Raging liberal tax-and-spend broadcaster Keith Olbermann is a hypocritical tax cheat who wants to deprive the government of revenues in order to further enrich himself! That's according to the well-named site Olbermann Watch, which reports that the MSNBC host has a tax warrant out against his personal corporation in New York, for failing to pay about $2,300 in state taxes. All of which would have gone to buying baby formula for children on welfare, but which Olbermann wantonly hoarded to enhance his own hair gel collection instead! He should really pay up. Disclaimer: Although this news is true, it comes from a right-leaning website, which is inherently untrustworthy. Unlike, you know, Huffington Post. [Olbermann Watch]

The WSJ wraps up its three-part series on the Bear Stearns Wall Street clusterfuck today, and it is a masterpiece of financial journalism that's a lock for a Pulitzer. Uh, not that we care. In the final installment, various cutthroat maneuvers lead to JP Morgan's bitter $2-per-share salvation of the troubled Bear. And it's clear that enemies of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon (such as: formerly wealthy people who work at Bear Stearns!) were very forthcoming sources on this story, because two of the best anecdotes in the piece do nothing but make him look like a snippy asshole:

Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that has come to dominate the radio dial and our country's political media at large (you can't go anywhere these days without hearing about the latest Rachel Maddow show) is back in the news. This time, for fraud! The network's fugitive former director, Evan Montvel-Cohen, was arrested in Guam yesterday on money-laundering charges unrelated to Air America. But boy, they should really consider rehiring him for his fundraising skills alone:

When you loathe someone, there's nothing more cathartic than scrawling ad-hominem invective over a portrait of that person! At least, that's the thought behind a new painting of disgraced Bear Stearns chair Jimmy Cayne by Geoffrey Raymond, the artist who's made a career out of painting controversy-tainted Wall Streeters. Raymond was standing outside Bear's headquarters at 383 Madison yesterday and offering Bear employees a red marker to express their black thoughts about Cayne on his painting, "The Annotated Bear." A few employees of the about-to-shutter bank—today was the last day in Bear Stearns' 85-year life—took up the offer, scribbling love notes like "Dear Jim, Up Yours" and "Now You Know What BS Stands For." Make yourself at home in the pillory, Jimmy, it's going to be a long time before these burned bankers tire of throwing rocks at you.

Last night was the social event of the year for the finance community: It was the annual gala of the Robin Hood Foundation, the poverty-battling non-profit backed by banking heavyweights. The usual suspects from the worlds of hedge funds and private equity were in attendance, as were a smattering of celebs too classy for the Sex and the City premiere, including Jay-Z, Conan O'Brien, Russell Simmons, Tom Brokaw, David Byrne, and Cindy Sherman. Performances by Shakira, Sheryl Crow, and John Legend had noted hoofers like Henry Kravis, Steve Cohen, and Art Samberg tapping their feet underneath their tables.

The Wall Street Journal is in the midst of a trillion-word ongoing series chronicling the downfall of Wall Street firm Bear Stearns earlier this year. Today's installment looks at the rapid compounding of the firm's financial problems, which builds inexorably into a crisis. That's nice and everything, but the really interesting part comes when the story reveals what threw a wrench into the multibillion-dollar firm's effort to save its public reputation: Eliot Spitzer and his stupid hooker! Not to mention their old card-playing stoner chairman of the board:

Angelo Mozilo is the CEO of disastrous mortgage lender Countrywide, and one of the most overpaid, reviled, and villainous business executives in America today. He's drawn huge salaries even as his company led to the way for the subprime mortgage collapse. So you might expect the guy to be surrounded at all times by a team of highly-paid image consultants, ensuring that every word out of his mouth in some way helped to resurrect his shattered reputation. Wrong, bitches! With a classic "Hitting reply instead of forward" move, Mozilo inadvertently let a desperate homeowner (and the world) know what he thought of his plea for help: "Disgusting.":

It's worthwhile sometimes to stop and think about the real victims of today's tanking American economy. Like Sanjay Sanghoee, a hedge-funder who's running into trouble financing the film version of his corporate intrigue novel. The novel, Merger, is your standard tale of "an Indian corporate titan who begins a hostile takeover of a satellite company that transmits information from the C.I.A." Obviously, it'd make a great little indie film. So Sanghoee, none of whose Law & Order spec scripts were ever accepted, raised millions in private money from his hedge fund friends. They loved the book, and the pitch, and the fact that it was a movie made by a banker about bankers. But then, the mortgage crisis! Suddenly, not even a verbal agreement from Lara Flynn Boyle "to take a supporting role as a sultry henchwoman" was enough to keep the checks rolling in.

Business types are excited about the news today that General Electric is planning to sell off its appliance division in a $5 billion move. Normal types are excited because this proves that GE CEO Jeff Immelt is now making decisions for his $323 billion company based on how they would affect the characters of 30 Rock. After Alec Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy got relieved of his imaginary position running the microwave division of GE's NBC on the April 21 episode, it was only a matter of time before this sale happened. The loss of a leader of Alec Baldwin's caliber—and its ripple effects on Tina Fey—sends strong signals to Wall Street. Recap video of that fateful episode is below. If GE decides to finance Tracy Morgan's Fat Bitch 2 movie, we're rating its stock a strong buy.

We've reported that Monster, Palm, Intuit, EarthLink and MetroPCS bought $856 million in auction-rate securities. The credit market being what it is these days, these companies are having a hard time getting cash for their paper. Add Google to the bunch. According to a filing with the SEC, Google owns $259.6 million worth — or worthless — of auction-rate securities.

When massive corporations decide to come up with a new slogan, they almost always end up with something short, trite, and massively expensive. Citigroup just unveiled its earth-shaking new slogan "Citi Never Sleeps," which is a reworking of its classic "The Citi Never Sleeps" tagline. But didn't they just spend $30 million last year launching a different slogan? Well yes, but that one didn't work out, because it sounded like it came straight from the mouth of bottom-rung redneck comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Derisive laughter is appropriate here:

Frivolous backstabbing egocentric money media war! The protagonists: Tim Sykes (pictured), who made a big name for himself as an under-30 hot shot hedge fund guy by starring in a reality show called Wall Street Warriors, and then proceeded to lose lots of his money and try to remake himself as a media figure; and Randall Lane, the former editor of odious greed magazine Trader Monthly and current head of Doubledown Media, who recently lost a gig publishing Players Club magazine after a financial dispute. Lane disinvited Sykes from a Trader Monthly party last year, and the young capitalist is still nursing his wounded ego! Now Sykes has taken to the internet to tell Lane—a "Sick Twisted Son Of A Bitch"—boo-yah, loser!:

Bear Stearns might lay off 10,000 employees as it's subsumed by JP Morgan. But it's the Wall Street kind of layoff, where you get nine months pay and one-third of last year's bonus. Why the hell are we bloggers again? [Dealbreaker]

Lehman Brothers' Japan office is under scrutiny for making a little mistake: it lost a $350 million investment in a fraud. They thought the project they were investing in was backed by a reputable Japanese trading house, but it really wasn't. How did the scammers pull off their master plan? With fake stationery and business cards. Yes: somebody showed them some documents with an "official" company seal, handed over that genuine-looking business card, and next thing you know, $350 million! When things like this—or, say, a low-level trader at Societe General losing $7 billion by himself— happen at some of the world's top financial institutions, the impulse is to call those involved idiots or crooks. And sometimes they are. But guess what: getting scammed can be way easier than you think. And that especially goes for journalists!

Ha ha, your medium is dying! Financial-news print outlets seeking relevance have added video to their web sites. But their work is pretty much the opposite of YouTube gold. Brett Erlich, apparently just this guy who loves web videos, makes fun of the work of the Journal, Forbes, and Fortune on this criminally underwatched Current TV segment.

Word on "The Street" is that CNBC Reporter Michelle Caruso-Cabrera may be dating Gary Parr, deputy chairman of Lazard and a guy who is involved in finance stories Caruso-Cabrera could be covering [Radar]. It's reminiscent of CNBC Money Honey Maria Bartiromo's purported canoodling with Citigroup exec Todd Thompson. This raises an important issue: why do all the rich business guys go for the CNBC women? Haven't they heard of a little place called FOX BUSINESS NETWORK, which put in a lot of effort to hire its own stable of attractive female on-air personalities to lure male viewers? Can they get some love over there? We've decided to help them out; after the jump, five of Fox's foxy professional women, and a real item of interest about each one. Act now, Wall Street jerks!

The Starbucks high command had its annual shareholder meeting today in Seattle. The company's stock price has fallen by almost half in the past year. So what big changes are in store? Upgraded coffee makers, shorter espresso machines "that will allow baristas to interact more easily with customers," and other minor crap that probably won't change the fact that SBUX is the embodiment of corporate stealth penetration into the liberal American psyche. The company's big hope for redemption, though, is its newest customer-relations website, MyStarbucksIdea.com, where they solicit ideas for improvement from YOU, the consumer [WSJ]. If you have any great thoughts you should let them know immediately, because even the more popular suggestions on the site so far aren't exactly staggering works of turnaround genius:

MasterCard has just released a new credit card for the good people of Dubai—the good, rich, rich, rich people. The Dubai First Royale MasterCard is invitation-only, offered to a "select" group of elites who "must possess the right criteria in terms of social standing and profile." And are very rich. The card itself is diamond-studded—practical and functional. It offers benefits like a huge credit line and a personal concierge. Neither you nor we shall ever have one of these. Sob. Below, a guide to other deluxe credit cards neither of us will ever be invited to own; press your nose to the glass and salivate at the pretty, pretty plastic.

Since I read Portfolio for my business news, I never know what the hell is going on in business. Thankfully there's this slideshow on Google Docs, which explains the origins of the subprime mortgage collapse (putting the blame on pretty much everyone working in a financial institution). Someone find this guy so he can explain brokered conventions. [UPDATE: If you still don't get the subprime crisis, the commenter ADismalScience further explains it in the thread below, here, here and here.]

Portƒolio magazine brings a new angle to the Britney Spears story, asking, in their report "The Britney Economy," just how much money the singer and unfit-mothers'-rights activist produces annually. Beyond record sales, Wal-Mart scent exclusives, and canceled concert tours, the mere act of Britney being Britney, indulging each and every one of her increasingly unpredictable whims, winds up putting cheesy-bread on the table of countless paparazzi, gossip magazine editors, hair-extension technicians, and coffee-blending artisans, to the tune of a whopping $120 million per year: