Art, culture and the credit crunch

I note a recent spate of articles dwelling on what effects the credit crunch might have on the arts, particularly in connection with the recent BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit. They are all interesting in their various ways for the views they take of the relation between art/culture and the economic 'base', as it were, as well as for their various takes on the virtuousness of thrift more generally. See:
(i) a Guardian review article by Colin Burrow, on the idea of indebtedness in literature from Milton to Martin Amis
(ii) George Walden in the TLS - After the credit crunch - the arts crunch ?.
(iii) A.S. Byatt on Little Dorrit, also in the Guardian.