I mean, the government is already going to dip into the Strategic Furniture Reserve and sell off a few things—although probably not the desk I've been looking at.
Maybe better to pledge the pretty picture as collateral for a 500 billion euro loan from the ECB.
If France can get a negative interest rate the loan should be self-liquidating sometime later in the millennium.
From The New York Post, May 20:
It’s enough to wipe the smile off the Mona Lisa.
Tech entrepreneur Stephan Distinguin has suggested that France can offset its financial losses from the coronavirus pandemic by selling Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece — arguably the most famous artwork in the world, according to the Independent.....MUCH MORE
Distinguin, founder of innovation agency Fabernovel, told Usbek & Rica Magazine that the country should “sell the family jewelry” for at least 50 billion euros, or $54.7 billion.
“Day after day, we list the billions engulfed in this slump like children counting the fall of a stone into a well to measure its depth,” Distinguin told the mag. “We are still counting, and this crisis seems unfathomable.”
He continued: “As an entrepreneur and a taxpayer, I know that these billions are not invented and that they will necessarily cost us. An obvious reflex is to sell off a valuable asset at the highest price possible, but one that is the least critical as possible to our future.”...
