The Great Red Hope. We’ll get to the commies in a just a moment. First, a question: what happened to Tuesday’s big rally?

Somebody out there is making money, despite all the doom-and-gloom news about the global economy.

The Financial Times reports that British art auctioneers Sotheby’s and Christie’s are predictiung a bumper sale of artworks this month. Together they estimate they will sell about $790m in artworks over 10 days at the sales of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art.

The FT puts the rise in art sales down to the boom in oil and other commodities — money-laden oil barons, it seems, love nothing more than spending ludicrous amounts of cash on old paintings.

A disaster waiting to happen. This is how legendary bond investor Bill Gross and the richest man in the world, Warren Buffett, have described the $516 derivatives bubble.

According to a report by Dow Jones MarketWatch: “Not only Warren Buffett, but Bond King Bill Gross, our Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the rest of America’s leaders can’t ‘figure out’ the world’s $516 trillion derivatives.”