Conde Nast overseer Si Newhouse desperately put his Alberto Giacometti sculpture, "L'Homme Qui Chavire"—for which he'd paid $20 million— up for auction at Sotheby's yesterday. He was expected to lose $10 million on the sale. He got lucky.

The Way We Live Now: Bubblicious. The Great American Real Estate Bubble is so one bubble ago. People are already gulping in fear for the new bubble. Will it be stocks? Asian currencies? Failed laundromats? Boutique hotels? Golden pennies? Sure!

Raising a child in our modern world can be expensive, what with their constant nagging for new "Gameboys" and "contraception." Fortunately your child's dewy, youthful innocence can be sold off to a modeling agency, for sweet, sweet money.

You may be aware that deathly newspaper company stocks have experienced a brief resurgence recently, amidst speculation that things aren't so bad after all for the newspaper industry. If you benefited from this resurgence at all, lucky you. Now sell.

Conde Nast potentate Si Newhouse is prepared to take a $10 million loss just to sell off some art and raise some cash. That can't be good.

Warren Buffett is buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp—a railroad company, what else would it be?—for $44 billion, in what he calls an ""all-in wager on the economic future of the United States." We call it an old dude who forgot that people don't ride trains any more! But cheers to the greatest investor of his generation, Warren Buffett, and his losing all-in bet.

The new head of the National Endowment for the Arts says that he'd like to explore government funding for hip hop culture, including rap and graffiti. Whoa, whoa. Does he know about the hoes?

Media jobs used to be cushy; nowadays, you can't even land a media job, and if you do, it sucks. But six-figure journalism salaries still exist! As do terrible, fly-by-night hellholes (Billboard). We've found the best and the worst.

The Way We Live Now: Absolutely fabulous, thank you very much! When you said "we," you were referring to well-timed Ford investors and university presidents, correct? Oh, you mean everyone. They're all in the garbage business, one way or another.

The Way We Live Now: Bouncing into oblivion. Not giving a hoot. Skiing off the edge. Having horrible holidays. Believing, or not.

The Way We Live Now: In secret shame. We walk around in public acting like the recession is finally over. But look in your dirty closet, America! Our fanciest corporations are undercover paupers. Our homeless are disappearing. Into the void!

The Way We Live Now: Sulking about moodily. Night school is kicking our ass. We can't pay the train fare to work. And what's the point, even? There's no hope for employment. Unless you star in a music video.

The Way We Live Now: To the extreme. We will sell ourselves for food. We will torture someone over loan modifications. We will make an entire nation too broke to afford McDonald's. What a seductive lifestyle!

Billionaire investor Jeffry Picower—who made billions off of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme—was found dead in his (expensive) pool Sunday. Murder??? Well, the coroner doesn't want you to think so. But clearly, Madoff's money has a deadly curse.

The Way We Live Now: Big. Too big, actually. Too big to fail. Too big to manage. Too big to fuck with. Here's what we're gonna do: Run away to Africa, find diamonds, get rich, blow it, FIXED.

Everybody thinks, oh, if things get too bad I'll just go on down to the bodega and rob the place, problem solved. Well yea, go ahead and think that, then you meet a clerk named Mustafa Yakupoglu, who will grab your big ass shotgun out of your hands and chase you out of his store, like a bunch of dudes scared of a man with a shotgun.

As soon as New York magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein died last week, speculation about the magazine's future began. Would the Wasserstein family really want to hang on to a money-losing prestige title? Yes, apparently.

The Way We Live Now: Doing everything we can to get your unemployed ass back on your feet. Don't blame "The System" if you can't find a job. "The System" is ready to re-assimilate you into The Matrix help you!

When the Bernie Madoff scandal broke, New York Mets fans were momentarily terrified because the team's owners had huge accounts with Madoff's firm. Turns out that was the Mets' best investment. Hey-o!

Great news: The New York Times Co. lost more than $35 million in the third quarter! They've decided that "selling ads" is the way of the past.