billion dollars

It's a long time now, some 40 years or so, since Nelson Bunker Hunt's notorious observation that "a billion dollars isn't what it used to be". Which presumably means that today it's no longer even quite what it was, back when it wasn't what it used to be. After all, we've just seen the dispersal of a single art collection--assembled by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft--realize $1.5 billion. Nonetheless it feels as though the transatlantic yearling market, in 2022, has reached a pretty historic landmark in tipping 10...