[Flickr/TrespassersWill]

Few billionaires have been spared from the horrors of the financial meltdown (just today it was reported that Warren Buffett has seen his net worth decline by more than $9 billion), but for many, it's vital not to relinquish the most significant status symbol: the luxury yacht. Global yachting company Edmiston & Co. is still receiving new commissions and is currently making 30 superyachts for new owners. So why are big flashy yachts, which cost millions to operate, still in demand? It's the Russians' fault, of course!

Sandy Weill may be preparing to get back in the game: The architect of Citigroup is now "in talks about launching a private-equity fund that would invest in beaten-down financial companies and assets." [WSJ]

♦ Real estate exec Chuck Berman and his wife Melanie paid $6.7 million for a three-bedroom apartment at 15 Central Park West. [Cityfile]
♦ Oscar Schafer, the managing partner of OSS Capital, has lowered the price of his 17th-floor apartment at the Plaza for the second time since June. It's now $14.5 million (down from $18 million), which means he'll be taking a loss on the property if he sells it, since he purchased it for $14.94 million back in May. [NYP]
♦ Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng have taken their 11-bedroom Centre Island home off the market. It recently had an asking price of $12.8 mil. [Newsday]

"The call ends with [Fox's Sean] Hannity's declaring: 'Obama's list of friends reads like a history of radicalism.'" [Huffington Post]

How do you boost interest in your struggling newspaper during these challenging economic times? You get a rock star to write an Op-Ed column! The man who oversees the New York Times' editorial pages, Andrew Rosenthal, says that Bono will write a regular Op-Ed column beginning in 2009. [Radar]

It's Day 2 of the Palin wardrobe scandal and cable pundits continue to bicker about what impact it will have on the presidential race. (Fashion industry types seem to be more focused on whether the RNC got its money's worth.) But there's an interesting footnote to the story. Greg Allen has noticed that the woman who bought Palin various accessories and baby clothing (as well as pacifiers for baby Trig) was Lisa Kline. Not only has Kline come up with outfits for the likes of Britney Spears, it was Kline who was responsible for that leopard-print swimsuit that Paris Hilton wore in her Internet video lampooning John McCain. [DaddyTypes]

Imagine you have $800 million due to various banks in two months, and your chief holdings are a couple of billion dollars in rapidly-declining CBS and Viacom stock. You've opened some delicate negotiations with the bankers into how you'll, uh, pay them. What do you do? If you're Sumner Redstone, you immediately take the obvious option — sell some more shares! — off the table, and then proclaim you don't know how all this happened because you don't really run your company (National Amusements). Then in the future, presumably, you can tell your mouthy daughter you were "forced" to sell her movie theater chain because it was the only option left, ha ha. That'll teach her to try and be your successor! That's just how Sumner rolls, said the Wall Street Journal:

Maniacal cable news host Nancy Grace turns 49 today. Also celebrating: Oscar-winning director Ang Lee turns 54. Memoirist Augusten Burroughs is 43. Novelist Michael Crichton turns 66. ABC News correspondent Brian Ross is 60. Spider-Man director Sam Raimi is turning 49. Retired soccer legend Pelé is 68. And "Weird Al" Yankovic is 49.

♦ Guy Ritchie supposedly cried after seeing son Rocco wearing a Yankees t-shirt this week. So sensitive! Or maybe not so much: Ritchie also reportedly described Madonna as "old, fat, ugly and wrinkled," and said she couldn't sing. [Us, NYDN]
♦ Not only did Lindsay Lohan's stint on Ugly Betty get cut short because she didn't get along with America Ferrera, LiLo clashed with everyone else on set, too. Also, she enjoys snipping out photos of herself from the tabloids. [P6]
♦ Jennifer Aniston's publicist is denying she's pregnant. [ET]
♦ Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen spent four days in the hospital with a "potentially life-threatening throat-infection." But she was miraculously cured and released yesterday afternoon. [Us]

♦ Yesterday's sell-off is expected to continue today. [WSJ]
♦ Even Goldman Sachs is cutting. The firm plans to cut 10 percent of its 32,000 employees. [WSJ]
♦ The glory days of hedge funds are over, as you're probably aware. [NYT]
♦ Credit Suisse reported a $1.08 billion loss during the third quarter. [DB]
♦ The inquiry into the financial crisis on Capitol Hill continues. Today's guest piñata will be Alan Greenspan. [NYT]

If it wasn't inevitable from the get-go that Rupert Murdoch would, via tentacles that touch every distribution channel and medium, obtain an advance copy of Michael Wolff's biography of him, it certainly became so when the book landed in the hands of the News Corporation chairman's son-in-law Matthew Freud. Freud got it from a London newspaper negotiating serialization rights, Murdoch got it from Freud, and Wolff soon heard from Murdoch, the Times reported this morning: "[The book] contains some extremely damaging misstatements of fact," he emailed, thus playing into Wolff's hands, as he seems to have done from the beginning.

Internet publishers Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown may both be foreign transplants to the U.S., but there's little question which of the two fifty-somethings has more fully assimilated her site to the democratic rough-and-tumble of American Web culture. It was Huffington who offered blogs to five virtual strangers over the course of two days, as documented in the New Yorker earlier this month, including "the Asperger’s-afflicted teen-age son of a radio d.j." and "a woman, dressed exclusively in green, who was trying to stop insecticide spraying." Brown, in contrast, has lent her Daily Beast a distinctly royalist feel, as one might expect from a Commander of the British Empire. And the former New Yorker editor played the snob angle for all it was worth in a lengthy interview with Portfolio's Lloyd Grove:

Food is at the center of Google's corporate culture, a sign of the company's Pollyanna worldview and the outsized financial success which enables this largesse. So why is Google is closing a café? Off The Grid, one of Google's 18 in-house eateries at its headquarters, abruptly shut its doors this week. Employees are being told the cut is "temporary," but workers are removing the café's fixtures, which suggests a permanent closure. What this means: Despite CEO Eric Schmidt's protestations, Google is being hit by the recession. And the blows are harder than the company has admitted to shareholders or employees.Off The Grid's closure is the harbinger of more cuts, a source within Google's kitchens we've nicknamed "Deep Fried" tells us. The building, 2350 Bayshore, is also having its "micro kitchen" snack stations closed. A large number of workers in the building were contractors, Deep Fried says, some of whom are losing their temporary jobs at Google. The closure also leaves a large area of Google's campus without breakfast service. Food is just one area where Google is slashing costs; under recently hired CFO Patrick Pichette, Google has been having a series of meetings about eliminating expenses, and Googlers have been implementing the cuts with the same slapdash speed with which it rolls out new websites. Google executives gave food-service operator Bon Appétit sharp budget cuts this year, which has only worsened the already troubled relationship between the companies. Google eliminated dinner at one café earlier this year. But the closure of Off The Grid was sudden, coming after a meeting between Bon Appétit executives and Derek Rupp, the café's executive chef, Deep Fried writes:

Oh, what fun! David Hornik, the feisty financier who organizes The Lobby, a conference which gathers a self-appointed Valley elite on the Big Island of Hawaii, organizes group expeditions as part of the boondoggle's bonding rituals. We hear he's hired Shinteki, an activities coordinator popular in the Valley, which has in turn created a fake "treasure-recovery services" outfit to lead Lobbyists on a treasure hunt. With venture capital growing scarce, why not just label the exercise "Find Your Own Series A"? After the jump, a spoiler on the treasure hunt for anyone who wants to play along.Check the "treasures" listed on Heritage International's site. They spell out "Google Earth." What happens when you play with the GPS coordinates listed?

Who is this joker? Why, it's venture capitalist David Hornik, the pocket-sized B-lister who has invited some of Silicon Valley's shallowest thinkers for a company-paid vacation. The three-day, mostly agenda-free funconference has opened tonight on Hawaii's Big Island, with attendees Twittering about drinking mai tais and dancing the hula. What, work?Why, that's for employees, not founders. The employees that Lobby-goers didn't lay off before boarding a jet to jaunt across the Pacific, that is. We hear some of this year's attendees, concerned with the appearance of attending such an ostentatious waste of time and money, tried to cancel. Hornik told them there would be no refunds. You know times are tough when a VC is being this tight about $3,000.

Official websites give celebrities a powerful way to fighti rumors or promote new projects, free of the pesky filter of the entertainment media. But it's becoming clear vanity sites can backfire. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr recently pissed off fans by admonishing them, via his website, to stop sending him mail. And now William Shatner has taped a long diatribe against his Star Trek co-star George Takei, who allegedly did not invite Shatner to his recent gay wedding. It can't be long before Shatner yanks his YouTube video on Takei's "sickness" and "psychosis" over who got more camera time forty years ago, particularly now that Takei has told AP that Shatner was, in fact, invited to the wedding. And if Shatner really meant to attack "Takei's decision to come out of the closet later in life," as AP has it, he'll probably be getting left off many more invite lists in the future. Click the video icon to watch the highlights.

Everyone is extremely worked up about Sarah Palin's $150,000-per-month quest for the most elite finery in the land. Republican donors, for example, are upset their money is being spent so ostentatiously. (Just wait until they find out how much of the money is going to gay fashion moguls!) Lawyers and accountants are talking tax liability. But how much are "Hollywood" Barack Obama and wife Michelle spending on their radical chic? Well, you can start with a $1,500 suit for Barack, which contains an opulent 3 percent cashmere and comes from "the largest suitmaker in the United States," And as conservative blog Town Hall reveals, via Wonkette, Michelle may have spent tens of dollars more (or less, depending on whether she accessorizes properly):

You know, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein may have his problems, involving Project Runway, a fashion line, a video distributor, an internet company, his wife's fashion company — they're endless, really. But the brash executive will be damned if he's going to feel ashamed to be losing four executives in the span of about six weeks. Because what that turnover really means is that he's an excellent people person! The departing staff, you see, started at entry level and were "groom[ed]" into "great executives," according to a statement sent to us by a PR firm representing the Weinstein Company. And what do great executives do? Get as far as possible from Harvey Weinstein, obviously. Click the icon to read the full statement.

Jason Calacanis is a master storyteller. Like most writers, he needs an editor. Here's a summary remix of Calacanis's secret insider mail, sent a few hours after Mahalo's layoffs were expertly leaked to everyone but me, thanks pal.