Oh pooh! The moneyed slobs of the Hamptons are feeling the pinch of the recession this summer! Tiffy's gala will be positively ruined! "Trustees of the Children's Museum of the East End rejected a dinner dance at a rented farm in favor of a cocktail party on the museum grounds here, replaced a five-piece rock ‘n' roll cover band with a teenage jazz combo and slashed ticket prices to $150 from $450, but still only drew about 150 guests, half the number that turned out for the benefit last year... And there are still hundreds of tickets left for the annual Art for Life gala, also scheduled for Saturday night, at the East Hampton estate of Russell Simmons, the rap impresario." People, won't someone please think of the rappers?!

Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (née Sneed) (thanks Wikipedia!) used to be the most powerful woman in business, back when she was running HP. She ran HP into the ground, btw, forcing a deadly merger with Compaq, laying off 7,000 people, losing market share to Dell and IBM, and finally being forced out by the board. She received a ridiculous $21 million cash severance payment (breaking the company's own severance cap) and she also somehow received a reputation as someone to be taken seriously in matters of business. Now her job is to convince people that John McCain is business-friendly and knowledgeable about money in general. America! Lloyd Grove interviewed her for Portfolio. This is our favorite quote:

This month's Fortune presents two dueling covers—John McCain and Barack Obama both promising to fix the economy. It's cute! John McCain says the greatest threat to our economy is terrorism, obviously. ("Terrorism" means "secret Muslim president.") But McCain, while he doesn't understand anything about economics, has a cunning plan to fix the current crises: allow Barack Obama to win and inherit a situation so dismal that there's next-to-nothing he can do, then allow McCain's party to reap the benefits of total collapse a few generation later. Cunning! [Animal]

Oil was $140 a barrel on Monday, now it's below $133 a barrel either because Vladimir Putin farted or the U.S. released its fuel stock figures — we're not sure. Is Peak Oil real, or is the myth driving investors to get nutty with an otherwise healthy market? A decade ago, when oil was cheap, it was a "controversial theory," reported in the San Francisco Examiner, that predicted the party wouldn't last very much longer. So why was the conventional wisdom of OPEC fantasists, who warned of "$5 oil," so laughably bogus? (The Economist devoted a cover story to it; see left.) Who made false predictions then, and who's really talking sense about the state of the industry now?

Sure, the current dicey economic climate has reduced America to nation of terrified food hoarders. But more importantly, it has cost us some of our annoying and unnecessarily strange advertising icons: Applebee's Wanda Sykes-voiced talking apple, and a bunch of guys running around in bizarre red pigtail wigs on behalf of Wendy's. Take a moment to mourn them. "Both campaigns were meant to attract younger diners," the Times reports. But they failed, because kids aren't doing as many drugs these days, I guess. The companies' new advertising strategy? "Hey, look at our food."

The question weighing on the mind of the print media at large is, "In what month will I be getting laid off?" But in the luxury print media sector, the question is more like, "Will our readers be buying more, or fewer, private planes this year? And when should I buy mine?" As hard as it is for crusading journalism school grads to admit, magazines targeting upscale readers—a polite term for "rich Wall Street bastards"—will naturally attract more premium advertising, and are usually better positioned to ride out any crazy economic fluctuations than other magazines whose readers are quicker to go broke. Or are they?

New York University announced a plan last Friday to save $25 through an administrative hiring freeze and restructuring. While the school announced the plan in the name of efficiency and passing the savings onto the students, a memo from NYU President John Sexton placed the blame squarely on NYU's "high ratio of dreams to resources," also calling out "a world where financial markets are in turmoil, the US economy and currency are weakening, and our elected officials are raising serious questions about higher education." Not to mention that today's generation of high school students has never even heard of Felicity, and the Olsens have been gone for years. Details of the hiring freeze at NYUNews, Sexton's full memo after the jump.

Silicon Valley added 28,000 jobs in the last 12 months, up 2.1 percent. We outpaced the rest of California at 0.9 percent and the nation at 1.4 percent. But still, that's fewer new jobs than were added the year before, when the Valley gained 33,000. And the number of midwage jobs, those that pay between $30,000 to $80,000 a year, continue to shrink. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley's cost of living is 47 percent higher than the rest of the country. All this, according to the Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation annual report. More stats:

We've laughed it off for months now but maybe Mayor Bloomberg is idiotic enough to run for president. How else to explain the formerly bland technorat's suddenly strained attempt to transform himself into similarly rich and short crank Ross Perot? Asked about Bush's economic stimulus plan (he is going to send us all checks!!!), Bloomberg said it was "like giving a drink to an alcoholic." He meant because Congress is addicted to spending, but the analogy seems to actually say that Americans are addicted to having money. Or maybe he is actually just saying that Americans will actually spend their entire stimulus checks on booze? Some of them will, sure. But some of them will spend it on drugs! Besides, Americans aren't addicted to cash. We're addicted to running up debt! [NYSun]

All the traders and bankers responsible for the mortgage crisis had a kick-ass weekend in Vegas! They feel quite sober and bad about the whole collapse of the economy thing, of course, in between rounds of golf and Super Bowl parties hosted by Countrywide Financial. [NYT]

The Wall Street Journal has a humor columnist now! We'd make our own little funny about them laughing as the world burns (or the economy recesses, whatevs), but, really, no one is actually laughing at this. "We've called some of our best recessions in the shower or while making an omelet or fishing in Ireland. Our fifth recession, 'Data From a Distant Realm' (Capitol-EMI, 1969), which went platinum, was done in three days in Ringo's basement." It's no "Laughter in Uniform." [WSJ]

Yahoo! Food helps you adjust to the coming recession with this "dressed up" Ramen "recipe," a truly sad collection of words to end up in a sentence together. Next week: how to make a rucksack and the fine art of pencil sales! This will certainly come in handy for anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people in the next couple weeks. [Yahoo]

OIL HIT $100 A BARREL TODAY EVERYONE PANIC! It closed comfortably below that at $99.62, and adjusting for inflation it's not actually the highest it's ever been, but we're well on our way! Everyone invest in Flintstone cars. And Google. [NYT]

Anemic sales and high gas prices mean America's retailers might've had the worst Christmas ever! "Perhaps the season's biggest loser was women's apparel," says the Wall Street Journal. On the other hand, they didn't spent an hour stuck upside down in a tank full of shit.

Luxury leather goods maker Coach is predicting a "weakening retail landscape." Why should you care? Do a quick Google search for the term "Coach" and ads come from Coach, eBay, Luxuryhandbags.com and Bagborroworsteal.com. They may not have so many clicks to pay for if consumer confidence keeps dropping. Weakening retail is bad news for Google and other business dependent on online advertising. But there's hope.