does.
The editors do not select articles based on “what is the perfect analysis that we agree with and know all our readers will agree with”.
The editors select articles they think shed some light on some aspect of our culture, especially our political, economic and ecological situation.
And, they understand that there are a wide variety of readers here, with different experiences and understandings of the world, who may get different things out of the articles that are collected and reprinted here.
i am amazed every time a reader denounces Common Dreams for having published an “incorrect” article. Common Dreams is not here to select and publish perfect analyses, which in any case do not exist.
This is obscene AND depressing. We have people not able to buy gas to commute to work and others are buying Ferraris? We have single parents not making enough to buy food for their children, put gas in their car or are losing their homes and people are flauting their Rolls Royce automobiles. What is wrong with this picture? One thing I do know, however, money doesn’t buy happiness. At least I think I know that. Maybe I’d like to experience it just once in my lifetime to find out.
Old saying among the rich …. “when there’s blood in the streets, buy property”
I haven’t looked lately, but there used to be a link at the top that took you to a good idea of who the people who started Common Dreams were.
Sure, they have their own point of view. They are going to select the articles that appeal to them. That’s a given. When I play with my own blog, I of course will do the same. So will anyone else.
I tend to be to the left of them. Occasionally I might point out a link to an article they haven’t selected. That’s just a help for other readers. If you can do it nicely, no problem with that.
But, people shouldn’t be rude to them. If you really don’t like their selections, go start your own blog or site.
I’m still not sure I see what’s wrong with this story. It is made by corporate media, so its certainly one to take with a grain of salt.
But, I think it is important to point out that we are not an equal society. There are some people really struggling right now. There are others who are getting by, but who are working harder to do it and have to be very careful. And there are still others who are so rich they don’t care.
Great Depression was the same way. The Rockefellers weren’t on street corners selling pencils after the crash. They were still rich. They are still rich today. This is important to remember. If you expect the rich who run this country to be upset at how things are, its important to remember that they are not struggling.
Its always important to know what’s really happening in the world. Even if it turns your stomach to read that the same economic woes that are costing people their homes and their life savings are just seen as a chance for the rich to pick up a new Rolls cheap.
As far as those people are concerned, it’s the purpose of government to spread it’s largesse across the landed gentry. You can’t review the last hundred years of this family without reaching that conclusion, and the hundred plus before that is gangstaland. These are evil people with a history of evil doing stretching back to before the revolution. We need to wise up and stop accepting ourselves as second-class citizens. Mitt Romney’s millions are chump change in the neighborhood these folks run in. Google William Walker and think walker. Then do Smedley Butler. In between these lines is our history. Our tax dollars are used to just rip the wealth of other western hemisphere countries.
Richfilth animals are richfilth animals. They kill for their swag and they suck the marrow from the bones of your children so they may live in Palatial Wealth, Power, and Privilege, aka private law (over us). It’s Oligarchy, ain’t changed in 3000 years and they think you are meat on the grill for the profit feast. Enjoy your 80-20 society. You get NOTHING they take all and laugh at you…that’s why they are animals, nothing human about them at all. Are YOU hungry yet? You will be soon. Master NEEDS you and your children to be HUNGRY, so you will beg on your knees, like a good slave who knows how to kiss the whip. “Yes, Master, how high do you want me to jump, just don’t let my family starve.”
That’s your America my Noble fellow Citizens. This is the Future America always dreamed about, a high tech slave plantation with rolls royces. Now that’s living. Tommy J. would feel right at home. Find one of those white breeding females with a 200 slave ‘dowry’ and a little 14 yo girl…start Monticello all over again, never have to see the slaves ever, except little Sally of course.
But what could that have to do with the monsters who stole your life and your future? Oh, that’s right, they didn’t do anything but work hard and play by the rules…ohh yeah, have another glass of Kool-Aid you’ll see that Master loves you and you deserve to be a slave and your children of course, the ones you don’t sell for food.
This is the future of exclusion and war America chose 45 years ago. And now many will vote for a Black Man to be Master’s Head Overseer on the slave plantation. We are not only amnesiac, we are irony deficient.
It’s great to see an article like this coming from the corporate media. It’s time to be putting class warfare on the front pages and inspiring our own version of the French Revolution. For some time now the media and especially the politicians have been afraid to even mention class warfare. It’s been waged against the poor for too long now, and it’s time for the rich to find out what happens when they push people too far.
ALOHA !!
“Class warfare”???? Please-e-e-e!!! It was a democrat … LBJ … who started the “Great Society” … remember? It was suppose to end poverty in the USA! So for the past four decades we have allowed miscreants we elect to office every four years to play 3Card Monty with the public funds all the while creating huge bureacracies and the end result of all this messionic mess is that poverty levels are worse off now than back in the 1960s and GOVERNMENT is BIGGER! Close to 40mil Americans living in poverty according to US Census. Add in the 77 million Americans known as baby-boomers ready to retire over the next eight years or so, which is half the US workforce! What will they retire to? More BIG GOVERNMENT sponsored poverty is the answer! Thank you US PESO! Welcome to the USSA …
I can see by this article that the so called “rich” may be rich now, but once again this proves being rich does not mean “smart”! I have never seen a bigger bunch of dumbasses buying Ferraris! Sooner or later they’ll figure out the false wealth they seek is just as flimsy as the US PESO they covet so much! During the Great Depression and the stock market crash of 1929 many a rich person jumped to their death and ended up in soup lines with the rest of the peasants! Being “rich” is no guarantee of anything other than “its a long way down”!
Hi Webwalk,
Thank YOU so very much for your brilliant reply to my post (mutual sarcasm definitely intended).
It’s amusing to read your criticism of my post as you put words in my mouth, e.g. you make the bizarre claim that I want “perfect analysis” from Common Dreams.
I would hope the editors of Common Dreams can handle some criticism (unlike yourself?). You seem a bit uncomfortably wanting if somebody dares to criticize this website. And another poster “Samson” gives the old knee-jerk “if you don’t like it leave” comment (took alot of thought to come up with that one–NOT).
You and Samson both share the typical American liberal failing: hyper-sensitivity to criticism–especially if it comes from other liberals.
All through the American left, the progressive movement (whatever you want to call it) this typical failing of over-sensitivity and self-censorship pervades. Nobody can handle criticism, and everybody is eager to put down anybody who else who makes criticism of things left–be it a blog, a website, another liberal, etc.
Too bad! Oh boo-hoo….get over yourselves milquetoast liberals, hippies and granolas of America! Lose your fragile eggshell egos! Liberals in the USA will never get anywhere in the political arena as long as there is so much self-censorship and hyper-sensitivity to criticism among the ranks.
It’s easy to see why the neo-cons or republicans kick the left’s butt time and time again. What a bunch of whiny wimps the left has on their hands!
Finally: I still maintain this article I commented on sucks massively. An article gushing about the lifestyles of the filthy rich is tabloid journalism, and is better off in the National Enquirer, or on Fox News.
So get over it. Common Dreams can do better than posting an article on what the filthy rich are buying with their millions. Hopefully they can handle a little criticism better than hyper-sensitive lefties like webwalker or samson
can we say, “conspicuous consumption”?
Pssst! Feel like you have been slapped in the face? These “movers and shakers” have made their fortunes on yours and my back.
I agree with Zamboni. I think CD can do better than “posting an article on what the filthy rich are buying with their millions.”
I think CD should print more articles on how the filthy rich got to that place not by hard work but by in any way imaginable stomping on, grinding, cheating, stealing and convincing the general working populace that being slaves to their personal empires was somehow in their best interest.
Throwing them the crumbs while devouring the cake was really the American Dream after all. Their fancy toys were only just reward for being so damn smart at fooling the workers anyhow.
We don’t need no stinkin articles about what we do with our filthy money. Just because we have manged to perpetuate the biggest con game in the world for years doesn’t mean we shouldn’t live off the rest of the peons.
Besides, when I ride my bike to work and sneer at the occupants of the Rolls Royces for being such poor stewards of the environment and the egregious consumption patterns that they lavish on themselves I think it’s enough. I mean they did earn it fair and square right?
Personally, I think that we need to start rationing electricity, fossil fuel and water. Let them eat cake. The newest version from Haiti includes mud.
BTW, I work on Palm Beach and I can assure you that all of the above mentioned items of necessity are in great demand and are being bought up in equal amounts before the price goes up.
Hey…Webwalk, Zamboni
Wow! Wimpy wimp here!
When was the last time you faced a police dog and a cop on horseback? I am getting to old to take it to the streets. My back is bent and my food is costing twice as much as last month and the food in the fridge is dwindling.
I like Barrack Obama. However, if they LET him get into the White House who’s to say his policies will be any different from the former administration. Hey, you know how it goes…with stealth…it’s your family or it is your life. Which does he give up to preserve.
Therefore, as a hopeful majority of one….how do you suggest that I change things if I do not know where to change them.
Do you keep me unconscious of how other people the “rich” are stealing my due. You can give me “liberty or you can give me death”…but until then give me at least a passion to affect my own liberation.
This isn’t new. Its been around since this civilization started. Tell me something I don’t know. Again I see the armchair Che’s haven’t learned yet. I’m Tired, I’m Hungry and I’m Angry……
Having been the first to post to this article the only disappointment I see are the comments from the waanabe rich; Like Zamboni. Who the hell you calling wimpy? Liberals created this country, gave us the 40 hour work week and safer working conditions. Conservative, narrow minded people didn’t think up things like free speech or habeas corpus. Liberal thinking is what made this country great and admired around the world. Neocons have destroyed this country. We can no longer claim to be the best at anything worth bragging about. This article was perfectly placed in Common Dreams because it showed the absurdity of status.
As I pointed out, the $440,000 Rolls only seats four people. A purchase like this only says one thing, “I’m rich, and I can afford to waste money and the worlds’ resources.”
The top 2% of America makes $100,000 or more a year, live in a $250k or more home, and have at least $500K in net worth.
So now that we’ve captured 99% of Congress, doesn’t it make sense that their congressional products are crafted to protect and further their wealth?
Food for thought in an American capitalist society.
When the American people finally wake up to the hunger in their bellys, they will know who the enemy is by what they drive, the clothes they wear, and the homes they live in. It’ll make it easier to identify where to focus their anger. These richfilth might as well have signs hanging around their necks that read “I’m a terorist” inside a red bulls eye.
Even the communists in the USSR knew that to prevent a peoples revolution that they had to keep the people fed. To bad the Amerikan rich filth, with the government’s complicity, hasn’t figured this out.
Zamboni,
I’m not hyper-sensitive. My feelings aren’t hurt. I just want to rip your little pin head off and shit down your throat.
No. Really.
In reply to iammyself’s comment about Econ 101, money supply is not fixed, so it is not quite a zero sum game. Money supply policy is generally to adjust it to match the total productivity of the economy, which tends to keep prices stable. However, there is still the problem of the relative distribution of wealth and power in society which has gotten so bad in the US over the last few decades. Capitalism needs to run under better rules that will allow a productive economy but without great inherited wealth, oppression of labor, and monopolies.
The Roller only seats four.
What does that have to do with anything?
Would all this be less horrible if it seated six? Eight?
And why is everybody moaning about the USA? Even the poorest person in the US is richer than over half of the rest of the worlds´population!
The whole problem with people raking it in and why they are not attacked in the streets is, that people secretly hope that one day, they too, can buy the Roller and piss on everybody else. The famous Horatio myth.
If we couod only live by the teachings of who we always seem so eager to invoke: sell your house and give the money to the poor, turn the other cheek, etc.
What I read here is just a bunch of mutual hate. And that is exactly how the filthy rich keep us dancing to their tune: DIVIDE AND CONQUER.
For alas, there won´t be a New Revolution anytime soon my friends…
I don’t expect to see that cruising around my town soon. Those people don’t go far from their own garage unless it is to ship the car to their summer digs on some island. So they won’t be making a stir here.
I liked the passages about the skilled craftsmen. I go to a craft fair once and a while and watch them. Usually their products become art at some point, a collector’s item, worth more due to marketing. You see we all have the opportunity to become a skilled crafts person and hence win the rich trophy in our lifetime. Have you priced one of those beautiful cherry tables? Have you looked at blown glass or gems? Step by Step higher and higher.
I have no desire to own a car like that but those other items are desirable but already beyond my reach. I have been thinking too low all my life. Working at a “company” will never make anyone rich unless you are the CEO and write your own contract.