Wall Street has jumped the tracks. Its former liquidity is iced. The bulls have morphed into bears. The “masters of the universe” have gotten their pink slips and the rest of us are waiting for the shit to roll downhill. Oh, I’m sorry — for the shit to “trickle down.”

For a while, it looked like the big dogs — the ones with the golden parachutes — would actually get their asses kicked and their appetites curbed. Wrong! Congress (your senator, my congressman) wants to step ‘n fetch some more kibble to feed the yawning maw of corporate greed and irresponsibility.

We’ve been told the “assets” taxpayers are poised to absorb (for a cool $700 billion) should increase in value; taxpayers will get their money back, eventually. Hmmmm… when was the last time the government returned some of our money? Oh yeah, when Bush ’43 sent us $600 to shop at Walmart, so the whole country could stay afloat, so what’s happening now wouldn’t happen. As Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

Not surprisingly, the art market is getting weird, too. Like Wall Street, revenue is generated in buying and selling, based on perception. Galleries and big investors pocket most of the dough. Nobody is buying art for art’s sake. With rare exceptions (I’m guessing Jasper Johns and Jeff Koons), even the most successful artists can’t match the return their collectors get from re-selling their work. Like Wall Street, the truly rich float above the market dips and peaks, biding their time for the right moment to invest or dump.

But recently British artist Damien Hirst turned the tables on his well-heeled customers (uh, “collectors”). He bypassed his own galleries (which typically take a 50% – 60% commission) to sell his work directly from the auction block at Sotheby’s in London. He raked it in! Made far more money than he would have, had he gone through his dealers. And this, on “Black Monday,” the day that Wall Street tumbled.

Hirst is smart. He bet on art collectors paying a ransom to re-affirm the current value of their Hirst holdings. Even the two galleries that represent Hirst—Jay Jopling’s White Cube, in London, and Larry Gagosian’s gallery in NYC—ponyed up so they could continue selling their Hirst backlog at the going rate. The actual cost of suspending a shark in formaldehyde is beside the point. What people imagine (and hope) it is worth is more important. Hard cash is made from the imagined, not the real. Damien Hirst has learned to swim with the sharks.

Meanwhile, we taxpayers will pay our ransom to shore up America’s banking system and buy in to a vision of Wall Street restored. In turn, that vision might become a reality when we — and the rest of the world — begin to believe in Wall Street’s good health. Perhaps with perceptions “adjusted” and confidence restored our lives won’t go down the toilet. God help us all if the fantasy doesn’t hold. Without a dream, who’d buy that lottery ticket?

Photo credit: Suzanne Plunkett, Reuters