Worries about the future notwithstanding, there’s no denying that New York is at this moment the financial and cultural capital of the world. Ample evidence comes this week in two forms. Five of the largest Wall Street finance houses have announced that they will disburse a total of an astounding $36 billion in bonuses to a total of 173,000 employees, a 30% increase over last year. And this evening, all eyes in the art world will be on the Sotheby’s auction room on the Upper East Side to witness the sale of 85 lots of Impressionist and modern art.

Despite concerns expressed from time to time by these columns, not to mention by Mayor Bloomberg and Senator Schumer, about the competitiveness of America’s and New York’s capital markets, those markets clearly are still leading the world and, by extension, enriching the city’s residents and the rest of the country. The list of financial institutions offering the record bonuses — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns — doesn’t even include the three largest American banks. Those three — Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase — are expected to add billions more to the bonus bonanza.

Meantime at Sotheby’s, buyers will be competing for an astonishing trove of masterworks, from an 18″x 24″oil still life by French Impressionist Paul Cezanne with a high-end estimate of $35 million to works by the Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte and the Dutch Impressionist Johan Barthold Jongkind with low-end estimates of “only” $250,000 each. In between, works by the likes of Claude Monet, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso, to name but a few, also will go under the hammer. Some of these artists never traveled to America themselves, but American audiences have embraced their work and American buyers may, too.

This confluence of events highlights the secret of New York’s success, and why it’s hard to be pessimistic about the city’s future no matter what economic vicissitudes, terrorists, or bumbling politicians throw at it. The city has an uncanny eye for spotting talent and rewarding it, whether that talent involves making millions of dollars with a computer keystroke or making a perfect line with an oil-laden brushstroke. This truly is a remarkable week for the city, featuring as it does the democratic life that has freed the city, the merchant life that has enriched it, and the artistic life that has uplifted it.