Conspicuous consumption may be out, but art stays tucked away in your mansion. Which helps explain why global elites spent $264 million in one night on the collection of Yves Saint Laurent.

The bidding frenzy surrounding the legendary fashion designer's estate involved buyers dialed in on 100 telephone lines and resulted in record prices for six artists, including Matisse ($41 million) and Marcel Duchamp, whose work was subject to a battle between two American buyers and sold for six times the estimate (at $10.1 million).

"Everyone is looking for a good Matisse," an editor from BeauxArts magazine told the New York Times.

The mammoth take was from only the first of six "sessions" over three days.

The takeaway: The rich clearly still have bags and bags of filthy lucre to pump into the economy, it just has to be coaxed out of them. For example, by not referring to it as "filthy lucre." (Even when that is totally what it is.) So do your part and compliment some rich person's diamond-encrusted mobile phone or solid-gold Range Rover or $800 nightclub champagne bottle today. Otherwise artists will continue to accumulate all of society's precious money! (Such a waste.)