The Man with the Golden Helmet

A lot of folks on Wall Street are still worried about the "stress test" of banks on Wall Street. They should go back to the original stress test!

At one time, The Man with the Golden Helmet, was one of Rembrandt's most famous works.

Until the art world determined that it wasn't Rembrandt! (I disagree).

The Rembrandt Research Project was the first "stress test." But some previous Rembrandts, which they determined not to be Rembrandts, became Rembrandts again after dendrochronological tests (tree ring dating) showed that the panels on the wood frames of some of the disavowed paintings were the same as other known Rembrandts.

From 1870 to 1935 there was a marked increase in Rembrandt's works. The art world, was the original Moody's. There was demand for Rembrandt's works, and they supplied it. Back then, the sub-prime and HELOC's were the Rembrandt self portraits--done by his students, and not the Master himself.

But the art stress test came about because art forgeries had panicked Museums because of the Van Meegeren fake Vemeer's scandal of 1945.
http://www.essentialvermeer.com/misc/van_meegeren.html

Han Van Meegeren, was charged with collaborating with the enemy after he sold a Vemeer, entitled The Woman Taken in Adultery to the Nazi Hermann Goering; a crime appropriately punishable by death.

But he made a good trade with the Nazi! He swapped a fake Vemeer, that he painted with his own hand, for 200 Dutch paintings that Goering had stolen in the war. Instead of being on trial for being in bed with the Nazi's, he claimed he should be a national hero!

So the charge was changed, and eventually, he was found guilty of forgery, and sentenced to a year in jail.

After the trial he told a reporter, "Two years, is the maximum punishment for such a thing. I know because I looked it up in our laws twelve years ago, before I started all this. But sir, I'm sure about one thing: if I die in jail they will just forget all about it. My paintings will become original Vermeers once more. I produced them not for money but for art's sake."

This weekend, one of the Old Masters of finance opined on Wells Fargo and USB. Warren Buffett had this to say:

“I think I know their future, frankly, better than somebody that comes in to take a look,” Buffett said yesterday of the bank stocks that Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire owns. Regulators “may be using more of a checklist-type approach.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aocwzKPyyegc&refer=home

It's the checklist stress test, with lipstick on it.

And just like Rembrandt's The Man with the Golden Helmet was the collateral damage of over zealous and panicked art historians, so was the downgrade of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway by the rating agencies.

They wouldn't know a Master, even if they watched him paint the picture.

And the stress test?

It's just another show trial that's done to accommodate the banks and the public.

After all, didn't Jamie Dimon said, that TARP money, "is a scarlet letter?"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=az0FiElfwtoM&refer=home

But they're done for money, and not art's sake!