17 Comments

Everything is better in the original Latin.

Signed, One of those crazy kids who took Latin during <i>all four years</i> of high school.

Also too, Apropos Of Nothing: On Monday Yr Philosoph completed his sixth full decade on this planet and commenced his seventh. He thinks it's weird because based on how he feels he is convinced that he's been on this carnival ride for only half that number of circuits and he is mystified regarding how the other three decades got snuck in there. Something must be wrong with the lap counter. In any event he has no plans to jump off the merry-go-round any time soon, so that hoodie guy with the scythe can just suck it.

Expand full comment

St. Nicholas?

Expand full comment

Stay tuned...

Expand full comment

Hypothetically, perhaps. Assuming that the world economy, and especially the art market, actually operated like they did in freshman economics lessons, that is, free of any real-world factors and constraints. The actual operation of world markets isn't anything close to that simple though. An individual asset, such as, say, a Renaissance painting, held by the Vatican has a potential market value, a monetary amount that it could fetch if it was sold on the open market. Total up all of those individual valuations and you have, on paper at least, the equivalent of a pretty substantial sum of money. But this doesn't mean that you could actually liquidate even a portion of those assets (on any time frame shorter than a few centuries, that is) and actually recoup money in amounts that are anywhere close to those assessed valuations. At any given time there is a finite amount of money in the art market and a finite number of potential buyers possessing the requisite financial resources and the willingness to part with sizable portions of those resources in order to acquire rare and expensive objects of art. Feeding even a small portion of the world's hungry would require expenditures measured in billions, not millions, of dollars, and there simply isn't enough of a market for rare items of art to yield anything like the sums needed to fund such a project.

So while the Vatican possesses assets worth billions in estimated value, it doesn't mean that it could actually liquidate even a portion of those assets at any given time in order to accumulate real monetary assets that were equivalent to those valuation estimates.

Sorry, I don't mean to dump on your comment in isolation. This is a popular argument that I have encountered many times over the years. The argument sounds plausible enough on the surface, but it doesn't hold up when it is subjected to any kind of economic analysis. If you take into account factors like those that I mention then I think you'll agree.

Expand full comment

the new pope be rockin the boat for a whole lot of people quite comfortable with the status quo

Expand full comment

Still waiting for her to be able to join in holy matrimony Adam and Steve.

Expand full comment

borrow Miley's

Expand full comment

Thursday this year

Expand full comment

Fat Tony isn't going to like this....

Expand full comment

a stripper having a seizure, what's not to like?

Expand full comment

your move, Sarah

Expand full comment

I am beginning to suspect that this Pope actually believes in Jesus.

Weird, I know...

Expand full comment

Naked Pope?

Expand full comment

Just imagine what a commie touch would do...

Expand full comment

Well, my mind sure went in the gutter when I read that.

Expand full comment

My problem with eating the rich is Aerosmith's crappy song about it.

Expand full comment