How the Rich Prepare for the Day When the Dollar Says "Goodbye"

If you haven't figured out that "the rich" have more and more eschewed paper assets in favor of all things tangible, perhaps this latest item from world of art auctions will establish the trend in your mind:

Pablo Picasso set a record Monday when his 1955 painting of a harem of colorfully dressed women, “Women of Algiers (Version O),” sold for $179.4 million—the most ever paid for a work of art at auction.

We'll set aside the aesthetic beauty or lack thereof of this cubist "masterpiece." Let's just stick with the financial. In that light, we suggest those with the big bucks foresee that our money as represented by paper Federal Reserve Notes and their digital offspring will continue to decline in value, without hope of revival. Yes, current levels of inflation remain low; but low still means lower value. And rather than wait for an acceleration of the deterioration of purchasing power, "the rich" who have the means to transform their intangible "money" into something real forge ahead, with the result that we now have the latest and greatest in a series of record-setting auctions dating back to the years before the financial crisis of 2008.

They see it coming and they're doing something about it.