The art world has seen a lot of crazy in the past decade. With trophy assets booming in a low-rate world that drives demand for safe havens, only the clubby world of the super-rich and the brand power of Leonardo da Vinci could turn a US$1,000 art-auction bet into the US$450 million “Salvator Mundi.”

A contemporary example of late capitalism might be the GameStop Corp. saga and the idea that it’s reasonable for a stock price to become untethered from the underlying value of a business.

Bernard Arnault, the founder and chief executive officer of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, is usually regarded as the most powerful man in luxury. But right now he’s not the kingmaker.

Tesla Inc. has begun accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicles in the U.S. This could be a clever marketing strategy, a way of bolstering the value of the company’s own crypto-bet, or perhaps just something to do. Maybe it’s all three. One thing it isn’t: compatible with Tesla’s green credentials.

I spend a lot of time around lawyers, so I can tell you with some authority that they were thrilled by one aspect of their work lives during the pandemic. They stopped flying.

The accelerating reopening of businesses in the U.S. doesn’t violate “the science” of COVID-19. Some individual scientists are warning of increased virus deaths associated with these choices, but there’s no science that can tell us precisely how to balance public health with other human needs.

If the lockdowns of the past year introduced millions of people to the ease of online shopping, they also underlined some e-commerce pain points.

Can Mark Zuckerberg stop the spread of a dangerous message?

At the end of January, an impeccably preserved painting by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli sold for a record US$92.2 million. Six weeks later, a work that could not be further from the Old Master, a digital compilation of images by an artist who goes by the name of Beeple, sold for US$69.3 million.

Chief among the many challenges brought on by COVID-19 is the acceleration of the global pension crisis. Low interest rates and decreased economic activity are ballooning pension liabilities and challenging return assumptions, ultimately stressing pension plans all over the world.