Bubble Wrap

The Hamptons Stress Test

Vanity Fair’s Michael Shnayerson explores this year’s decidedly different Hamptons season, which is characterized by the multitude of stories each mansion and their famous owners can tell, along with shocked brokers and bottom feeders.

But something more fundamental than prices has dropped with the times. The outrushing of money from the Hamptons, like the outflow of water from Georgica Pond when the coastal barrier has been breached, has left a stench, like pond-bottom muck, of fear, anger, and quiet desperation. Titans have been brought low, fortunes lost, a world transformed. And through that muck, curling around one Hampton estate after another, is the slithering trail of Bernie Madoff.