"Fat Cats" in the neighborhood

Ha. Not what you think...



Along Avenue A at 11th Street. Details about the short film here.

Closed, no cigars

Dunno if this is one for Jeremiah's Signs of the Yunnipocalypse...but Carolina's Cigars on Nassau Street in the Financial District has closed....



Wasn't exactly a hotspot for fat cats, though telling nonetheless...

Oh HENRY

Item: "Wall Street bonuses were more than $18 billion last year — roughly what they were in the fatty, solvent days of 2004."

“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker, lunching Friday at Harry’s at Hanover Square.

“I’m a HENRY,” Mr. Konstantinidis added. “High Earner but Not Rich Yet.”

Noted

The first clues are emerging that Wall Street pay will plummet this year . . . Bonuses for top executives could plunge by 70 percent. (New York Times)

Falling fat cats

Wall Street: Fall of the fat cats (CNN.com)

Excerpt:

"These guys were spending more than $250 billion a year," Robert Frank said. "They bought mansions in Greenwich and Palm Beach. They bought art for $100 million a painting."
Frank, author of "Richistan," says the enormous amounts of money earned by Wall Street elite made them practically a nation unto themselves.
"They just looked at the guy with the bigger house, the nicer Ferrari, the better artwork," he said. "And it was all competitive spending."

Our billionaire mayor speaks out on the "I want it now" society

An "I want it now" society that refuses to live within its means is partly responsible for the subprime-mortgage crisis, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

"I think you just can't blame the banks," he said, taking borrowers to task.

"They say, 'I want the great American dream. I want it now and I'm not going to wait until I put some money in the bank.' . . That's where we lost the moral compass of saying no to people who did not have the earning capacity to support a mortgage."

(New York Post)

Meet Manhattan's fat-cat home buyers (all you need is $45 million!)

The Post has a feature today on the richies who have paid more than $45 million for their Manhattan digs. You know, the $45 Million Club. As the article notes, hedge-funder Daniel Loeb bought a 10,000-square-foot apartment in newly renovated 15 Central Park West for $45.8 million in February. "The place has five bedrooms and five baths - but, in what seems quite a scandal, his view of Central Park is obscured by an adjacent apartment." Perhaps Loeb can pay to have that adjacent apartment removed.