Kelly.

Big things are happening in post-Fashion Week NYC. For the first time since the late 80s, all the hot young things are flooding to Wall Street. But unfortunately for Turnbull & Asser and half of the meatpacking district’s nightlife establishment, these kids aren’t spending all-nighters snorting drugs and waiting for the markets to open to Japan. They’re occupying Wall Street. And by occupying, we mean camping out in a semi-organized fashion in the Financial District, despite the fact that the financial district is no longer in the Financial District. And we have to admit, midtown just doesn’t have the same symbolic appeal.

The ruckus on Wall Street did manage to steal some of the thunder from Saturday Night Live’s premiere this weekend, when a perfectly coiffed Alec Baldwin broke the record number for guest-hosting gigs and somehow managed to refrain from Tweeting at his girlfriend during the show. But it was all downhill after his dead-on cold open as the Freudian tongue-slipping Rick Perry in the GOP debate.

Speaking of the GOP, Fox News partnered with Google to livestream the Republican debate, proving that at least some conservatives know how to work the YouTubes. We’re interested in seeing how Megyn Kelly continues her hosting duties, especially now that she’s out of the closet in support of transgender Chaz Bono performing on Dancing With the Stars. With the Fox and Friends America Live anchor busy being slightly more progressive than usual, she must have been thrilled with the LGBT-friendly Emmys this year, which brought in mucho viewers with Jane Lynch hosting and the ultra-Modern Family nabbing the most awards of the nights. Still, Mad Men secured enough wins to remind us that most people would rather be living in the misogynistic, whiskey-soaked world of Don Draper. Never underestimate nostalgia for the three-martini lunch.

Let’s not forget however, that even the kings of cool can stumble, as evidenced by Jay-Z’s baffling decision to be the new face of the New Jersey Nets...or the Brooklyn Nets?  No wait, Jersey. Brooklyn. Brooklyn! (Confusing! Was this Mikhail Prokhorov’s idea?) So if anyone needs those front-row season tickets to the Knicks, just shoot Beyonce’s baby-daddy an email before next September.

Rupert Murdoch might want to make a bid: after all, he’s got some extra cash floating around after selling his Long Island abode for $9.1 million. Which might get him... well, front-row season tickets for the Knicks. On second thought, he might want to hold on to that cash. Or at least keep it out of the markets­—which is just the kind of advice you’d hear from Anonymous protestors down on Wall Street right now.

Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that Ms. Kelly was a co-host of Fox & Friends. She is the host of Fox's America Live. The New York Observer regrets the error.

The group will find its new home at the soon-to-be-built Barclays Center on Flatbush and Atlantic Ave., as part of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards Project that's been going so well. Jay himself announced the official name in a "brief and anticlimactic" ceremony in New Jersey today.

So starting on September 28th, the pre-season for the Brooklyn Nets  will include three weeks of festivities, including eight concerts by Jay-Z. Hopefully this will give Jay comped front-row tickets to the games, as a season VIP pass will run customers $15,400. And what happens if Jay and Beyonce are still photographed at Knicks games when he's telling everyone else to switch their allegiance? Does that hurt his endorsement in a team that he's soon to become the campaign face for? (Get ready, lower Manhattan!)

This is why guys like Jay-Z need to follow their own advice and not be a businessman, but a business, man.

Hmmm... do I take the pay cut?

On Sept. 2, Mikhail Prokhorov, billionaire owner of the soon-to-be-Brooklyn Nets, announced he would consider a run for the Russian presidency this winter if the political party he created, Right Cause, does well in parliamentary elections in December. (The Transom first learned of this from a friend who is a journalist in Moscow, and confirmed it with English-language reports of Mr. Prokhorov’s comments.)

So, if Mr. Prokhorov, the central-casting projection of modern muscular Russia, does, in fact, edge out his friend Vladimir Putin or Mr. Putin’s hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, what will it mean for the borough’s b-ball? Can one man be the leader of a superpower and the owner of a powerhouse at the same time?

Yes. There is nothing in the N.B.A.’s charter that precludes a foreign head of state from owning a team, though none ever has (the closest analogy might be U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, who has owned the Milwaukee Bucks since 1985; George W. Bush sold his stake in baseball’s Texas Rangers before he became president).

Where it gets a tad dicey for a 46-year-old President Prokhorov is that he would have to spend much of his time in his country rather than, say, in David Walentas’s Clock Tower penthouse in Dumbo, or some other suitably baronial domain for an oligarch abroad.

“It would very much change his ownership style with the Nets,” said Robert Boland, a clinical associate professor of sports management at N.Y.U. “He’s a very hands-on guy. From everything that I’ve observed about him, he likes to be involved firmly, he likes to own the franchise.”

Mr. Boland said that in sports ownership the best owners are either highly involved or not really involved at all, turning over management to pros. Seizing a middle-ground tends to breed ineptitude. (The Dolans and the Knicks, anyone? The Wilpons and the Mets?) So if a freshly elected Mr. Prokhorov had to shed management responsibilities vis-à-vis the Nets, it would not necessarily hurt the franchise, Mr. Boland said.

In fact, his presidency could help the N.B.A.

“The N.B.A. is ripe to expand globally,” Mr. Boland said. “Suddenly, here’s an N.B.A. owner with a hugely important political role in Europe and Asia. He might become very important to the N.B.A. in terms of expansion or movement abroad.”

And, somewhere, Marty Markowitz lays out a suit for the inauguration.

tacitelli@observer.com :: @tacitelli

Bruce Ratner went on Bloomberg yesterday to discuss the state of the local economy and progress at Atlantic Yards. During the interview, he said he expects to break ground on the first apartment tower at the site by December or January.

That is pushing Ratner's promise made last fall to have the tower under construction sometime this year. He also promised renderings in the first half of the year, but here we are in June. Could this further undermine the blown 10-year timetable for the project?

Who cares, because everyone is cheerleading for the new basketball arena, even this Bloomberg reporter.

Ratner did say he had $100 million in financing lined up from the bank. That does not sound like so much money for a 32-story apartment building, so could it mean Ratner is in fact going forward with plans for a more affordable prefabricated building? The Observer has reached out to a Ratner rep for details.

Ratner also mentioned that Mikhail Prokorhov is still mulling taking a 20 percent stake in the Atlantic Yards project, and Forest City Ratner is preparing a final presentation for him soon as the partnership must be finalized in the next six months. How do you say the clock is ticking in Russian?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Mr. Prokhorov did not attend (too snobby?), but architect Alexander Neratoff was there. He said he'd had the chance to hang out with Mr. Prokhorov, though: "We all went to see the Nets. We were up in the box and just screaming for them--the other team got a basket at the last possible second." Mr. Neratoff was excited to see Vertov's classic: "I'm not sure if I've seen every film, but I took an experimental film class in college."

The Observer was introduced to Alex Fridlyand, a principal at Soros Strategic Partners, in conversation with a somber-looking young woman. "His grandmother slept with Vertov--allegedly!" The Observer was told. We mentioned to Mr. Fridyland that we'd heard he had a family connection to Vertov, and his face turned Dostoevskian. "My grandmother used to say she slept with him. That is not family." What did he do, exactly? "I work on the Wall Street."

Our door to the Snob literati was quickly closing. Was Mr. Fridlyand excited for the film? "No." Why come? "My wife makes me."

We were hustled away. "I think you should not have said that, about his grandmother," Snob's events producer told us. The Observer made one last attempt to gain entrée into Snob society: we shook the hand of an elegantly appointed woman in a silk scarf, who told us that she was working on going out and meeting more Russian expats. "The best place was kitchen place, to discuss about boss, about wife..." Her knuckles were sore, though, from The Observer's handshake: "Are you Russian soldier? In Russia, we"--she demonstrated--"kiss hand, treat gently!"

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

"While we have always respected Carmelo as a player, when we met the other night--I enjoyed that meeting, liked him a lot--it was clear he wanted to come to our city and play for our franchise," Mr. Dolan said.

The emphasis was his.

After monopolizing the five boroughs for the past five decades, Mr. Dolan's Knicks are suddenly on the defensive.

Crowding the city's basketball spotlight is an outsize Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov, who, in May of last year, purchased the lowly New Jersey Nets--the vagabond stepchild now bound for Brooklyn--and declared, in all his Bond-villain blandness, that he would "turn Knicks fans into Nets fans."

As Mr. Anthony dangled from Denver and the Knicks demurred on sealing a deal, Mr. Prokhorov made a last-minute, over-the-top offer that included the Nets' best player, its top prospect and four first-round draft picks, all in the hopes of denying the Knicks their biggest swap since Bernard King in the early 1980s, and luring the Brooklyn-born Mr. Anthony back home. 

Mr. Dolan, in turn, went all in, throwing in a package of young talent that seemed to belie the patient, piece-by-piece approach that had dragged the franchise back to respectability under his resident basketball guru, general manager Donnie Walsh.

"The Nets are trying to hang in the ball game, that's why we had to give up so much," said Walt "Clyde" Frazier, who sat in the front row alongside other Knicks legends during Mr. Anthony's introductory press conference.

"There's clearly a rivalry going," said Robert Boland, a professor of sports management at N.Y.U., who said the greatest threat to any franchise is losing the exclusivity of its market. "It seems that Prokhorov is not going to let this thing go without a battle. He's going to fight in the streets for this one."

He already has, actually.

Shortly after buying the team, Mr. Prokhorov plastered a 225-foot billboard of himself and co-owner Jay-Z--under the headline "The Blueprint for Greatness"--in plain view of the Knicks' offices at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, and rented his own office space at Aby Rosen's Seagram Building in midtown.

In October, Mr. Dolan returned the volleys with a massive billboard of star forward Amar'e Stoudemire--under the banner "BROOKLYN REPRESENT"--just a few blocks from the Nets' nascent arena at Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards.

The budding rivalry stands to be one of the more colorful conflicts in the annals of New York sports.

Mr. Dolan is squat, with a big belly and a bush of brown hair above a face straight out of a Thomas Nast cartoon; he grew up on Long Island, where he now lives with his wife and children, and is a proud teetotaling 12-stepper.

Mr. Prokhorov is a slender 6-foot-8, with a physique carefully refined by twice-daily workouts, who calls his 21,500-square-foot mansion on the outskirts of Moscow his "bachelor pad," and in 2007 was detained for 88 hours in France for allegedly flying in Russian prostitutes. He frequents Moscow's clubs but claims never to have consumed more than a single sip of vodka.

Mr. Dolan nixed his dreams of being a rock star while a student at SUNY-New Paltz, but still toils in a blues band, J.D. and the Straight Shot, and was an avid sailor and competitive yachter before giving up the sport a few years ago.

Mr. Prokhorov did an obligatory stint in the Soviet Army as a youth, and still enjoys shooting AK-47s; he eschews yachting for a 300-pound jet ski.

Mr. Dolan mostly shuns the media, running what has been characterized in the past as a draconian press operation that closely monitors nearly every word uttered by Garden employees and bounds departing ones with strict nondisclosure agreements.

Mr. Prokhorov claims to have funded an opposition newspaper in the mining town he controlled--just to keep a healthy dose of dissent--and, at times, he might be too revealing for his own good. Last year, he showed off his favorite Kalashnikov to 60 Minutes, and before an interview last month, he challenged a reporter to match him in the eye-hand exercises of Tescao, a Tibetan martial art.

(A Knicks spokesman said Mr. Dolan and other Garden officials were unavailable for comment. Mr. Prokhorov was heli-skiing in British Columbia; a spokesperson said he was unavailable to speak.)

Mr. Dolan was groomed from a young age to take over his father's Cablevision empire, selling subscriptions and decamping to Cleveland to start a sports radio station, all while preparing to succeed his father as CEO.

Mr. Prokhorov was reared in a small apartment in Soviet Russia, and his first business venture involved stone-washing jeans to sell during perestroika, followed by a rise through the ranks of post-Soviet banking before coming to dominate the Russian mining market.

They share at least one common trait: Both want to rule New York's basketball market.

Mr. Dolan would very much like to counteract the past decade of futility, one that left an impression that he was more concerned with the parent company's bottom line than with hanging new banners from the Garden rafters.

"Jim Dolan has always taken, to me, unnecessary hits as far as wanting to win," said Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks' coach from 1996 until his resignation in 2001. "Maybe you question the methodology, but he's always wanted to win."

"He's had such a negative reputation for so long, in terms of what the Knicks haven't done in recent years, I think he knew above all else that he had to get this deal done," said Wayne McDonnell Jr., a sports business professor at N.Y.U., of the Anthony trade.

For Mr. Dolan, adding Mr. Anthony helps the entire MSG empire. It boosts the television ratings, ups the in-stadium advertising fees and helps book the luxury boxes--all of which help to offset the nearly $800 million in renovations the arena is undergoing.

The challenge for Mr. Prokhorov is to somehow chip away at the prestige, and now the buzz, of Mr. Dolan's monopoly.

He has brazenly guaranteed a championship within five years, and--even as the team watched Mr. Anthony slip away--he crowed about the Nets' impact on the deal. "I think we've made a very good tactical decision to force Knicks [sic] just to pay as much as they can," he told CNBC, even before the trade was officially completed.

A few hours before the Knicks' press conference to introduce Mr. Anthony, the Nets announced a new star of their own: Deron Williams, acquired in an out-of-nowhere swap with Utah that was certain to crowd the next day's headlines.

"We all love to have rivals," said Mark Cuban, the outlandish Dallas Mavericks owner and fellow billionaire to whom Mr. Prokhorov is often compared, in an email to The Observer. "He is a good guy," Mr. Cuban wrote. "Smart. Passionate. Competitive. Most importantly, he is witty as shit. He loves a good battle of the words, even if it isn't his native language." (Mr. Prokhorov is unlikely to match the noisy courtside presence of Mr. Cuban. A person familiar with the plans said Mr. Prokhorov is assembling an in-house retreat for himself 10 times the size of a standard luxury box "for he and his Russian friends.")

The Knicks' official position is to feign a lack of concern. "While we always respect any competition, the Garden will always be the Garden," the company said in a statement.

And, on the night of Mr. Anthony's debut, the Garden was very much the Garden again, for the first time in recent memory.

In the concourse, fans pulled brand-new "Anthony" jerseys over their shirt
s, and the crowd stayed on its feet for the layup lines, snapping cell phone shots of Mr. Anthony in his new uniform.

Then the arena went pitch black, Diddy's "Coming Home" floated over the PA, and a quotation from Mr. Anthony flashed on the scoreboard. "I was born May 29, 1984 in Brooklyn, N.Y."

If Mr. Prokhorov has any hope of capturing the city's affection, he must first conquer Brooklyn, which could prove a rocky beachhead.

The rosiest scenario has the Nets replacing the bygone baseball Dodgers as the borough's pro sports heroes, but the prospect of a glorious homecoming is quite a bit more complicated.

"For someone like me, who's a Brooklynite through and through, it's going to create dilemmas," said Senator Charles Schumer, who was born and still lives a short bicycle ride from the new arena site. "Because I've been a Knicks fan all along, and I guess I'll have to wait until they arrive and see what happens. But my inclination is to stick with the Nets"--he shook his head--"with the Knicks."

The team's arrival has already suffered years of bad press, thanks to the protracted battle over the $4 billion development at the Atlantic Yards site in downtown Brooklyn. Before a series of court rulings resolved it and construction started in earnest last year, the battle pitted neighborhood activists, many of them newcomers who spawned the borough's gentrification, against the team's former owner Bruce Ratner, the site's developer.

The bitterness lingers.

Eric McClure, the founder of Park Slope Neighbors, said the only thing that might possibly draw him to the arena was "a Beatles reunion."

"Can Prokhorov sway Brooklynites to root for a different team?" mused Daniel Goldstein, a leader of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the leading Atlantic Yards opposition group, in an email to The Observer from India. "If he pays them enough."

"For the hard-core anti-Yards people, I don't see them coming around that fast," conceded Borough President Marty Markowitz, a longtime supporter of relocating the team. "But I see their kids coming around. And that will motivate them."

For the majority of Brooklynites, the prospect of Nets fandom is likely to rest on the simple question of whether the team is worth watching.

"I've been a lifelong Knick fan, but winning changes everything, so if they start to win, they'll like 'em," said Larry Chertoff, a Park Slope dad, who was leaving the Atlantic Center mall on Sunday afternoon. "I don't see myself switching allegiances, but a couple years ago, when the Nets were pretty good and they had [Jason] Kidd and [Richard] Jefferson, I went out to Jersey to see them, and I enjoyed them, so you never know."

In that regard, Mr. Prokhorov seems to inspire more hope for a competitive product than Mr. Ratner ever did.

"Bruce Ratner, who I respect enormously and who made this possible--after I put the pressure on--he was never a jock, I was never a jock," Mr. Markowitz said. "This man eats and breathes basketball. He's looking at it, I don't think as an investment, as in only dollars and cents; I think he's looking at it as being a good owner."

Mr. Markowitz cited the recent trade for Mr. Williams and said he hoped the new point guard would help lure a winning team to the borough. "We'll have his back, that's for sure. He'll learn how lucky he is to be wearing a Brooklyn Nets uniform in not too long from now."

But first the team must get him there; Mr. Williams can opt out of his contract in the summer of 2012, just when the franchise is set to occupy the brand-new Barclays Center.

On Monday evening, Newark did its best to woo him.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé sat in the Prudential Center's front row; fans were showered with complimentary Williams T-shirts; the opening montage had been recast with his highlights; even the mascot, an overgrown silver fox, was wearing his No. 8 jersey.

Though the crowd was spotty--despite being within a few hundred seats of a sellout--the fans who were there gave him a rousing ovation.

Mr. Williams high-fived his teammates with a stone face. "I can't really give any assurances or say that I'll be here, when I don't know what the future holds," he had said in his first press conference last week, when asked about his long-term future with the Nets. On Friday, Mr. Prokhorov cut short his heli-skiing trip to fly to San Antonio and welcome him to the organization, which hopes he'll be a cornerstone capable of luring other top talent.

While both teams tinker with their rosters over the next 16 months, the climax of this cold war won't come until the summer of 2012, when Mr. Williams and two other superstars--Orlando's Dwight Howard and New Orleans' Chris Paul--are set to hit the open market.

But with the NBA renegotiating its labor contract this summer, it's unclear just how much room Messrs. Dolan and Prokhorov will have to maneuver around each other. Will teams be able to exert a contractual clamp on their free agents like football's franchise tag? And will a strict salary cap restrict the ability of both to spend freely? No one knows, and the pessimists predict a long lockout as the two sides try to hash it out.

For Knicks' fans, though, the larger, looming question is who might be making the basketball decisions in 2012.

At Mr. Dolan's press conference, after introducing Mr. Anthony, the owner launched into an unprompted screed against rumors that he had overruled Mr. Walsh and was instead heeding the counsel of Isiah Thomas, Mr. Walsh's predecessor, who stuffed the team with an underperforming cast of bloated contracts.

"While Isiah Thomas is a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, he was not at all involved in this process," Mr. Dolan volunteered to the crowd. "The trade was a complete effort with Donnie, Mike and I," he said, as Mr. Walsh, whose contract expires in June, sat awkwardly next to him on another stool and head coach Mike D'Antoni stared straight ahead with his arms crossed.

"I'm a die-hard Knick fan," said Shawn Mundinger, a season-ticket holder who was wearing a Ronnie Turiaf jersey on Wednesday night. He commutes to the Garden from Westhampton, even though he has to wake up at 5 a.m. for his shifts as a sanitation worker. "But if [Mr. Thomas] was ever to come back, in any way, shape or form, and the Knicks really aren't a contender, I think I'd give up my seats. I know a lot of people who feel the same way. He's just toxic, always has been."

"In my opinion, Dolan will not bring Isiah Thomas back," said Dan Klores, the veteran PR man turned documentarian, who met Mr. Walsh in 1967, and then helped him land the Knicks job four decades later. "Donnie went through the two worst years of his professional career, and it would be wonderful to have him see the fruits of his labor."

Mr. Klores, a Brooklyn native, was cautiously optimistic about what the new rivalry might mean. "Obviously, it's a great time for New York basketball," he said. "Unless the people running New York basketball screw it up."

rpillifant@observer.com

Matt Chaban contributed reporting.

Snob originally launched in Russia in 2008 with a $150 million investment from Prokhorov. The magazine features upscale coverage of lifestyle, arts, business and sex. Snob expanded to the U.K. in 2009. Here in the U.S., it will sell for $8 a copy with an initial distribution of 20,000 in New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco.

Prokhorov was clearly pleased with Snob's performance in London. With Snob's high price and approximately 700,000 Russian speakers living in the United States, there is clearly potential for the magazine to find more readers and revenue here as well. Snob's editors also cite their existing web readership in New York as a reason to be optimistic about Snob's launch. Along with the magazine, there is a Snob social networking service and a premium membership with access to events hosted by the magazine that should provide additional cash.

Thus far, Prokhorov has been cagey about Snob's finances, but he doesn't need the magazine to make money. Prokhorov is worth approximately $13.4 billion. The investment in Snob is a drop in the bucket for a man who lost $10 billion during the height of the recession and earned most of it back within a year.

Even if it's not profitable, Snob will also provide Prokhorov with something he can't buy with cash -- the cachet and status being a New York media mogul.

Prokhorov, who famously purchased a billboard across the street from Madison Square Garden that featured him alongside Nets co-owner and rapper Jay Z, is clearly fond of publicity and this latest launch brought him a ton of it. The latest issue of Snob, which is the first to be distributed in New York, features a 12-page interview with Prokhorov.

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To Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, Brooklyn is a country—one that he says will help him make his Nets worth $1 billion in five years.

The Russian billionaire is featured on the cover of Forbes Russia’s August “Stars and Money” issue, discussing his conservative profit estimates, his passion and love for sports, and the Russian stereotypes he seeks to break. 

Mr. Prokhorov, who has not always had adoring fans in Brooklyn, became owner of the Nets in May, in preparation for his team to make their new home in the Barclays Center within the controversial Atlantic Yards development.

And he couldn’t be happier to be in Brooklyn. Translation via nba.com, Mr. Prokhorov tells Forbes: “Brooklyn is a country unto itself. Even the Americans themselves say that. It’s the center of immigration. It has a unique energy to it. Tens of millions of people who now live in the U.S. came through Brooklyn.”

Brooklyn’s so great that a deficit is in fact a built-in part of the plan.

“The structure of the deal is such that, before the move to Brooklyn, we plan to have a certain budget deficit. That’s built in. But from the time we move to Brooklyn, the team becomes profitable,” he says.

In two years, he says, his “conservative” profit estimate is $20 million.

And there’s nothing screwy going on here, he says. Discussing Phil Jackson’s interest in a coaching job with the Nets, Mr. Prokhorov transitions into his distaste for vodka and Russian stereotypes.

“He said he wanted to drink vodka with me. But the problem is I don’t drink vodka! (He laughs). By the way, that’s one of the stereotypes, that, if it’s a Russian, there must be something screwy going on. We’re going to break the stereotype."

It’s also not just about business for this businessman. It’s about love. And passion.

“When you’re talking about the business of sports, you can’t leave out passion and love,” he says.

How does he handle conflicting interests of love and money? Self-discipline!

“In this business in particular, I need to be maximally careful, so that my passion and love for basketball don’t interfere with my business reasoning. It has to do with balancing my own internal interests and here I will be very self-disciplined.

slevin@observer.com

"Welcome to the New Russian Wave. According to night-life insiders, a surge of rich Muscovites has arrived in New York City, and they're taking over where the beleaguered investment bankers left off - flashing credit cards at clubs, buying up bling at Bulgari, and draining wine cellars of their best bottles all over town."

Among the evidence is a Russian princess named Kristina Kovalenko drinking $5,000 bottles of cognac mixed with apple juice at our favorite Russian joint, Mari Vanna, and spending $6,500 on a lunch at Nello; model Irina Shayk (and girlfriend of soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo) buying three pairs of shoes at Christian Louboutin per visit; and an unnamed Russian billionaire renting the roof deck of a strip club and spending $20,000 on cigars, champagne and girls--"There were like five girls for every guy. They were very generous, definitely big tippers," said a dancer named Cynthia. The billionaire is described as a "40-something, slim and handsome, with chiseled features"--might this be Mikhail Prokhorov?

The Post explains that unlike guilty Wall Streeters, the Russians can spend shamelessly and, compared with Moscow, New York bottle-service prices happen to be a deal.

As Tatiana Brunetti, a partner of Mari Vanna, explained to us a few months ago, New York will eventually become a second London:

"Before, it was very hard to get a visa and travel to United States. When the Soviet Union broke up, people went to London, France, Israel, Spain and started buying real estate, because it's close and you can get a visa. The main reason it was hard to get a visa is that U.S. was scared of you to stay here illegally and work illegally or live off welfare. Even for wealthy people, it was hard. But when America started having not good economical times, then they opened up the borders. It's easy now as long you have a job and invest in American economy."