Steve Rattner may eventually face civil and/or criminal charges in connection with an alleged kickback scheme involving his investment firm, Quadrangle Group. Many suspect it's just a matter of time before the scandal forces President Obama to oust him as his point man on the auto industry bailout. There's speculation he'll face repercussions from Quadrangle investors as a result of the saga. And even if he manages to avoid any serious legal consequences, there's no question his rep has taken a big blow. But he has one person on his side: Michael Bloomberg!

Is Michael Bloomberg in a bad mood because deep down he doesn't really want to be mayor for another term? If that's the case, he's not letting it show: The mayor plans to spend another $4.5 million flooding the airwaves with ads in the next few days. This brings the total cost of his campaign thus far to $7.5 million, which means he's on track to break his own campaign spending record. [NYT]

Michael Bloomberg has been pretty cranky recently, have you noticed? It didn't just start last week when he had a hissy fit at a press conference. The Times's Clyde Haberman thinks that the mayor has "been in a chronic bad mood for half a year, more or less since he won his battle for a change in the law to give him a shot at a third term." But what could be getting under his skin? He's the richest man in New York. He won the battle to overturn term limits. His real estate holdings have expanded. And he hasn't been forced to give up his plane like so many other moguls. Guess we'll just have to wait and wonder. Unless, of course, you happen to be his shrink and you're willing to violate doctor-patient confidentiality, in which case we'd love to talk to you. [NYT]

As Gotham's mayor, Michael Bloomberg feels he's gone above and beyond for the reporter, the Examiner's Michael Harris. Harris gets transportation in a special van and wheelchair access around City Hall, Bloomberg's flack tells the New York Times.

Mayor Bloomberg got a tad annoyed at this morning's press conference announcing plans to introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. It seems a reporter's tape recorder (or phone) went off just as Bloomberg was about to begin speaking, and he wasn't too happy about the interruption.

"I don't know how to break this to you," Michael Bloomberg told CNN's Wolf Blitzer yesterday, "but people that go out and murder people don't read The Wall Street Journal." Needless to say, that isn't true. Plenty of people who worked in finance (and read the paper daily) have been convicted of murder. But we couldn't think of a better tag line for a future Wall Street Journal ad campaign:

Mayor Bloomberg may have been slow to update the decorations outside his East 79th Street townhouse, but he reports he's been better about keeping up to date on the inside. The mayor says he's converted almost all of the lights in his house to compact fluorescent bulbs," and "walks around his home to shut off lights [and] open windows." As for whether he drags newspapers, glass bottles, and other recyclables to the curb himself, he didn't say, but let's just assume he does until he says otherwise. [Newsday]

Bloomberg Spends $3 Million on TV Ads in Mayoral Race [NYT]
Related: Mayor Mike's New Spanish Language Phrasebook [Cityfile]

In a last-ditch attempt to prevent Michael Bloomberg from waltzing into another term on a cloud of money, the New York Times let rival Anthony Weiner plant a limp "push-polling" accusation on today's front page.

Members of Mayor Bloomberg's administration announced last week that the city was making "real progress" combating homelessness. Allow us to respectfully disagree! [Flickr]

You can now take a panoramic tour of Michael Bloomberg's snazzy new "Situation Room," the place he's supposed to sneak off to in case of emergency and where, if something disastrous happens, you'll find him "huddled with his cabinet members and glued to CNN." (Apparently the mayor has a fave cable news channel.) But before you get any crazy ideas about the "tastefully accoutered" command center, the mayor would also like you to know he built his for $2.5 million, a lot less than the $15 million Rudy Giuliani wasted on a room that had its own gas-proof ventilation system. That's probably still a bit too much given it's roughly the size of your bedroom, but at least he's headed in the right direction. [NYT]

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that he's willing to support gay marriage in New York State. But he's really not sure "when the time will be right" for the passage of any legislation because, as we all know, the mayor never likes to move ahead with anything unless he has absolute consensus. "We see that the tide is turning, that support is mounting," the mayor told the annual dinner of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. "Make no mistake, the time will come... and we will pass this bill." Speaking of "time," the mayor should only have to keep repeating that line for 25 more weeks and hope the gay community turns out at the polls this November. [NYDN]

• Today in silly celebrity brand extensions: Kim Kardashian has a "budget-friendly shoe club," Avril Lavigne's first scent debuts this summer, and Nicole Richie's new jewelry line sold out before it even arrived in stores. [SW, WWD, SW]
• Several racks of clothing have already materialized at Topshop! [Racked]
• Calvin Klein made a cameo on 30 Rock last night. [Fashionologie]
• Michelle Obama is the new Carrie Bradshaw, says Isaac Mizrahi. [MB]
• Have you ever wished that Joe Zee would finally document every food item he consumed over the course of the week? You're in luck. [NYM]
• Don't bother asking Michael Bloomberg about his fave footwear. Ask him about his shoes and he'll tell you they're "probably Paul Stuart," but he's "had them a long time," so he really has "no idea." [FN]

If you found it heartwarming to hear that Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler is now personally fighting crime, you'll be extra pleased to hear that Michael Bloomberg has expanded his role as mayor and has started saving lives. The Mayor rushed to the side of a Lehman College student who fainted during a news conference this morning, and led the effort to revive him by searching for a pulse, unbuttoning his shirt, and trying to get the boy to keep talking until paramedics arrived. No word on what kind of emergency preparedness courses they're taking over there at City Hall these days, but if Patti Harris manages to save a child from a burning building next week, we're really going to start getting suspicious. [NYT/City Room]

We understand you're super busy and all, but it's March 16th, Mayor Bloomberg. Christmas was nearly three months ago! Would it be too much to ask that you retire the mini-Christmas trees, pine cones, and red branches outside your East 79th Street townhouse and replace them with something more seasonal? Spring will arrive in just 96 hours! Below, a few more photos of the mayor's rather dated display along with further evidence that he really did gobble up four of the six apartments in the townhouse next door: His tired decorations are in front of that building, too.

Forbes's somewhat suspicious list of the world's billionaires is now online. You can look through the complete list here, but as you can probably imagine, it wasn't a very good year for members of the ten-figure club. The 2009 list includes 793 people—it's down 30 percent from last year—and a handful of notable New Yorkers (like Sandy Weill and Hank Greenberg) saw their names vanish. NYC's richest man, according to the mag? That would be Michael Bloomberg, who saw his net worth jump 39 percent from $11.5 billion to $16 billion. So did the mayor have such a fantastic year? No, Forbes had just been underestimating his stake in Bloomberg LP in years past, although they didn't bother to mention that. [Forbes, NYP]

Has Anthony Weiner decided not to face off against Michael Bloomberg this fall? It's hard to say! In a letter to campaign supporters today, Weiner said he plans to put off a final decision about his mayoral campaign until the summer, since he doesn't feel this is an appropriate time to engage in politics. Rest assured it is still a fine time to cavort with models. [NYT]

• Following yesterday's stock market surge, some analysts see a comeback in the making. Believe it when you see it. [CNN]
• Investors pulled $11 billion out of hedge funds in February. [BN]
• Related: hedge funds may slash 20,000 jobs around the world this year. [DB]
• Even the junky little banks that should have never been given a piece of the bailout in the first place now want to give the money back. [NYT]
• Some 45% of the world's wealth has been destroyed over the past year, says Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman. [Reuters]
• Tim Geithner appeared on Charlie Rose's show yesterday. [BN]
• Quadrangle Group, the firm formerly headed up by Steve Rattner, has hired three new execs to help manage Michael Bloomberg's money. [DB]
• Good work if you can get it: Hedge find titan John Paulson has made about half a billion bucks since the fall shorting a couple of British banks. [BN]

Michael Bloomberg has been speaking a lot of Spanish in recent weeks. He now often ends press conferences with a few Spanish phrases and has been been taking questions from Spanish-speaking reporters, too. Unfortunately, despite nearly six years of one-on-one tutoring sessions, Bloomberg still has trouble spitting out a sentence without making a mistake: When he was asked about the recent snowstorm, for example, he pointed out that the "the streets have cleaned" and "it was a lot of windy." With the mayoral election fast approaching—and considering challengers like William Thompson and Anthony Weiner are taking Spanish classes, too—the mayor is going to have to do a lot better if he expects to win over the city's Latino population. And he's going to have to do more than simply chat about the weather; he's going to have to connect with voters on a much more personal level and demonstrate he understands their culture and concerns. To that end, we turned to our in-house translator to put together a few phrases that the mayor might want to memorize as he meets voters over the next few months. ¡Buena suerte, Señor Bloomberg!

John Catsimatidis isn't ruling out that possibility that we'll have two egotistical billionaires competing in the mayoral race this fall. Which explains why he isn't exactly holding back in interviews with reporters: "I'm not the same type of billionaire as Mike Bloomberg. He came from Boston; I came from the city of Manhattan. I know these people. I know these people as well as anybody in this city. I used to play stickball on 135th street." Them's fighting words! Except he has a couple of facts wrong, as the Daily News's Elizabeth Benjamin points out: "Bloomberg, for the record, did not come from means, either. He is a self-made billionaire. And he actually hails from Medford, not Boston." Better luck next time, John. [NYDN]