According to a new economic forecast, New York City could lose as many as 165,000 jobs over the next two years on account of the financial crisis. Just a friendly reminder in case you haven't taken the time to kiss your boss's ass today! [AP]

Spotted at the Capital One branch on the corner of 8th Street and University Place. [Vanishing NY]

♦ James Frey has cut $500,000 off the price of his condo at 505 Greenwich Street, less than a month after first listing the place. The four-bedroom spread, which Frey bought as two separate units and later combined, is now on the market for $4.5 million. [Curbed, Corcoran]
♦ Farid Naib, founder of the finance software company FNX Limited, paid $2.29 million for a seventh-floor loft at 288 West Street. [Cityfile]

We just heard that shrinks in New York are suffering from a slowdown in business due to widespread belt-tightening, but apparently not the ones the Observer talks to, who say that an epidemic of stress means business is good, and will likely boom as the fallout from the economic crash continues. (Of course, they might just be using their training to manipulate us: If so many people are getting therapy, maybe we should too!) But what important insights are emerging from inside the consulting rooms?

♦ Gordon Gekko will live again: A sequel to Wall Street is in the works, although Michael Douglas has yet to sign on to the pic. [Variety]
♦ The downturn has been good for financial news sites: CNNMoney.com and BusinessWeek.com have both experience record growth. [WWD]
♦ The new issue of Rolling Stone is shorter and skinnier than issues past. [AP]
♦ Andy Lack, the former president of NBC News (and, more recently, the relatively unsuccessful CEO of Sony Music) is joining Bloomberg L.P. as CEO of the company's multimedia group. [NYO]

Why does former tabloid queen Bonnie Fuller think Britney Spears is "more civilized" than Sarah Palin? Because she reads, or so says Fuller: "Criticize Britney all you want for her bad choices in men and her barefoot trips to public restrooms, but you can’t accuse her of not reading. As any tabloid fan will attest, Britney has routinely been photographed carrying books—from, ahem, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue—Book 1." Well, that settles that! [NYT/The Moment]

Last week Jim Cramer set off a firestorm when he appeared on the Today show and recommended that investors take every penny they'd need for the next five years out of the market at once. If you were foolish enough to heed Cramer's advice and you sold your holdings late last week, you would have missed out of yesterday's historic rally, of course, proving once again that Cramer's track record predicting the markets is about as distinguished as George Bush's record charting the war in Iraq. But it gets better. Instead of owning up to his mistakes or simply suggesting his advice may have been a bit rash, he's changed his tune once again. According to Cramer, we've reached "the beginning of the end of the crisis." Video after the jump.

Dave Chappelle walking with his wife and kids in SoHo ... John Mayer leaving his apartment building with a duffel bag ... Michael Stipe leaving lunch at Souen on East 13th Street ... Mary-Kate Olsen walking with her finger wrapped in a bandage ... Sarah Silverman and Tina Fey outside the Letterman show ... Jessica Alba standing on the sidewalk with her bodyguard holding her waist... Lindsay Lohan going into Kirna Zabete in SoHo, and later leaving the Bowery Hotel ... and Dina and Ali Lohan leaving the launch of Lindsay's new clothing line at Henri Bendel.

You may have heard about Russian mogul Valery Kogan and his wife Olga when they purchased a mansion in Greenwich for $18.5 million and then applied for permission to raze the house to build their 27,000-square-foot "dream home." In May Greenwich's planning commission denied the Kogans a permit following complaints from residents, who voiced concern that the mammoth manse would—gasp!—dwarf their own mansions and be a "vulgar" addition to the neighborhood. But Valery and Olga haven't given up on the dream. They resubmitted plans for a scaled-down version of the home just last week. And what exactly does "scaled-back" mean in rich Russian-speak? The new plan features 25 percent less square footage and just 15 bathrooms, down from the 26 they initially proposed. Alas, the revised application does not indicate if some of the other amenities they said they planned to install—like Turkish and Finnish bathing facilities and a "dog grooming room"—made the final cut.

It's almost impossible to imagine now, we know, but there once was a time when cultural lynchpins Blair Waldorf and Serena Van der Woodsen existed only in the pages of YA novels, and as such their corrupting influence of superficiality, decadence and greed was limited to young girls (and a few girlish boys), rather than an across-the-board, if small, section of the TV-viewing public. But will the supposed literary antithesis to the Gossip Girl books make it to primetime? Let's hope not.

Not such great news if you're hunting for a rental: According to Citi Habitats, the economic downturn has not yet had a significant impact on Manhattan rental prices. Prices only fell slightly from July through September, except for one-bedrooms, which actually rose two percent. [NY1]

A source tells Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider that Yahoo! is acquiring AOL from Time Warner and will announce the news as early as tomorrow. [SAR]

You don't have to just rely on the government to fix the economy. You can play a part, too, by lending a helping hand to a former employee of Lehman Brothers. How, you ask? By picking up some of the junk ex-Lehmanites are now selling on Ebay. On sale today: a Lehman Brothers evacuation kit, which was handed out to employees after the attacks of Sept. 11 (but clearly wasn't much help when it came to evacuating employees from the credit crisis); a Lehman mousepad, which comes along with a snazzy pen; a Lehman lanyard which you can use to hang an ID card around your neck (and which, if you don't buy, could very well be turned into a noose in the near future); and this card which was used in the Lehman Brothers cafe at 745 Seventh Avenue: "Like Lehman Brothers, this card has no more remaining value."

Art Review has issued its "Power 100" list of the industry's most influential figures, and manages to make it semi-relevant in these troubled economic times: Erstwhile major art sponsors UBS and Deutsche Bank are conspicuous in their absence, and the list's compilers say that the murky economic climate has made established artists more desirable to big-name collectors. As a result, Damien Hirst is number one—the only other artist in the top ten, Jasper Johns, is number nine—followed by Larry Gagosian and the MOMA's new associate director Kathy Halbreich.

It's a special day for two important men in the fashion biz: Ralph Lauren is 69 and Isaac Mizrahi is 47. Also celebrating today: Yankees manager Joe Girardi is 44. Marc Jacobs' longtime business partner Robert Duffy is turning 54. Feminist writer Katha Pollitt is 59. Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines turns 34. Usher is 30. Model Daniela Pestova turns 38. Wrestler/actress Stacy Keibler is 29. And Madonna's daughter, Lourdes Leon, is turning 12.

When it comes to Sarah Palin, you've probably heard every rumor and allegation over the past last month. But here's one more piece of Palin news to make your jaw drop: Eight years ago, Sarah Palin drove two hours to Anchorage to attend an Ivana Trump event where she stood in line to purchase a bottle of Ivana's perfume and an autographed copy of her book. Disturbing, isn't it? Naturally, Ivana is solidly behind her former fan/small-town mayor-turned-vice presidential candidate: "We have a lot in common. She's down to earth; I'm down to earth. In business, I use the skills I picked up as a ski champion rather than shooting moose, but there's nothing wrong with that." [P6 Mag]

♦ Is Lauren Bush supporting Barack Obama? Maybe. The niece of the president praised the Democratic nominee in a recent interview and she decided against using her family name for her new clothing line, Lauren Pierce, taking her grandmother's maiden name instead. [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are either engaged or splitting up, depending on what you read. [Daily Mail, MSN]
♦ Marc Jacobs is supposedly jealous that his ex, Jason Preston, is dating someone else, even though he has a new boyfriend of his own, too. [P6]
♦ He can't afford a plane, but Diddy did get to upgrade to a new Rolls-Royce last week. [P6]
♦ In a new memoir, Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch) says she used to trade sex for coke. [NYDN]

♦ In a extraordinarily bold move, the U.S. will use $250 billion to take equity stakes in major financial institutions like Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as part of an effort to restore confidence in the system, unlock the credit markets and "avoid financial collapse." [WSJ, NYT]
♦ The government's move isn't unprecedented, although not everyone is very happy with the "partial nationalization" approach. [NYT, WaPo]
♦ Global markets continued to rise overnight as investors responded to news of the government's plan. [Bloomberg]
♦ Notwithstanding the bailout, some hedge fund titans like Steve Cohen, John Paulson, and Israel Englander are staying on the sidelines and keeping their billions in cash. [WSJ]

♦ If Sarah Palin was on the cover of Elle, what would she look like? "Two words," says Joe Zee: "Blowout and contact lenses." That's actually four words, Joe, but we get the point. [Daily Intel]
♦ Today in bizarre publicity stunts: Wal-Mart is opening a pop-up store in Times Square, and will also have a truck "roving around the city to celebrate the launch of AC/DC's new album." [Reuters via Curbed]
♦ Kelly Cutrone won't be appearing on Whitney Port's new show on MTV: "I didn't really feel like it was a great idea to be on a spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff." [The Cut]
♦ Sofia Coppola's goal in designing for Louis Vuitton was "to create the perfect bag that doesn't exist." The result is the $2,190 "SC" purse. [IHT]

In this week's issue of Newsweek, heiress/author Holly Peterson shares a few anecdotes about how the very rich are cutting back in these turbulent economic times. The daughter of Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson, Holly says people are now flying commercial rather than jumping on private jets, women are wearing the same dress twice, and lots of men now seem to have more time on their hands. (The proof: some guys are actually dropping their kids off at school in the morning, a job once relegated to wives and nannies.) "Everyone is just plain scared, but no one is talking specifics," she explains. "The thing about rich people is you never know exactly how rich they are or where their money is." Well, except in the case of her father, of course, who walked away with $1.9 billion in cash when his private equity firm went public last year. [Newsweek via Radar]