• Hedge fund manager Cliff Asness won't have an apartment to stay in when he makes occasional trips to Manhattan from his home in Greenwich. Or at least he won't have the apartment at The Oxford on East 72nd Street that he bought back in 2002 and has owned till now. Asness has sold the 35th floor apartment for $1.55 million. [Cityfile]
• James Luikart, executive vice president of the private equity firm Jeffries Capital Partners, has paid $7.8 million for an 18th floor apartment at 170 East End Avenue. He and his wife also picked up a ground-floor studio in the building for an additional $500,000. [Cityfile]
• Things haven't been going well at Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi. And they're not getting any better. The price of the combined triplex and duplex has been cut to $27.9 million, which is $10.1 million less than its last listing price of $38 million, or roughly $31 million less than its original asking price of $59 million. [NYP]

Wall Street looks nothing like it did a year ago, of course, but here's a sign that things may be even more desperate than previously imagined: Some hedge funders are offering to work for free. Why would people accustomed to earning seven-figure annual incomes in the past stoop to this? For one thing, lying to your wife and telling her you have "meetings" to go to and then spending the afternoon playing online poker at a Starbucks in Midtown gets old after awhile. And working for free might just lead to a real job in the future. That's the thinking, at least:

Hedge fund titan Cliff Asness is not a happy camper today. The founder of AQR Capital (and a man once described as one of the smartest guys in the business) is firing back at Dealbreaker.com for reporting on his firm's losses and suggesting he'd fired his own secretary, as well as at former employees of his fund, who appear to have been ripping him to pieces in anonymous comments: "The internet's a great place for anonymous ignorant fools who feel like tough guys in the know when they post their verbal vomit. Enjoy your fun while it lasts. When we go back to doing great for clients what are you going to do for fun? Well, whatever, I'm sure it will be dishonorable and cowardly." [Dealbreaker]

♦ The Bank of England slashed its key interest rate to 3 percent. And it may go even lower. [Marketwatch]
♦ The short list for Treasury Secretary: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Paul Volcker, and Bob Rubin. [WSJ]
♦ Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group reported a $502.5 million loss for the third quarter. [DB]
♦ More chatter about falling bonuses: One study says the drop could be 20 and 35 percent on average with a 70 percent fall-off for some top execs. [NYT]