In Italy, amusingly corrupt right-wing media mogul Silvio Berlusconi has just returned to his old position of Prime Minister, after a bitterly contested election that also put a straight-up fascist in charge of Rome. Berlusconi welcomed the country's rightward turn by invoking the name of Francisco Franco's Spanish fascist party. On the way out of power, the departing center-left government "published every Italian's declared earnings and tax contributions on the internet." They didn't even play it off as an accident, either: "The finance ministry described the move as a bid to improve transparency." Hah. Stay classy, Italy. We'd check to see what an Italian professional blogger makes, but we're kind of terrified of the whole country. [BBC]

The Observer's Doree Shafrir and Jezebel's Jessica Grose landed a book deal for "Postcards From Yo Momma," their beloved tumblr blog that reprints emails from readers' mothers, because we are all terrible children. Doree and Jessica "are said to have received a comfortable... sum," according to Balk, though not as much a the creators of Stuff White People Like. Of course the Stuff White People Like guys actually have to, like, write their book. Themselves! [Radar] Update: Doree says, "they actually want quite a bit of original content." Of course she'll probably make her mom write it.

Comedian Al Franken is running for Senate out in the frigid wilderness of Minnesota. He's running against Norm Coleman, an oily scumbag whose best argument for remaining a senator is that he's not comedian Al Franken. It will be a bitter and dirty race. The GOP is painting Franken as an out-of-touch Hollywood liberal, which is untrue: he's an out-of-touch New York liberal. They can't use the New York Jew line against him, though, as Norm Coleman is a real New York Jew. And Coleman's "wife" is a political prop—she lives in Hollywood, of course, where she is trying to be an "actress." So this is what they're trying on Franken now: he didn't pay his taxes once.

Even if your great-grandfather started the Spanish-American War, it doesn't always mean you can pay your bills on time. Lydia Hearst, the newspaper heiress who writes for Page 6 Magazine on occasion, has a website that was suspended for non-payment some time ago. How sad. It's just like that time last year when I came home and they'd shut off the cable and I sat on my bed and cried. Except I had $10 in the bank, not a billion.

We throw ourselves at your mercy. Paying taxes is a terrible bother for freelancers, which means us, your Gawker staff. A reader asked us to be servicey and offer our tips. BUT WE HAVE NONE. The only tax tip I ever got was "file quarterly," which I didn't do. But some of you commenters are like economic geniuses and stuff, right? Right? Then help a blogger out. Tell us what to do, and how to do it.

Today, New York plays a little game to make you feel like a moron. What if you had had $100,000 to invest in 1998? Well, you would probably still be a rich person now, but bear with them. They offer a number of examples of investments you could've made instead of spending all your time getting wasted and listening to the New Radicals (was it really that long ago!). Sure, they include a couple ringers that woulda lost you money (theglobe.com stock! A BMW!), but otherwise it's a rich catalog of things you were too poor to afford then that now you are all the poorer for not having bought. 3,300 shares of Apple! A townhouse just about anywhere in New York! Gold! Investments they missed, after the jump.

The United Way and the Community Service Society have just released a slew of demographic maps of New York City, which handily answer the question: Are The Poors in your hood? Pictured, the household income map (click to enlarge), which is perhaps most surprising for revealing that Williamsburg, despite its yuppie influx, is still broke, along with HOT HOT NEXT BIG THING neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, et al. After the jump, neighborhood-specific maps of the city showing unemployment rates, immigrant populations, and "disconnected youth" who aren't working, in school, or concerned about you very much.

Many months ago, top Washington Post political reporters Jim VandeHei and John Harris left their real newspaper to go be partners in a multimedia cross-platform Web 2.0 venture called Politico, which is actually a tiny little newspaper in Washington, DC. And a website. They lured a bunch of other top reporters over there too, with promises of lots and lots of Internet money, just like the Huffington Post gets, and promises of expansion and fame. It's been a huge success! Maybe! The Observer reports today that Politico is now turning into a TV show, which makes sense, because they are owned by a company that owns TV stations, but there's still not any word on whether this venture is actually making any money, for anyone. Which we're kinda curious about! Is it, as it appears to be, a big vanity project?

So—the years of tax returns the Clintons just released? They'll be feeding crazy news stories throughout the weekend. (Friday afternoon news dump! Good work, Clintons!) We'll try to limit ourselves to this: Bill Clinton has made millions of dollars just for being friends with Ron Burkle. Back in 2001, Burkle, the supermarket magnate who secretly owns Radar, asked his good friend Bill to do some nonsense advisory work for Burkle's private equity firm, Yucaipa Companies. How has that worked out? Well! Bill reported $12,674,668 in income from Yucaipa between 2001 and 2006. All for flying around on Burkle's private jet with cute girls. Anyway this could be a bit of trouble for Bill because of the sleazy rumors and whatnot.

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?

Was this week a peek at a terrible future? A dreadful harbinger of things to come? Will all the weeks be like this from now on? Yeah, news-wise, it was slow, which is deadly for a blog like this, but it shouldn't have been slow. Two gubernatorial sex scandals! A heated election! A collapsing economy! Shouldn't it be crazy here? Maybe we're all too depressed to write about it! Look at Drudge. The image above has been on top of his site all day. He's talking about the presidential race, but everyone feels like that crying smiley face this week. Right? Let's take a look at the tape:

Having neglected to take to heart the dire lessons of the classic muckraking documentary Trading Places, Wall Street has apparently turned its deadly attention to the commodities futures market. [NYT]

A Bear Stearns trader with a sense of humor taped a hard-earned two-buck greenback to the front door of Bear's corporate headquarters in New York. $2 is the per-share value that JPMorgan Chase agreed to purchase Bear Stearns for, a far cry from the $60 a share that the bank was trading at last week. Our best caption is above, but you can do better. Leave one in the comments below. (Photo by Reuters/Kristina Cooke)

Hey, remember how Scarlett Johansson was auctioning herself off for charity? The bidding ended yesterday and someone paid FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for the opportunity to go to the He's Just Not That Into You premiere, ride in a car that's longer than other cars and is therefore fancy, and meet the busty, hoarse-voiced actress. Though this person, whose cryptic, asexual eBay name is Bossnour, lives in England so they probably just threw, what, like three pence into PayPal and that was that. Bossnour, if you are out there somewhere, reading this: Please let us know how this goes when it goes. Did she touch you? Did you touch her? Was it awkward? Can I have $40,000? [Showbiz Spy]

Is international asshole and oil heir Brandon Davis broke? He's been bumming money off friends and asking strangers to buy him drinks. But this is the same international asshole and oil heir who was detained at Syndney International airport in January for carrying too much cash around. Rumors of Davis getting cut off have been going around since July, but maybe he just forgot to deposit his allowance this month. Rich people don't understand that regular people don't casually lend out thousands of dollars (unless you are trying to buy an over-valued home). Perhaps he's just asking for loans and drinks because of the "asshole" bit. The man should be living large off royalties from coining "firecrotch" alone. [P6]

We report, you decide. This week in baby rumors, is Natasha Lyonne preggers? Last time we stalked caught up with our favorite crazee, she looked "clean, clear eyed and smiled a lot" with Chloe Seviggasygny. Now, our stalker says she has a bun in the oven. What do you think? Not is she pregnant, but SHOULD she be pregnant? What is in store for the baby, being the spawn of a celebrity? How much will Natasha get for the pics? Sighting after the jump.

Attached, Nicole Richie's million dollar baby. As in one-million dollars, the price paid by People for the exclusive. Holy buckets, you say—what an expensive baby! You, sir, are naive. This is the bargain baby! Shiloh Jolie-Pitt was worth $4m. Jennifer Lopez's new twins went for more than $3m each! (How awesome would it have been, actually, if Jennifer had sold one twin to People and the other to OK!?) Even Christina Aguilera's loser baby was worth $1.5! And once Angelina has this next phantom baby the photo will probably cost some outlet enough to publicly finance the presidential election. Or like ten minutes of Iraq! This is the business model that will save the magazine industry. And keep our celebrities the way we like them: pregnant and complicit in the exploitation of their families. [Related]

The New York Post this morning puts a total of four reporters on the trail of Lauren Cleri, the bad woman who ruined her husband's life on national television this week by revealing her cheating heart on the Fox show "Moment of Truth." She wasn't that hard to track down, but you need some support in touch and go reporting situations like this. The stunning headline: WIFE: I DID IT FOR THE TV MONEY [NYP]. She's still telling the truth, at least. Cleri said she was surprised at the attention the couple's meltdown in front of 8 million viewers got, because she didn't think they were "going to stand out." Well then. It's hard for her too, you know; a message on her MySpace page (below) trumpets the depth of her despair.

Hey, rent is due soon. Oh, which reminds me: Daniel Radcliffe, the alter-ego of magical British wizard Harry Potter, has just purchased his second New York apartment, for a rumored $4.9 million. He'll divide his time between his fabulous New York pads and the cupboard under the stairs he sleeps in back in Little Whinging. [Showbiz Spy]

Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and awkward filmmaker, dimly fascinated us with his 2003 documentary Born Rich, in which he interviewed his other entitled friends about what it means to be fabulously and accidentally wealthy. These friends ran the gamut from relatively normal to about to spin off the planet, and it was fairly entertaining, if not all that enlightening. Now he's got a more expansive follow-up premiering on Cinemax (only the best) this week called The One Percent (though it originally showed at the TriBeCa Film Festival back in 2006.)