• Lehman slashed 1,500 jobs yesterday. But job cuts are expected at several other banks around town very soon. [NYT]

• Obama now has a running mate. But now Joe Biden's son and brother are in the news over a hedge fund that went sour. [WaPo, Dealbook]

Dozens of perks both large and small have vanished at financial firms in recent months as the recession has deepened. Sadly, Deutsche Bank employees can no longer expect to be reimbursed for "adult entertainment." They're also barred from checking into hotels early. (Those who arrive for a morning meeting are expected to shower and shave at the airport rather than charge an extra day at the hotel.) Many junior UBS staffers are now being forced to fly coach. Goldman Sachs informed employees in London that they'd have to cut back on taxis and and meals; traders at Goldman in New York now have to buy their own beverages. (The bin of free soda and bottled water was removed.) And employees at various firms say the office temperature has gone up as firms try to keep energy costs under control.

• An analyst suggests Lehman may be a hostile takeover candidate; a WSJ reporter explains why that's unlikely; and another points out the difficulty involved in selling off its asset management business. [NYP, WSJ, WSJ]

• Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is expanding the probe into auction-rate financing. [Reuters]

• CVS has agreed to buy Longs Drug Stores for about $2.7 billion. [Bloomberg]

In an SEC filing, Yahoo reported that through June, it spent $36 million on fees for third-party advisors helping it deal with Microsoft's unsolicted bid for the company and all its fallout. The New York Times figures most of the money went to financial advisors Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Moelis & Company. Skadden Arps provided Yahoo with legal advice.

• Morgan Stanley has offered to buy back about $4.5 billion in auction-rate securities from clients, following a similar offer by Merrill Lynch last week. The move came after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office sent out another round of letters to banks, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Wachovia. [Bloomberg, WSJ]

• Ford announced an $8.7 billion loss for the second quarter—its worse ever—and an $8 billion write-down. [NYT]

• Yahoo and Carl Icahn have reached a settlement: Icahn and two of his nominees will join the board of the company. [AP]

• Merrill Lynch's $4.65 billion second-quarter loss was almost twice what analysts had predicted; the firm also wrote down an additional $9.5 billion in connection with subprime losses. [Bloomberg]

• Did Goldman Sachs have a hand in the downfall of Bear Stearns? London-based traders at the firm are now under investigation for spreading negative rumors [WSJ]

It's good to be Lloyd Blankfein: In 2007, the Goldman Sachs chief collected $68.5 million in cash and stock, monies he plowed into the real estate market with the purchase of an apartment at 15 Central Park West for $27 million and a ten-acre home in the Hamptons for $41 million. But he also gave a few bucks to charity, too! After the jump, the nitty gritty details from the Lloyd and Laura Blankfein Foundation, including his astonishingly generous $262 gift to the American Stroke Association.

• Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal is joining Goldman Sachs' board. [Bloomberg]

• Ten percent of Citi's investment banking division will lose their jobs in the coming weeks. [Bloomberg]

• Goldman Sachs reports that earnings slipped 11% in the second quarter, but still better than expected [WSJ]

Citing a more challenging consumer environment, greater customer-acquisition costs and investor reluctance to pay above-market prices for shares, Goldman Sachs today cut price targets for Internet stocks including Google, eBay, and Amazon by 10 percent. For more reasons why Wall Street is suddenly less impressed with your tech stock portfolio, see Goldman's entire report, embedded here:

A tip sent to Wall Street blog DealBreaker: "Goldman just cut free water/soda for employees." [DealBreaker]

Helio has tapped Goldman Sachs, its longtime banker, for a new project, we hear. Signing up a banker is usually a sign that a company is putting itself up for sale. Helio, Sky Dayton's wireless startup, began life as a joint venture of EarthLink and SK Telecom, the South Korean phone company. But EarthLink washed its hands of Helio after the untimely death of CEO Garry Betty, and on Tuesday, Dayton and most of his EarthLink-loyalist management team were ousted. Now SK, too, may be looking for Goldman to rid it of a cash-burning child. Why would anyone buy Helio? Not for its tiny user base. Possibly for its innovative phone designs, like the Ocean, and mobile friend-finding services. It is unlikely those will reclaim the hundreds of millions of dollars SK poured into Dayton's dream.

Dear all dudes who work at Goldman Sachs: We're in. Let's roll. Seriously, if you're taking home $600K (on average) for Christmas, we are all willing to stay home and tend the plants on the terrace and make you dinner and we don't really care if you're a schlub who thinks therapy is for wusses and you have five asthmatic dachshunds and self-loathing. Fine! Yes you, Steven Schukei, 30, VP of technology—you win New York!