Stereohell, which made a splash recently for its phony ad campaign for American Apparel, is at it again: The subversive design collective's latest work is a proposal to turn investment banks into casinos on the Las Vegas strip. ("The banks didn't 'invest' but gambled... Everything looked under control and glamorous, like under the Las Vegas glittering neon.") The group's ambitious set of drawings and diagrams can be found here. [Stereohell via AnimalNY]

Eliot Spitzer attended the Slate.com holiday party last night. (The former governor is writing a column for the online mag these days, as you may recall.) And just where did Slate hold the event? At Happy Ending, the bar on Broome Street that used to be a massage parlor/brothel. [FT]

• Jimmy Breslin and his wife, former City Council member Ronnie Eldridge, have paid $1.65 million for a 38th-floor apartment in Kent Swig's Sheffield 57, two months after selling their old condo on Broadway for $3.3 million. [Real Deal]
• John Clay, co-founder of the asset management firm Clay Finlay LLC, and his wife Jennifer, have paid $9.6 million for a 20th-floor apartment at 15 Madison Square North. [Cityfile]
• French exec Alain Bréau, currently the CEO of Mory Group, paid $2.08 million for a two-bedroom pied-à-terre at 200 East 66th Street. [Cityfile]

Judi Giuliani is turning 54 today. We're guessing a very expensive gift will be headed her way later today courtesy of the former mayor. Also celebrating: 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl is 67. Benjamin Bratt is turning 45. TV writer/producer Steven Bochco is 65. Record producer Scott Storch is 35. And Michael Lohan Jr., the brother of Lindsay and son of Michael and Dina, is turning 21.

• Remember all that talk about how a noble Guy Ritchie was walking away from his marriage to Madonna without asking for a penny? Madonna would like everyone to stop feeling sorry for him and note that he's actually getting somewhere between $75 and $92 million (depending on the value of several real estate properties), making it "one of the largest payouts ever," according to Madge's publicist, Liz Rosenberg. [NYP, Mirror]
• Imprisoned con man (and Anne Hathaway ex) Raffaello Follieri has agreed to pay back $3.6 million to the people he scammed, although it's doubtful it will ever happen since Follieri's lawyers say he's "virtually broke." [NYP, AP]
• Newlyweds Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo are honeymooning at Tommy's home in Mustique and are planning a big reception in New York sometime after New Year's, just so you know. [Cindy Adams]

• Goldman Sachs has posted its first quarterly loss since becoming a public company. The bank says it lost $2.1 billion during the fourth quarter. [CNN]
• BoA is cutting a number of top execs as it merges with Merrill. [WSJ]
• More on Bernie Madoff's biggest losers: Tremont Group had $3.3 billion, or more than half its assets, invested with him. [Bloomberg]
• Madoff's sons do not appear to have been involved in the scam. [NYT]
• Arthur Levitt denies he gave Madoff special treatment as ex-SEC chair. [NYP]
• A fresh fraud: Daniel Laikin, the CEO of National Lampoon, has been charged with securities fraud. [DB]

Consumerist's Biggest Business Debacles [AdAge]

• Glamour's list of 2008's style dos and don'ts is now online. We'll leave it to you to guess where this outfit worn by Jodi Marsh landed. [Glamour]
• Marc Jacobs chats about his new Stephen Sprouse-inspired collection for Louis Vuitton. [SF]
• Carmen Marc Valvo has decided against staging a runway show at Fashion Week in February. [WSJ]
• Barack Obama has already picked out his tux for the inauguration, but a few designers share their sketches anyway. [WWD]
• Mayor Michael Bloomberg went holiday shopping on Saturday and picked up Diana Taylor a pair of $29.99 fleece gloves at Modell's Sporting Goods. Times are tough, clearly. [NYT]

Time Warner may seem like a grinch laying off thousands of staffers less than two weeks before Christmas, but the company isn't lacking holiday spirit entirely: Time Warner Cable is giving all employees (as well as customers who request one) a pin-up calendar featuring its cable repairmen in a variety of suggestive poses. Just what you've been waiting for, we're sure. [NYDN]

Real estate tycoon and Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman would like you to know that, contrary to earlier reports, he was not really a victim of Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme. First of all, the $30 million he'd invested with Madoff was part of a charitable trust and didn't have anything to do with his personal fortune. And he'd never even heard of Madoff before last week; the money was invested with Madoff via a third party. Please also note that he hasn't worried about the Madoff mess for a moment. "I spent the weekend taking my daughter to see the Jonas Brothers, so I haven't been thinking about this, and after that concert I'm trying to regain my hearing, which I've barely done." [NYM]

• Frank Bruni assesses the toll the recession's having on NYC restaurants. The silver lining: It's never been easier to snag a last-minute reservation. [NYT]
• A look inside Ortine, which opens on Wednesday. [GS]
• Expect further delays for Table 8 inside the Cooper Square Hotel. [Eater]
• Christophe Bellanca has landed at Laurent Tourondel's BLT Group. [TFB]
• Caracas Arepa Bar's Brooklyn outpost opens today. [BP]
• That can of Coke is going to cost you more pretty soon. Gov. David Paterson has proposed a 15% "obesity tax" on nondiet drinks. [NYDN]

Steve Feinberg is the elusive founder of Cerberus Capital, the private equity giant that paid $7.4 billion to acquire 80 percent of Chrysler in 2007. For years Feinberg has done his very best to remain in the shadows: Few photos of him have been published—the ones that have typically been outdated or grainy—and he almost never speaks with the press, preferring to leave those duties to the firm's chairman, former Treasury Secretary John Snow. Until now, that is. Feinberg headed to Washington on Friday to participate in negotiations over the auto industry bailout and soon found himself confronted by reporters on the scene. "When other reporters figured out it was Feinberg—who has rarely been photographed in 20 years on Wall Street—photographers and TV crews swarmed him," reports the Detroit News. A photographer for the AP managed to snap a pic of the elusive billionaire (above) before "he and the other Cerberus executives fled to a tiny room in the Capitol basement." Nice to see one of the most powerful men in finance (and one of the country's most prolific Republican fundraisers) come out of the shadows, isn't it? In honor of his outing, we're pleased to share a couple of other photos of the notoriously secretive billionaire. After the jump, photos of Feinberg holding up his prey from a hunting trip last winter.

Bernie Madoff ripped off dozens of wealthy investors, hedge funds, schools, and non-profit institutions over the years (and his elaborate scheme has also helped sap what little confidence remains in the financial markets at large). But there's some positive news for his victims, people like Mets owner Fred Wilpon and real estate tycoon Mort Zuckerman. It turns out that "investment losses that result from theft" are fully tax-deductible, according to experts. [Financial Week]

• New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick has confirmed he's writing a book about "Barack Obama, race and politics in America." [Politico]
• David Shuster is the new host of MSNBC's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. [NYT]
• Vogue was the most profitable magazine at Condé Nast this year. [P6]
• Crain Communications (AdAge, Crain's New York) is laying off 60. [NYP]
• The list of layoff victims at CNN grows longer: Jamie McIntyre, Kelli Arena, Linda Stouffer and Rusty Dornin are all on the way out. [TVN]
• The Day the Earth Stood Still was No. 1 at the weekend box office. [NYT]

Last week, the Times reported that luxury shoppers are now doing much of their buying in secret because "shopping is almost embarrassing" given the state of the economy. The Daily Beast follows up today with the news that some high-end stores are even handing out plain shopping bags to help their customers disguise their high-end purchases. One such customer at Hermès: Kathy Fuld, the wife of Lehman CEO Dick Fuld. "Since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, Mrs. Fuld has still been a regular client, visiting the boutique once a week and spending $5,000 or $10,000 each time." [TDB]

Ethan Hawke walking with wife Ryan Shawhughes and his three kids ... Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey getting out of their Maybach ... a cheery-looking James Franco holding a notebook and cup of coffee ... Diane Kruger hailing a cab ... Steven Tyler dressed in leopard pants outside the Trump International Hotel ... Bill Murray leaving a store with a woman ... Katie Holmes shopping with Suri and her parents ... Rihanna and Chris Brown catching a flight at LaGuardia ... Ashley Tisdale holding hands with her boyfriend at JFK ... and Amy Poehler, Cameron Diaz, and Casey Affleck heading into the SNL afterparty.

Have you started handing out Christmas gratuities yet? Were you tempted to give less than last year on account of the economy? The Times reports today on the effect the recession is having on the people who depend on cash-stuffed envelopes this time of year, like doormen, building supers, housekeepers, and nannies. Many New Yorkers, not surprisingly, report that they plan to be less generous than in previous years, although they also fret about the consequences of giving less. ("Will their packages be signed for when they are not home? Will their guests be dropped off at the right floor? Will they have to wait while someone else's toilet is unclogged before theirs is?")

It's become an integral part of modern life: You experience a random physical symptom—a headache, say, or a muscle twitch, or a rash—and whereas in those prelapsarian days before the internet, it might have preoccupied you briefly then disappeared before you'd even gotten around to calling a doctor, now a quick Google search will diagnose it as the first sign of a devastating, and terminal, disease. Cyberchondria is epidemical, a new study reveals, which is not surprising given that web searches tend to offer the impression that rare, fatal illnesses are afflicting people like colds and flus.

There was a bit of good news last week for Stan O'Neal, the former Merrill Lynch CEO who was ousted last year: It was reported that O'Neal was "poised to make a reappearance on Wall Street" with a new job at a hedge fund called Vision Capital Advisors. But there was another, less positive development for O'Neal last week as well. On Friday, O'Neal handed over full ownership of his duplex co-op at 941 Park Avenue to his wife, Nancy Garvey, a property worth as much as $20 million. Why the transfer? O'Neal has been named as a defendant in a series of class-action lawsuits against Merrill, which have accused him of misleading investors about the firm's exposure to risky mortgage investments; moving assets out of his name could be a way to shield them in the event a court eventually awards damages. But the move could also suggest that the couple is in the process of dividing up their assets as part of a divorce proceeding. We'll let you know if we hear more. In the meantime, the apartment transfer document is below.

• David Ratcliffe, the CEO of Southern Company, the fourth-largest utility company in the U.S., has paid $2.075 million for a two-bedroom pied-à-terre at 7 Wooster Street. [Cityfile]
• Samir Billan, the owner of the Upper East Side French-restaurant Michelle's Kitchen, has sold his 17th floor apartment in the Rupert Towers on Third Avenue for $1.7 million. [Cityfile]
• Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen appear to be one step closer to building their dream house in LA. They've closed on the purchase of a 3.6-acre vacant lot of land in Brentwood—which they were first rumored to be buying in August—for $11.75 million. [BTL]