What happens when an irresistible force like Art Basel Miami Beach meets an immovable object like the current economic crisis — and now, official recession?

The irresistible force is advancing on Miami as we speak. Art Basel starts on December 3: UBS, the main sponsor, will have its buffet supper in a tent on the beach after the Vernissage; Cartier is welcoming shoppers guests back to its glamorous Dome for supper; Swarovski has sponsored a giant work by Ross Lovegrove to be displayed at Design Miami, a sister fair; Design Miami has commissioned a new temporary space from New York architects Aranda\Lasch; seven satellite fairs have set up tents along a boulevard in the stalled Midtown real-estate development in Miami, a perfect conjunction of commerce and culture (the best is the Green Art Fair, where the tents look like small Sydney Opera Houses); and the Art Miami tent covers an entire block and expects at least 4,000 people on Wednesday, when it opens to the public a day ahead of the big dog, Art Basel Miami Beach.

But then there’s the economy. There are plenty of worries that, after the disappointing contemporary auctions in New York, Art Basel may be a dead parrot glued to a perch.

With this year’s fair looking like more of a gamble than any since the aborted 2001 debut, which was canceled following the World Trade Center attacks, here are 21 worrying trends:

• Attendance at the Auto Show at the Miami Beach Convention Center was down 8 to 12 percent this year. Miami International Boat Show, also at the convention center and due to open in February, is having trouble filling its slots.
  Message: Hard times.

• The Washington Post reported the following about Sotheby’s contemporary sale: “Out of 87 artworks offered tonight, 32 failed to sell. That translates into $22.7 million worth of art that was ‘bought in,’ or taken out of the auction for failing to meet confidential reserves set by the various consignors.” No, this isn't a report about this fall's disappointing sales; it's about an auction from May 1990 that proved a bellwether for an art market crash.
  Message: It happened before, it can happen again.

• At Art Singapore, there was an upswing in lower-priced works. In London, DesignArt was weak, after months of hype. According to Forbes magazine, at the Frieze Art Fair in October, “although attendance of around 68,000 visitors was on par with last year, everyone seemed to be pinching their pennies a little more.” The first Russian Art Fair is scheduled for June in London; after the recent disappointing sales for Russian art at auction, the fair began promoting its “realistic” prices.
  Message: Art and design fairs aren’t the go-go businesses they used to be. 

• The dollar, recently beaten down, has risen against the pound and the Euro. While a pound would buy $2 in May, it’s now worth only $1.50.
  Message: Europeans will find no bargains in Miami.

• UBS may be throwing its dinner party, but don’t expect UBS bankers from Switzerland to show up. Earlier this year, after pressure from the U.S. Justice Department, UBS promised that “entities based outside the U.S.” will not offer cross-border private banking services [read: “offshore banking”] to U.S. clients. In indictments handed down in November, Raoul Weil, CEO of private banking for UBS, and other bank executives were charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. through customers’ tax evasion. As part of their sales approach, Swiss bankers brought encrypted laptops to events like Art Basel Miami Beach.
  Message: Expect to see nervous-looking, high-worth individuals wondering if that silent guy in the corner is an IRS agent.

• Just as speculators and flippers have inflated the real-estate market, causing Miami a great deal of suffering, speculators and flippers have driven up the price of emerging contemporary artists.
  Message: Do you know what your Huma Bhabha is really worth?

• Buyers from BRIC are dealing with their own economic crises. The Brazilian stock market is down 44.16 percent, the Russian 65.53 percent, the Indian 51.48 percent, and the Chinese 64.92 percent.
  Message: Don’t count on billionaires from emerging markets to bail out the art market.

• Hedge-fund managers such as Steven Cohen, who paid David Geffen $137.5 million for de Koonings Woman III in 2006, helped fuel the rising market for art. Now hedge-fund managers are hurting, with many having to unwind their positions.
  Message: Don’t expect record prices on art. Will Steve Cohen even come?

• As investors pull their money out of mutual funds, which they have been doing for weeks, they feel poor not just on paper, but for real.
  Message: People who are telling their kids that they can’t have anXbox for Christmas are not going to be buying art — at any level.

• With so many people having recently lost their jobs, it’s bad form for the still-employed to throw money around on things like paintings, fine watches, Hummers, and caviar.
  Message: The words “conspicuous consumption” and “ostentatious” will replace “bling” and “glitz.” If there are big sales, they will be quiet … except for, maybe, those involving Jeffrey Deitch, who always seems to sell everything on the first day. 

• According to New York magazine, orders for booze at this year’s fair are down 20 percent.
  Message: Dealers aren’t even counting on hooch to convince prospective buyers to snap up that as-yet-to-be-started Cecily Brown.

• The bankrupt Lehman Brothers had a collection of 3,500 pieces of art. On December 3, a court will rule if Lehman can pay the warehouses storing its art so that it can spring $8 million worth and sell it. As people like former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld Jr. liquidate their assets, personal collections are being sold, too. Fuld’s 16 works on paper, consigned to Christie’s for sale in November, brought in $13.5 million; he was guaranteed $20 million.
  Message: Supply and demand applies to the art market, too.

• There are too many fairs. Not just the dozens in Miami, but fairs all over the world, too, including, just recently, Art Beijing, ShContemporary, the Dublin Art Fair, the Singapore Showcase, Art Copenhagen, the Korea International Art Fair, FIART 2008 Valencia, the Toronto International Art Fair, the Third Seville International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Art Verona 08, Frieze, Zoo, FIAC, Art Forum Berlin, Artissima, and Arte Lisboa. The Art Newspaper said that there were 150 fairs around the world that merited attention this year.
  Message: Buyers are faired out, and so are the galleries.

• Enough galleries dropped out of the giant Art Miami satellite fair in Miami's Midtown that those on the waiting list were able to get in. The galleries that dropped out tended to be national; those on the waiting list were local.
  Message: Nonresident dealers don't want to pay for travel, shipping, and insurance; local dealers are willing to jump in for the chance of meeting an out-of-town collector... because there aren't enough in Miami right now to keep the galleries going.

• Owning a painting is an utter luxury, like owning a diamond necklace,” Laurie Fendrich, a professor of fine arts at Hofstra University, wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education. “A painting — cumbersome to take care of, appreciated by only the very few, and, as assets go, not even remotely liquid — is an easy thing to do without.” By the way, the ultra-high-end Graff Diamonds of London recently reported that sales of diamonds in the $20,000–100,000 range are soft.
  Message: No one needs art (or fancy diamonds).

• One major publicist in Miami handled 10 big events last year; this year, she is handling two.
  Message: Oh, you cynic. She’s a great publicist. People are just canceling.

• Some of the better hotels in Miami Beach had rooms available recently but weren’t dropping their room rates. Last year, when hotels like the Anglers had cancelations, they lowered their rates for the fair.
  Message: Some people haven’t gotten the message yet (but they will: An empty room looks really empty once the fair starts).

• The Minnesota Museum of American Art will close in January.
  Message: There will be more.

• Jerry Saltz is giving a talk on Thursday, December 4, as an official Art Basel event. It is titled “This is the End: The Rising Tide of Money Goes Out of the Art World and All Boats Are Sinking.”
  Message: Mayday!

• Cartier (a new sponsor of Art Basel last year) reserved the back page of the official Art Basel Miami Beach magazine — and then did not buy it.
  Message: In hard times, it makes sense to cut back.

• Finally, in a recent article in the Independent, Damien Hirst said he thought his own art was overpriced.
  Message: If über-self-promoter Damien Hirst says his art is overpriced, it really is.

Linda Lee is editor in chief of www.MA2Dweek.com, a Miami Web site covering Art Basel.