"The world of Mike Bloomberg is a charmed place"

From the Times today:

Campaigners for Bloomberg Taste High Life

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s operatives get to inhabit his very different world.
They stay at the Four Seasons in London (about $400 a night), the Intercontinental in Paris ($320) and the King David in Jerusalem ($345). Room service? The mayor pays for it all. Even the laundry.
And invitations to dinner parties at Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house rarely disappoint: Kofi Annan and Nora Ephron are regulars.
The billionaire mayor is turning heads these days with the hiring of high-profile operatives for his re-election campaign, including several who had previously worked for his rivals in the race.
And as he seeks to entice talent to come aboard the campaign, and possibly to a third term in City Hall, Mr. Bloomberg wields a powerful tool: the perks of inhabiting his world.
Working in politics often means stingy pay and tedious log-rolling. But when the richest, most socially connected man in the city happens to be mayor, it can seem more like the life on (pre-recessionary) Wall Street, right down to the car service.
“The world of Mike Bloomberg is a charmed place,” said Jonathan Capehart, who worked as a policy adviser on Mr. Bloomberg’s first bid for mayor.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in NYC is expected to hit 10.5%.

Down and out in NYC

Headline from today's Wall Street Journal:

As Times Turn Tough, New York's Wealthy Economize:
Plastic Surgeons, Jewelers, Yacht Builders Brace for Leaner Times; Saying No to Caviar

And the first few parargraphs:

A nose job in a hospital with a private nurse in attendance had been something of a rite of passage for Joan Asher's children. But when her fourth and last child was ready for her own rhinoplasty recently, Ms. Asher asked her to postpone it.
The financial markets were simply more out of whack than her 16-year-old's proboscis.
"The other noses were more prominent," the stay-at-home mother from a tony New York City suburb in Westchester County told her 16-year-old daughter. She could get hers done when things settled down.
The financial crisis on Wall Street has New York's well-to-do reeling.

Noted

Mayor Bloomberg is the 8th wealthiest person in America with a net worth of $20 billion. (Forbes)

Meanwhile, in Saint-Tropez

Please allow this quick diversion away from EV Grieve's usual topics...where we visit the pages of Page Six Magazine for The Ivana-logues, the high-society column written by Ivana Trump. Without comment:

To get to a party in Saint-Tropez last week, guests were asked to board a shuttle bus to the property. Well, I have not been on a bus in 20 years and I’m not about to get on one now. So I see this gorgeous French police guy with his big motorbike. I go up to him in my high heels—the guy has no idea who I am, he just sees a good-looking chick—and I say, “Monsieur, can you give me a ride?” I jump on the bike and he has these huge shoulders and he takes me two-and-a-half miles, through the bushes, to the party. When he drops me off, he says, “You look like Ivana Trump.” I say, “I am Ivana Trump and thank you so much for the ride.” He totally freaked out.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Post scribe thinks turmoil in Africa is so trendy in the news right now!

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.