Isn’t being rich supposed to make you recession proof?

Is it a return to the more pragmatic mobile in the United States? The coming global depression that some fear is on its way may mean that luxury mobiles are going to be a thing of the past.

New York’s financial industry has seen the layoffs of almost 50,000 people this year. I doubt someone’s budgeting of his or her severance package includes an $81,000 smart phone.

With lots of talk this weekend about the “yuppie scourge” being rinsed from the great metropolis of New York once and for all, the schadenfreuden among us gathered around Yuengling beers and horrible gin, and made the dire prediction that its going to be a whole lot of texting on plastic phones in 2009 and that you won’t be seeing the bling-blangarati flashing their gemmed out mobiles at parties anymore.

This Luxury Vertu phone goes for $81,000

It’s not just me saying this. A Telegraph reporter got a scent of this at a party launching a US$13,000 luxury phone, the Vertu, and tried to remind us that we need the rich people in our lives, even as people whispered they wouldn’t be buying the damn things.

New York stared into the future this week and saw a city without investment bankers. Many shuddered. There were chilling rumours of orders cancelled for a new $13,000 luxury mobile phone, of maître d’s erasers hovering ominously over the $1,000 lobster and caviar frittata at Norma’s restaurant.