The unemployment rate has dipped below 8 percent for the first time since 2009 — evidence of a slow, but steady recovery? Or evidence that hundreds of thousands of unemployed Democrats gathered together to lie about being employed?
Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and the man you can blame for destroying your productivity at work, turns 33 today. Fashion designer Calvin Klein is turning 67. Meg Ryan is 48. Today show news anchor Ann Curry is turning 53. Former GE CEO Jack Welch is 74. Ted Turner is turning 71. Jodie Foster is 47. Restaurant-less chef Rocco DiSpirito turns 43. Model Daria Werbowy is 26. Actress Allison Janney is 50. WNYC president Laura Walker is 52. TV legend Dick Cavett turns 73. Jerry Sheindlin, the former People's Court judge and husband of Judge Judy, is turning 76. Former football player and sportscaster Ahmad Rashad is 60. And Larry King is 76 today, or just 24 years away from celebrating his centennial.
• George Stephanopoulos will probably replace Diane Sawyer on GMA. [TDB]
• Now that Bloomberg LP is talking over BusinessWeek, columnists Maria Bartiromo and Jack Welch are both parting ways with the mag. [NYP]
• CNN is laying off four of its web anchors since it no longer plans to produce live video on CNN.com. The good news? With Lou Dobbs no longer on the payroll, it should save $9 million over the next few years. [NYT, [NYP]
• Euna Lee, one of the two CurrentTV reporters who was imprisoned in North Korea earlier this year, has scored herself a six-figure book deal. [NYT]
• Shares of Playboy jumped yesterday after it was reported the apparel conglomerate Iconix was in talks to acquire the (struggling) company. [NYP]
• Another senior Observer editor is bidding goodbye to the paper. [Politico]
• Fashion mags are expecting their fortunes to improve in 2010. [WWD]
• Is the Fox Business Channel a lost cause at this point? [VF]
• Television is more getting more and more obscene, supposedly. [NYT]
• Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch has closed on the purchase of an apartment on the 46th-floor of One Beacon Court. It's located next door to the apartment he already owns. And the legendary exec—who just got out of the hospital a couple of weeks ago—scored a pretty good deal, too: Welch paid $8.3 million for the apartment, or nearly $1 million less than what it was first listed for back in February. [Cityfile, previously]
• Kimora Lee Simmons has dropped the price of her blingtastic mansion in Saddle River, NJ. The four-acre estate, which first went on the market for $23 million last year, is now listed for just $16.5 million. [NYP, Sotheby's]
• Restaurant mega-publicist and Iron Chef America judge Karine Bakhoum has put her co-op at 205 East 69th Street on the market. The three-bedroom pad with fireplace and chef's kitchen is listed for $2.35 million. [NYP, Halstead]
• Alec Baldwin has put his longtime co-op in the Eldorado on Central Park West on the market for $8.9 million. He's reportedly thinking about trading it in for a four-bedroom apartment at the Dakota, which has been reduced from $24 million to $12.5 million over the past year. [NYP]
• Former GE CEO Jack Welch is in contract to buy a three-bedroom pad at One Beacon Court that's next door to the condo he already owns. The 2,669-square-foot space was most recently listed for $8.995 million. [NYP, BHS]
• New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and his wife, Robin Wells, have paid $1.7 million for former Times reporter Joseph B. Treaster's three-bedroom co-op at 110 Riverside Drive. Meanwhile, the couple is currently in contract to sell their former apartment, a one-bedroom at 304 West 89th Street that was most recently listed for $599,000. [NYO, Corcoran]
• Employees at Goldman Sachs can expect the "biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year." [Guardian]
• Banks like Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup are "hiking pay for their top investment bankers in an attempt to stop an exodus of talent." [FT]
• Bill Gross of Pimco has "emerged as one of the nation's most influential financiers." How do we know this? Tim Geithner has him on speed-dial. [NYT]
• Russian-American billionaire Len Blavatnik is suing JPMorgan for allegedly mismanaging an investment account with $1 billion in assets. [NYT]
• Jack Welch is lending his name to a new online MBA program. [WSJ]
• Warren Buffett auctions off lunch every year for charity. The bidding is open, but it's not expected to rake in the fortune it did in years past. [Guardian]
• Jane Beasley, the ex-wife of former GE chief Jack Welch, has put her 3,663-square-foot condo at the Trump International up for sale. Beasley acquired the apartment in 2003 as part of her divorce settlement with Welch. It now can be yours for $28.8 million. [Cityfile, Trump Realty]
• Dr. Gary Roubin, an interventional cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital, and his wife Peta have gone into contract to sell their 6,800-square-foot carriage house at 168 East 73rd Street. The six-bedroom home, which includes penthouse terrace, garden, and outdoor basketball court, was most recently listed for $22 million. [Cityfile, SSNYC]
• Ernst & Young executive Deborah Whitmore and her husband Kenneth paid $4 million for a penthouse condo at 140 West 22nd Street. [Cityfile]
Calvin Klein turns 66 years old today. Chef (and axed Dancing with the Stars contestant) Rocco DiSpirito is celebrating his 42nd. The Today show's Ann Curry is 52. Larry King may look 100, but he's (only) turning 75. Former GE CEO Jack Welch is 73. Ted Turner is 70. WNYC president Laura Walker is turning 51. Book publisher Julie Grau is 45. Jodie Foster is 46. Model Daria Werbowy is turning 25. Meg Ryan is turning 47. Sportcaster Ahmad Rashad turns 59. Actress Allison Janney is 49. Former Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug is turning 31. And TV legend Dick Cavett is 72 years old today.
Two weeks ago the news surfaced that Viacom chief Sumner Redstone and his second wife, Paula Fortunato, were divorcing after five years of marriage. Much was made of Redstone and Fortunato's 39-year age gap and the couple's pre-nup, which will provide Fortunato with a $5 million fortuno for the five years she spent by the not-so-healthy billionaire's side. But she's hardly the only one who has been married to someone who could easily pass for her father or granddad. After the jump, a list of famous New York couples and their equally famous age gaps.
One of the most influential and admired business executives of his generation—and the poster boy for the hypercompetitive star CEO of the '80s and '90s—Welch is the retired chairman and CEO of General Electric.
While the state assembly may be prepared to vote in gay marriage for New York, the measure has no chance of passing—or even reaching—the state Senate. Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Shadydealsburg) announced at a news conference today that "We're not doing gay marriage by Thursday; that's for sure, or this year. We're not going to take a vote; we have too many other issues. We're not going to spend hours debating an issue that, you know, is not going to be of consequence." What could possibly account for such antipathy to what, by now, must be seen as a basic human right? The Times' Danny Hakim may have put his finger on it.
Sir Harry and Tina Brown are the closest thing the New York scene has to a royal couple. (Tina is Tina, and Harry is more charming and also better-looking than HRH Prince Charles of Edinburg.) On Sunday, aboard the Manhattan-sized cruise ship the Queen Mary II, they hosted a luncheon to benefit the American Institute for Stuttering. (Their son George for many years had a severe stutter.) Katie Couric was the M.C. Carly Simon was an honoree. Jack Welch sat in turtle-like repose as did, closer to the back, a very disengaged former gossip columnist Lloyd Grove. Candace Bushnell promised to set me up on a blind date and despite the early call to port—11 a.m.!—the champagne flowed freely. Joshua, still recovering from the BBQ festival avant-hier biked to Red Hook, following the limousines to the Cruise Terminal. Photographer Nikola Tamindzic took a cab.
So the big news in media circles, if you care about that sort of thing (and, really, what's more exciting, Danny DeVito drunk on 'The View'? We think not.), is Maurice "Hank" Greenberg's plan to buy the New York Times. This morning's Post reported that the "billionaire insurance titan" has been "buying huge blocks of New York Times stock to break the Sulzberger family's stranglehold on the media empire." This afternoon, CNBC's Charlie Gasparino (yeah, just pretend that you know who he is) advanced the story, claiming
Tina Brown, bemoaning the absence of sex scandal — or even sex appeal — makes an exception for Jack Welch,... Tina Brown, bemoaning the absence of sex scandal or even sex appeal makes an exception for Jack Welch, and tells this funny anecdote. "At dinner parties Welch tells friends that he married his first wife to please his mother, his second wife to please GE, and he'll marry his third to please himself."
Where every loin is girded for war [Tina Brown]
