Before we get to those people, here are some fun facts about Bill Daley:

- Prior to being appointed, Mr. Daley was a vice chairman at J.P. Morgan.
- Mr. Daley at one point held $7.6M in stock from the company.
- In 2010, Mr. Daley made $8.7M from J.P. Morgan.

Seeing as how sentiment against the unmitigated profits of Wall Street reached fever pitch over the last year, one would think President Obama would be wise to consider resumes from other corridors of power to choose from when deciding upon a new chief of staff. And maybe he did!

In the end, however, he decided upon Jacob Lew. Here are some fun facts about Jacob Lew:

• Prior to his appointment as a deputy secretary at the Department of State, Mr. Lew was Chief Operating Officer of CitiGroup's Alternative Investments group.
• Do you know what Alternative Investments are? They're things like hedge funds, who buy things like credit default swaps! Credit default swaps are essentially the ability to buy insurance on someone else's house in one hand as you hold anything else—the adjustable-rate mortgage you know they can't pay off, or the capacity to sell that mortgage and therefore generate more mortgages like it, or a gasoline can—in the other hand. This is what Jacob Lew invested in!
• In 2008 and the beginning of 2009, Mr. Lew took in $1.1M from CitiGroup.
• This included a $900,000 bonus.
• Mr. Lew doesn't think financial deregulation was one of the problems adding up to the financial crisis that has persisted since 2008.

 
Mr. Lew is, like President Barack Obama, a Harvard graduate. He appears to be very intelligent! The money he made from CitiGroup really isn't that much in the very large scheme of things, and Citi is commonly a punchline as far as the largest investment banks go. He's probably a nice guy, too.

None of that will likely make a difference to someone who is still upset with the financial system and the people responsible for the havoc it wrecked on the global economy. That said, if the Republican candidates for president or the committees helping them with their campaigns are looking to assault President Obama for Mr. Lew's appointment, they'd be well advised to recall his nomination to the Office of Management and Budget, which "sailed through" the Senate in a voice vote.

Anyway: Congratulations, Jacob Lew! Enjoy that new job of yours. It will surely be rewarding both personally and financially and not stressful in the least.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff blocked a settlement between the S.E.C. and Citigroup, criticizing the S.E.C. for settling a case without proving the factual nature of its allegations and allowing the bank to pay a fine and admit no wrongdoing. His published opinion, which might provide some satisfactory morning reading to some of those New Yorkers enjoying "passive recreation" in Zuccotti Park, is scathing.

In the case, the S.E.C. claimed Citigroup had committed fraud by knowingly selling investors mortgage-backed securities the bank knew would tank but portrayed as sound. Investors lost $700 million in the deal, but the bank made a net profit of $160 million by offloading the assets. Under the terms of the settlement, Citigroup would pay a $285 million fine, some of which would possibly be returned to investors, and admit nothing. Judge Rakoff decided to draw a line.

Some highlights of his opinion:

..the Court has spent long hours trying to determine whether, in view of the substantial deference due the S.E.C. in matters of this kind, the Court can somehow approve this problematic Consent Judgment. In the end, the Court concludes that it cannot approve it, because the Court has not been provided with any proven or admitted facts upon which to exercise even a modest degree of independent judgment.

He goes on to opine:

Purely private parties can settle a case without ever agreeing on the facts, for all that is required is that a plaintiff dismiss his complaint. But when a public agency asks a court to become its partner in enforcement by imposing wide-ranging injunctive remedies on a defendant, enforced by the formidable judicial power of contempt, the court, and the public, need some knowledge of what the underlying facts are: for otherwise, the court becomes a mere handmaiden to a settlement privately negotiated on the basis of unknown facts, while the public is deprived of ever knowing the truth in a matter of obvious public importance.

His conclusion is openly critical of the S.E.C.:

Finally, in any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth. In much of the world, propaganda reigns, and truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers. Even in our nation, apologists for suppressing or obscuring the truth may always be found. But the S.E.C., of all agencies, has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges; and if it fails to do so, this Court must not, in the name of deference or convenience, grant judicial enforcement to the agency's contrivances.

The five-bedroom house, east of Third Avenue, has a second-floor balcony overlooking the 39-foot-long backyard garden, plus a two-camera security system with a flat-screen monitor.

The couple signed a contract in late February, less than one month after Ms. Bartiromo’s friend Todd Thompson, the head of Citigroup’s wealth-management branch, was publicly fired for “inappropriately showering corporate resources” on Ms. Bartiromo, according to a published report. For example, Mr. Thompson reportedly booted executives off a cross-continental Citigroup flight to be alone with the impeccably brunette anchoress.

But CNBC—the cable network where Ms. Bartiromo hosts the most popular financial-news show in the nation—rushed to the support of its “Money Honey” (a nickname that Ms. Bartiromo recently registered as a trademark). So did her husband Jonathan, the son of outlandish financier Saul Steinberg.

According to public records, which list the couple’s old address at a nearby apartment, their new townhouse recently belonged to Michael and Melissa Slocum, who bought it for a relatively steep $6.8 million in August 2004.

Photographs from the recent Stribling listing show the townhouse as a customarily fancy Upper East Side place with big ruffled curtains and bigger chandeliers. Better yet, the place has four working wood-burning fireplaces, a 32-foot-long kitchen, and a wet bar between the second floor’s dining and drawing rooms.

Will the TV go in the 342-square-foot family room? “I watch her at the Big Board every single day/While she’s reporting you best stay out of her way,” the late Joey Ramone sang about Ms. Bartiromo. “I watch her every day/ I watch her every night/ She’s really outta sight.”

Gap Heir Buys in the Pierre for $2.9 M.

Fortunes built on khakis and turtlenecks can buy grand rooms in the Pierre Hotel—rooms that have absurdly abundant space for khakis and turtlenecks. Billionaire William Fisher, whose parents founded the Gap, has paid $2.9 million for a Pierre co-op with two bedrooms, twice-daily maid service and a colossal dressing room.

Naturally, the Pierre apartment has deluxe Fifth Avenue views.

“The tops of the trees are precisely at eye level,” said listing broker Max Dobens, a vice president of the Jacky Teplitzky Group at Prudential Douglas Elliman, “so it’s like floating in the ocean, looking at the tops of the waves, with your head bobbing in the water.”

More importantly, the hotel room comes with a stocked mini-bar. And yet: “If you own in the Pierre,” Mr. Dobens pointed out, “it’s not particularly classy to be hitting the mini-bars.”

There are classier touches, like the reception hall, which comes before the 27-foot-long living room overlooking Central Park.

Both bedrooms have their own walk-in closets, yet the master suite’s dressing area stands out. “Normally, you would have to get dressed in the bedroom itself,” the broker explained, “but here it’s the classic old-world elegance: You get out of the shower, you get dressed, and you enter the bedroom once you’re dressed.”

One of the dressing room’s four closets, for example, stretches 18 square feet.

Mr. Fisher and his wife Sakurako bought the five-room apartment from the estate of Robert M. Shapiro. On the deed, the Fishers’ address is listed on Jackson Street in San Francisco, a few feet away from the second-oldest golf club in California.

Sadly, they’ll be paying $5,469 every month to maintain their Pierre apartment. “Yes, that’s high,” Mr. Dobens said. “This property is for people who are at a financial level so that maintenance is a non-issue. If you ask how much the maintenance is, you don’t belong at the Pierre.” Ouch.

Maintenance costs are lower elsewhere, but then elsewhere “you don’t have the people in the elevator pushing the buttons.”

Time Warner Chief Cedes Tribeca Summit Dominance for $2.2 M.

Manhattan tycoons should have bad toupees and bad tempers and badly decorated Fifth Avenue triplexes. But Dick Parsons, the mild chairman and C.E.O. of Time Warner Inc., has sold off one of his comparatively modest apartments atop 166 Duane Street.

According to city records, which listed the property in wife Laura’s name, the three-bedroom loft was sold for $2,218,063 last month to the Pittsburgh architect Leonard Perfido and his wife Ruth. That’s a baffling fall from the $2.9 million that the Parsons paid for the Tribeca loft (labeled Penthouse A) in July 2003.

Mr. Parsons and his wife won’t be leaving 166 Duane Street. “I don’t want to get into his personal life or investments, but he’s definitely staying in the building,” Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler told The Observer. “He’s a resident of Tribeca and loves it.”

There’s a lot to love: The Time Warner chief still has his five-bedroom Penthouse B, which he bought in 1999, when 166 Duane was converted into condos.

That sponsor unit had been listed for $3.7 million.

Will Mr. Parsons miss his newly relinquished apartment? According to a Corcoran Group listing, the smaller 2,520-square-foot Penthouse A had three bedrooms, plus an 810-square-foot private garden (landscaped by two name-brand designers: parks mastermind Patricia McCobb and modernist decorator Michael Formica).

According to floor plans, the building’s 125-foot-long roof is split into space for each penthouse, plus a “common roof terrace”—which means that Mr. Parsons has given up precious dominance of the building’s summit.

How un-mogul-like.

Consider this: Carl Icahn, the corporate raider who has called for Mr. Parsons’ ouster, owns a 14,000-square-foot spread atop the Cesar Pelli–designed Museum Tower, according to the database PropertyShark.com.

Mr. Parsons’ Tribeca penthouse is now merely 4,955 square feet—about one-third the size of Mr. Icahn’s.

Southampton Estate Battles for Buyer; It’s Only $48 M., Give or Take

Things don’t always go perfectly for gated Southampton estates, even 10.44-acre sprawls where the lakeside Georgian master house has 13 bedrooms and the guest cottage is shaded by a tulip tree.

Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein was twice reported to be in contract for Old Trees Estate on Lake Agawam. (He has enough money for the estate, previously listed at $48 million: He was compensated $54.8 million for his seven months helming Goldman last year.)

“That deal never came to fruition,” said Sotheby’s International Realty broker Harald Grant, an overlord of Hamptons realty.

So the listing has switched to Mr. Grant from Prudential Douglas Elliman. And the price tag has somehow gone up: “The asking price is a little more than $48 million,” he said.

The reported agreement between Mr. Blankfein and the seller, financier Donald Burns, was around $41 million.

But Douglas Elliman’s Jay Flagg, one of the old listing brokers, didn’t admit defeat. He said this week that customers who had been shown the house while Elliman had the listing were still “continuing negotiations.”

And yet his colleague Raymond Smith was less upbeat. “We had the exclusive. I’m not saying it’s done done, but it’s pretty much that way.”

Why the broker switch? “It happens all the time,” Mr. Smith said. “If something doesn’t sell, they change horses—that’s the way it works. People think they’re going to get a better situation, but it’s the same-old, same-old. The new guy’s going to do the same stuff I did, just as I would.”

The new guy, Mr. Grant, will likely show off the Atlantic Ocean views, the tennis court and the three-bedroom pig barn from the 1800’s, “which has seen its share of swinging summer soirees,” according to the old listing.

Plus there’s a regal heritage: Architect Goodhue Livingston built the place for himself in 1911, and hosted dignitaries and royalty there. It’s since been rewired and renovated. “It’s like a new house,” Mr. Flagg said, “that’s been enveloped by the old body.”

All it needs now is new suitors and a closed contract.

Terry McAuliffe explains what 'in it to win it' has meant for fund-raising. There's more campaign cash going around this cycle than previous ones probably because of rising economic inequality, not the Internet, says Ben. Mitt Romney raised more money that Rudy Giuliani Gail Robinson thinks "one clear loser" in the state budget this year was "open government." Joe Bruno is gloating about how he fared. John Catsimatidis is registering as a Republican Howard Weitzman is raising money for something. Andrew Cuomo settled cases against Citibank and school lenders. Plans to build a new United Nations building on a playground has at least one critic. Conspiracy alert: The guy who convinced Rudy Giuliani to dress in drag - and may have introduced the former mayor to his current wife - is now helping John McCain. Giuliani leads 2008 contenders in Florida. And pictured above is a scene from the Assembly chambers shortly after the budget deadline on Saturday night. -- Azi Paybarah

Ms. McCaskill is the junior Senator from Missouri, one of the good things that happened in the last election. As a member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and seated up on the dais, she looked down on those corporate hair bags from J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup and told them how her mother’s credit-card company had taken advantage of an elderly, unwell widow. Heretofore, like the rest of us, Ms. McCaskill has had to battle to get a human voice from the credit-card company on the phone.

If you are one of the about 40 percent of cardholders who pay off the whole bill every month, you know your credit-card company is dirty and swinish but, since they do not really have you in their grips, you don’t know how bad these guys are. You do know, of course, how they play games with you to trick you into getting your check after the deadline, which only they know, so they can hit you with a late fee. Or you may have been hit for the interest on a $1,000 monthly bill because you inadvertently wrote a check that was 20 cents short. And that’s a real story.

There were a lot of real stories at the hearing. Alys Cohen, a lawyer at the National Consumer Law Center, told one of them about “a young Navy sailor who opened a credit card account with First Premier Bank on November 21, 2006. The credit card had a $250.00 credit limit and a 9.9% APR for purchases. The same day that the sailor opened the account, he was assessed two fees—a Program Fee of $95 and an Account Set-Up Fee of $29. The next day (November 22), he was assessed a Participation Fee of $6. Three days later (November 24), he was assessed an Annual Fee of $48. When this young sailor received his first month’s bill, which had a closing date of November 24, 2006, he had already accrued a balance of $178, without making a single purchase.

“The next week, the young sailor used the credit card for four transactions totaling $84.85. On December 22, 2006, he was assessed a participation fee of $6. With all these fees, the young sailor was already over his credit limit, despite making less than $85 in purchases on a card with a $250 limit. He was assessed an over-limit fee of $25 and a late fee of $25, plus a finance charge of $1.96, on December 26.”

The hearing featured the sad tale of Wesley Wannemacher, married with a family back in Ohio, who contracted $3,200 debt on a J.P. Morgan Chase card on which he paid back $6,300, after which he still owed the S.O.B.’s $4,400. The guys in turtleneck sweaters with baseball bats who collect for the mob, or did in the old days, could not have done better than these modern Morgan Chase racketeers.

Once upon a time, when many bankers had the reputation of being a little skin-flinty but honest, they went about extending credit only to people that they had reason to believe could and would make good on their borrowings. The modern credit-card crook/banking executive seeks out bad risks, searches for people who will not be able to pay and shoves a card in their hands. They shark after students, old people, the uneducated, the sick, active-duty military-service personnel, anybody and everybody who might be too young, too inexperienced, too stressed or too desperate to know what signing a credit-card application means. It is a 180-degree reversal of what was once sound, and also ethical, banking practice.

As Alys Cohen says, “It’s not plasma-screen televisions or luxury handbags—it’s the medical bills, the groceries, the car repairs and the gas bill that pulls families into the quagmire of high credit-card balances, higher interest rates and fees.”

Elizabeth Warren, the Leo Gottlieb Professor at Harvard Law School, whose specialty is in these realms, says that “these companies know they can make higher profits if the customers finance their purchases over time, paying their credit card bills a little at a time, some of them for a lifetime. And the companies knew that they could make truly extraordinary profits if the customers stumbled and the company loaded up on default rates of interest and penalty fees. In 2005, interest and penalty-fee revenues alone added up to a staggering $79 billion.

“The sweet spot is the customer who stumbles and pays late fees and high rates of interest. Nearly eight out of every 10 dollars of revenue comes from the customers who cannot pay off their bills in full every month.”

When you sign up for a credit card, there is no way to know what you may be letting yourself in for. The tricks and traps, as Ms. Warren calls them, are hidden in the credit-card contract that the bankers have expanded from one page in the early 1980’s to 30 pages in the early 2000’s. What’s more, Ms. Warren noted that “the inserts sent along with monthly bills to amend the card agreements are filled with language even a lawyer would have difficulty parsing. In such an environment, the average consumer doesn’t have a prayer.”

For years, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the committee chairman, has been trying to pass a law, but with Republicans in charge you can guess how far he got. But now this man, who is at least a minor national treasure, is in the chair peering over his spectacles and in his courtly way driving hard. The challenge he must overcome is to write a law that the clip artists and sneak thieves who run the credit-card industry cannot slither their way around.

Whatever law is passed, it will probably be left to the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Reserve Board to implement, and these are organs of government where bank lawyers and lobbyists have their sway. In no time, the intent of the law will be turned on its head.

So how about a different approach? Instead, let the law say that credit-card debit obtained by these various abuses “and by all other as yet uninvented tricks and dishonest devices” are legally uncollectible. If the bankers are going to use the credit-card business to cheat people and steal from the innocently unwary, the law courts should not be used to assist them in their thefts.

Do that, and it won’t be long before the banks stop offering loans to people who cannot afford to pay them back.

At $49 billion, it was a record-breaker, although records of this kind are like records for the world’s tallest building: They often do not last very long. The previous record of $39 billion for the Equity Office Properties was set only a few weeks ago.

The curtain calls and chest-thumping on the TXU deal was foreshortened by the stock-market plunge. Attention was directed elsewhere, but we may have reason to come back to it if this baby comes a cropper. Even if it doesn’t, there is much about it that asks for a closer look and a few skeptical questions.

The first question is: Where did KKR and Texas Pacific get all the money? Successful as both entities have been in previous deal-making, buying this utility was a stretch. Left to their own preferences, you may assume that KKR and Texas Pacific would each have wanted to go solo, but the two investment funds obviously couldn’t come up with enough scratch to do it by themselves.

To swing the deal, which required $8 billion in up-front cash money, The New York Times reports, “Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific are each putting up about $2 billion in cash. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup plan to invest $3 billion from their private equity firms.” That takes them to $7 billion—$1 billion shy of what they needed.

One more investor was required for that last billion. The last investor turns out to be J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. These same banks will be handling the $24 billion in loans that KKR and Texas Pacific need to finish paying for TXU. (The buyers are also taking on the $13 billion in debt that TXU already had, and that brings the total cost up to the $49 billion sale price.)

So here we have it: First the banks become part owners in the company being purchased, then they lend the purchasers the rest of the money needed to pay for the deal. This comes close to a form of self-dealing, and if it doesn’t smell to high heaven, there is no doubt some unpleasant scent seeping out of this thing.

Bankers are supposed to be gimlet-eyed persons who have no connection with those coming to borrow money. They are supposed to investigate the hell out of the entities applying for a loan; they are not supposed to be in business with them.

The way to deal with such quibbles is to give this kind of loan a respectable-sounding name: Hence the term “equity bridge.” The idea is that, after the banks have bought their billion dollars’ worth of stock in the company, KKR and Texas Pacific are obliged to find somebody or some equity or hedge fund that will take the stock off the banks’ hands. Be that as it may, the “equity bridge” buy-in looks like a “pay to play” operation, as one Wall Streeter put it.

Pay-to-play has been a recurrent source of scandal in public financing. Whether what’s going on here is, legally speaking, pay-to-play is best left to the lawyers, but it stands to reason that if TXU’s bond business is restricted to insider-trackers, somebody’s going to lose out. If it isn’t the banks, the bondholders, or KKR and Texas Pacific, then the most obvious candidate will be whoever pays the household-utility bills.

The banks are willing to buy into a company they plan to lend money to because these bond deals are so lucrative. Last year, KKR alone, according to The Times, paid various banks fees amounting to $837 million. The banks will convert the loans they’re going to make to KKR and Texas Pacific into bonds, many of which will be sold, while some others will probably be kept in their vaults.

You do not buy and sell electric companies as though they were a chain of pizza parlors or hospitals. People pay attention to what’s going on with electric companies, which may be why they are often called public utilities. To buy one, you must satisfy the stockholders, but there is a wider public that must be pacified: the consumers and, in the modern era, the environmental lobby.

The consumers in this instance are to be bought off with a 10 percent rate decrease. At least that’s what they’re being promised, although one does wonder what the homeowner is going to do about it if and when the decrease is followed by a jump in the monthly electric bill. Or, if the political situation that the company finds itself in is acrid enough that it cannot raise rates, then where does that put the bankers?

The equity bridge is by no means the only fancy wrinkle that the buyout people have come up with to finance their deals. For instance, they also use the “payment-in-kind (PIK) toggle note.” This is a form of debt that enables private equity firms to borrow more freely than they would otherwise be able to. The PIK toggle note permits the borrower to stop paying interest on its bonds: When the toggle is used, the unpaid interest piles up and must be paid when the bond matures—unless the whole thing is refinanced somewhere down the road. Give these people an envelope, a cup of coffee and a pencil, and you’d be amazed what tight straits they can squirm their way out of.

Whether the PIK toggle note is used, or the equity bridge, or some other gimmicks that haven’t yet surfaced in the business press, the underlying lesson is that credit is very easy to get if you’re on the inside. You would almost think that the bankers were pushing the money out the door, the way they are willing to relax terms and embrace lower standards.

Does this easy money, this “don’t worry about a thing, we’ve got you covered” approach, remind you of something? Could it be the residential-housing market? The bankers there have been making 100 percent, no-down-payment loans to people without asking to see their financials—PIK-toggle-type mortgages, loans to people with low credit scores or none.

All that remains now is to see who can and cannot pay their bills.

Citigroup will need to draft up a new logo now. File this under slightly irrelevant, but what's this mean for real estate? Well, when they create the new logo it will mean a new top for three distinguished city properties: 666 Fifth Avenue; Court Square Two in Long Island City; and the top of the new Mets stadium in Queens.

- John Koblin

On Wednesday night at a steakhouse in Washington, Obama met with Rubin and a number of supporters including Michael Froman of Citigroup, Brian Mathis of Provident Group, Orin Kramer of Boston Provident Partners LP (who committed to Obama shortly afterwards) and Robert Wolf, the chairman of UBS Americas.

Rubin is the son of Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. For obvious reasons, he would be a nice get for the Obama campaign -- both a prominent name and a positive statement about Obama's generational appeal rolled into one.

Rubin's allegiance is still uncertain -- he did not return phone calls to his home and office -- but according to a supporter with knowledge of the meeting, he seemed inclined to commit to Obama.

--Jason Horowitz

The company’s forthcoming 56th Manhattan branch, located between 58th and 59th streets, will fill a 5,000-square-foot void along this Upper East Side commercial block, which is so desperately underserved by the cavernous Wachovia branch next-door. And the Bank of America two doors north.

If not for the Home Depot sandwiched in between, it seems, the entire block might soon consist of banks.

Clearly, the looming North Fork branch now under construction across the street from the future Citibank branch (and the Wachovia and the Bank of America) wasn’t coming online fast enough to satiate consumer money lust.

Or something like that.

“It is what it is. Some retailers won’t pay. Banks will,” said an executive from Vornado Realty Trust, who noted that the block’s newest bank branch will be paying around $220 per square foot in annual rent—about the median street-level retail rent in Manhattan right now, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.

Her enthusiasm in confirming the deal was clearly lacking. “Who’s excited about having three banks on one side of the street?”

Not long ago, some retail brokers were predicting a sort of cataclysmic bubble burst for the city’s seemingly never-ending bank-branch boom. For the better part of the current decade, the boom had reverberated throughout Manhattan and parts of the outer boroughs.

“Where can they go? Because you get the feeling they are everywhere at this point,” said purported bank-leasing specialist Cory Zelnik, then president of Winick Realty, in a December 2005 interview with property-minded trade pub The Real Deal. (Mr. Zelnik, it should be noted, no longer works for Winick; he formed his own firm.)

Similarly, last April, Commerce Bank chairman Vernon Hill told The New York Times: “The building frenzy in branch banking is probably nearing its peak.”

At least at street level, these forecasts of a recession in the recent retail-leasing dominance of banks appear quite premature.

What’s replacing the East Village’s historic Second Avenue Deli? A Chase branch, according to a sign posted earlier this month on the boarded-up storefront.

Proprietors of the hallowed P&G Cafe Bar on the Upper West Side continue to hear rumors of their replacement at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 73rd Street by an as-yet-unknown bank branch once their lease runs out in 2008. By bar manager Steve Hale’s count, there are already at least 10 banks within three blocks of the 60-year-old neighborhood institution.

Similar rumors surround the corner of Bleecker and Thompson streets in Greenwich Village, where several retailers, including Ben & Jerry’s, recently lost leases.

Yet it would definitely be an understatement to suggest that bank branches are becoming the new Starbucks as they continue to pop up on every corner like beacons of corporate homogeny and hegemony. One HSBC branch literally replaced a Starbucks at the corner of Broadway and 102nd Street this past October.

“Every day, I get an offer from a bank,” said retail broker Faith Hope Consolo of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who’s admittedly struggling to land some sort of high-end fashion tenant at the northeast corner of Broadway and 58th Street, near Columbus Circle.

Instead, she’s been fielding calls solely from financial institutions.

Ms. Consolo, at least, seems resigned to a future strewn with storefront A.T.M.’s.

“Service tenants, like banks, have become ‘safe’ and desirable tenants because of their longevity in neighborhoods,” she said. “I certainly do not foresee an end to this influx of banks; they are here to stay.”

Post editors don't want a sitting Assemblyman for comptroller.

The Daily News opines that whomever makes it through the screening panel "will have weathered a screening process, eliminating the suggestion that he or she is not the best or the brightest."

Rudy Giuliani is staying mum on President Bush's call for more troops in Iraq.

Mike Bloomberg told Congress that Al Qaeda is laughing at us.

A building the was part of the "scandal-plagued program of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development," in Boerum Hill was approved for a 25-year tax break from the city.

Democrats are planning a vote against Bush's Iraq plan.

And Jon Corzine has gotten poetic about New Jersey's problems.

-- Azi paybarah