Today we have cheating husbands, cheating golfers, lots of sad Golden Globe Awards attendees, and a bald dude.

Wall Street's reputation as an aggressively male zone, running on free-flowing machismo, utterly hostile to women and irredeemably suited to adrenaline-chasing, strip club-patronizing he-men? It's scientifically accurate, according to one of those studies that uncover the secrets of life by measuring people's fingers. Research by former Deutsche Bank derivatives trader John Coates has found that traders with the longest ring fingers as compared to their index fingers—indicating exposure to high levels of male sex hormones in the womb—make three times as much money as their less biologically blessed co-workers. It certainly simplifies matters for job recruiters/rich husband-seekers: Just ask for a hand-photocopy and all will be revealed!

Ohmigod, in an NYC sports-related tabloid scandal even bigger than the Pedro Martinez cockfighting video—made better by the distinct possibility of being totally false—a New York Knick has been accused of being gay (for dudes!):

These are tough economic times, no doubt. Have you been tempted to make a little cash by starting up a meth lab in your apartment? Who hasn't? If you're worried that you're going to have trouble finding a pharmacy to sell you boxes Sudafed in bulk, put your worries to bed. Just make Rite Aid your first stop. [Crain's]

• Guy Metcalfe isn't having much luck flipping the apartment at 15 CPW he purchased in October for $9.35 million. Two weeks after closing on the second-floor unit, the Morgan Stanley exec put the apartment on the market for $16.5 million, cutting it down to $13.75 million in December. Now Metcalfe is chopping again: The pad is currently listed at $12.5 million. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• Jason Capello, a partner until 2007 at Dwight Anderson's (now-doomed) hedge fund, Ospraie Management, has sold his 72nd-floor condo at the Time Warner Center for $16.25 million. [Cityfile]
• Hedge funder Steven Stuart, who left Fortress to co-found the Garrison Investment Group in 2007, has taken $1 million off the price of his 35th-floor apartment at the Park Laurel on West 63rd Street. The four-bedroom spread is now listed at $9.8 million. [Cityfile, Corcoran]

New Year, new jobs: Tom Cruise has assigned Katie Holmes reproductive duties, Alec Baldwin's famous voice finally got him his dream job and Lauryn Hill is testing new mounts.

Were you hoping to see Bernie Madoff stand trial? Don't get your hopes up. His lawyer is reportedly talking to federal prosecutors about a plea deal whereby Madoff "would agree to plead guilty in exchange for some type of leniency." [NYT]

Author Jay McInerney turns 54 today. Nutty editor Atoosa Rubenstein is celebrating her 37th. Orlando Bloom is 32. Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey is turning 43. Grey's creator, Shonda Rhimes, is 39. Julia-Louis Dreyfus is turning 48. Former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince is 59. Former Hillary Clinton advisor (and now Citigroup exec) Lisa Caputo is turning 45. Socialite Renee Rockefeller is 41. And legendary American Idol reject William Hung celebrates his 26th birthday today.

• Citigroup and Morgan Stanley may announce a joint venture combining their brokerage divisions as early as today or tomorrow. The firms have already agreed to set aside $2 billion and $3 billion to retain top brokers. [WSJ, NYP]
• The joint venture isn't giving Citigroup or its CEO, Vikram Pandit, much of a boost. Shares dropped 17 percent yesterday as investors grew concerned the deal was prompted by Citi's desperation more than anything else. [NYT]
• Close to 2,000 former Merrill Lynch employees in London have been laid off by new parent Bank of America. [Times UK]
• AIG is expected to sell its Canadian life insurance operations to Bank of Montreal to repay government loans. [BN]
• Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke says a fiscal stimulus won't be enough to spur an economic recovery. [BN]

Marcus Schrenker is surely one of the most memorable villains to emerge in the financial crisis: The "wealth management" advisor is believed to have crashed an airplane to fake his own death.

• It looks like Ashley Dupre's 15 minutes of fame isn't entirely over jet yet: She was spotted at HarperCollins' offices and is now reportedly trying to sell a memoir. [P6]
• Hijinks at the Golden Globes: Leonardo DiCaprio asked CAA to construct a ladder so he could sneak into the agency's dinner last Friday and avoid the press. Adrian Grenier and Paris Hilton were denied entry to another event. And Harvey Weinstein appears to be smoking again: He was spotted taking cigarettes out of Hilary Swank's purse. [P6]
• It's not easy being a Forbes: The family is taking its Highlander yacht out of commission until summer and has fired the ship's crew in the meantime. [P6]
• Eddy Curry is being sued by his former chauffeur for sexual harassment, after the Knicks center allegedly tried to "solicit gay sex" from the driver and forced him to "perform humiliating tasks." [NYP]

This is even more outrageous than that Hollywood scandal book we mentioned yesterday where all the most scandalous stuff was only available online, for free:

Uniball figures that between the Madoff scandal, mortgage crisis and high-pitched Law & Order cop S. Epatha Merkerson, it will sell a metric fuckton of pens to panicked individual investors. So it shot the ad below. As Videogum notes, it is heart-poundingly terrifying, for a ballpoint pen ad.

Anderson Cooper prefers to address questions about his sexuality with on-camera winks, nudges and the like. There's a reason the CNN anchor is not asked for more direct answers in formal interviews.

After his chat tonight with Bill O'Reilly, Christopher Hitchens asked for a second date: "We've barely got our trousers off," he said. The hawkish former Trotskyite had certainly pushed O'Reilly's buttons.

The editors and writers of the Los Angeles Times could shut off the presses tomorrow and live off its website, media pundit Jeff Jarvis claims. But the numbers don't add up.

· Funny — from the way Ann Coulter makes it sound, you'd think she thought her latest work's comparisons to Mein Kampf are accidental.

Though AMC recently set an optimistic summer return date for the next season of Mad Men, show mastermind Matthew Weiner (whose contract dispute remains unresolved) has a much gloomier forecast, he tells E!

Staff Sgt. Derrick Brooks, 26, looks enough like the handsome president-elect that he's already kind of a big deal. Barack Obama doesn't see the resemblance. Jealous much?

· Even without the onstage accompaniment of friends Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk and Andy Kindler — who will all be on hand — you would still rush to see Todd Barry tonight at Largo.