Courtesy Art Basel Miami Beach

Art Basel Miami Beach attendees view work at Milan-based De Carlo gallery's booth at last year's fair.

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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.