Why the rich get richer while the rest sit it out

The sellers were the Moueix family, owners of Ch‚teau Petrus wines. The buyer was an unnamed European, bidding by telephone. "Recession? What recession?" joked Barbara Gladstone, a New York art dealer, as she left the sale.

It does seem the world is split in two. While multimillionaire art collectors and producers of fabuolus claret engage in celebratory high fives, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, is warning families to prepare for a "squeeze" on their household finances and energy bills.

This divergence was highlighted even more graphically the previous evening, also in Manhatttan, at Christie's when to cheering and clapping, Lucian Freud's painting of a naked woman on a couch, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, went for $33.6 million (£17.25 million) - a world record for a work by a living artist.

Sue Tilley, 51, is the subject of Freud's study. She's a manager at the JobCentre in Camden. Last month, JobCentre staff joined with other civil servants and teachers on a one-day strike over belowinflation pay increases.

According to the public-sector union, PCS, the average salary award amounts to two per cent, with some workers offered nothing - this when inflation is three per cent and rising.

While the bulk of society contemplates an economic slowdown coupled with everything - bar houses - becoming dearer, the wealthy carry on getting wealthier. This year's Sunday Times Rich List recorded a 14.7 per cent increase in the combined fortunes of Britain's 1,000 richest individuals.

Yesterday, I met a private equity boss in his Mayfair office who had access to a $25 billion war-chest. He was watchingand waiting for the right opportunities to come along. And there are going to be so many of them that his organisation had decided to start a new fund for well-off investors. We may be discussing higher food and fuel prices - in the boardrooms in his industry, the chat is also of vultures, not of those in Bacon's triptych but of "vulture" funds that pick over the carcasses of troubled businesses, turn them round and sell them for a fat profit.

As recession takes hold, the rich are able to look forward to becoming even richer. Or rather, those who are liquid can. Again, all the talk in the City bars these days is of people who have "gone liquid" - and they don't mean those who have had too much to drink. These are the ones who got out in time, who sold at the top of the market and are ready to return when prices reach the bottom.

According to research based on the recent Sunday Times Rich List, there are at least 250 people, mainly in London, with £100 million or more of spare cash right now. They've raised the money from selling their companies or pocketing their bonuses during the boom years just ended.

This group of entrepreneurs, hedge fund operators, private equity players and the occasional celebrity are driving up prices in alternative asset classes. So traditional investments such as equities and property stall or wilt altogether but values in other areas such as art, jewellery and wine keep on climbing.

The rich are casting around for places to park their cash - away from the stock market. It's no coincidence that at the very moment banks have been laying off employees in their thousands, they've also been hiring executives who specialise in private banking, in advising well-heeled clients what to do with their money.

The liquid rich are able to spot an opening and move quickly, well ahead of the pack. All the sectors that have experienced recent huge leaps, such as farmland, commodities and energy, were being targeted by the super-wealthy set two or three years ago. They were snapping up farms and plunging into food, metals and oil futures long before their prices spiked upwards.

In the US, T Boone Pickens, who made billions of dollars from oil, has switched to wind turbines - he's investing $10 billion in 2,700 windmills in the Texas Panhandle. Likewise here, buccaneering City speculator Jim Mellon, who is worth an estimated £700 million, sees solar power as the next big thing. He is planning to invest in a factory producing solar panels. He reckons he will make a fortune by getting in early (but not first, as a pioneer - the trick is to leave the risky research and development to others and enter the fray only when the technology is proved).

Similarly, in the north of England, Brian Scowcroft has used the proceeds from the sale of Swinton Insurance to grab prime properties. Because he's got the cash (around £200 million) he's been able to move quicker than corporate bidders - by the time their boards have met and approved the deal, his offer has been accepted.

Cash is always king and never more so in a tightened credit market. The liquid rich make low offers on property or another type of asset. They're under no pressure - if they don't get it, they simply move on to the next target, until eventually they succeed.

This downturn promises to be like no other - thanks to the mountain of cash that built up over the past, crazy decade and, as a consequence of oil and gas prices, is still building in the Middle East and Russia. This week Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov will collect $10 billion in cash when he sells his company.

Not only is the rich-poor divide going to widen, it will do so to a degree never before experienced. The pressure this will place on society, on governments struggling to come to terms with a financiallystraitened, dispirited populace will be intense.

If we thought the last time we encountered inflation was bad, in the Seventies, when there were strikes galore and bags of rubbish filled the streets, we've not seen anything yet. This is Gordon Brown's nightmare, one of a community riddled with fissures, where one group is forced to tolerate greater hardship and their union representatives and political leaders are ever hostile, while another parties on, oblivious.

And if you don't think that is possible, contrast the euphoria in the Christie's salesroom with lowly-paid Sue Tilley in the Camden JobCentre. As Tuesday evening so vividly illustrated, it is already here.