Their hedge funds have blown up here and there, but unlike the investment banks, they are still very much in business. They have hurriedly pulled themselves into defensive positions inside their shells, like turtles. Their Armageddon, if any, will not come for two more days, which is to say, Tuesday, Sept. 30.

Most hedge funds open up a crack on Sept. 30, Dec. 31, March 31 and June 30 to give investors the chance to “redeem” their investments, meaning take their money out. These moments are called gates, like a series of gates in a prison. The gate is the limit, the fixed percentage of your money, that the fund will allow you to take out at one time. Even with these strict caps on withdrawals, some funds may end up nothing but shells.

But hedge funders are still superior, Wolfe added, because only they practice the magic of "saving," leaving them with a "nut" that will be just fine when their funds collapse, because they don't lead ostentatious lives of excess like investment bankers. Ha!

In any case, thanks for the warning, Tom. For a minute there we were all worried the torrent of horrific bad news might slow down this week!

First of all, Charlotte Simmons is supposed among other things to be an indictment of college promiscuity, something Tina Brown had no trouble with as an ambitious young undergraduate at Oxford University with boyfriends such as Martin Amis. (I'd been looking for an excuse to rehash Brown's active college sex life.)

Second, it is a profoundly conservative book—George Bush's favorite—by an author who has mocked Tina Brown for her salon liberalism. Tom Wolfe tells of a dinner party at which the guests engaged in ritualistic disdain for George Bush, only to be punctured by one of those workers they professed to care about so much, a waiter who planned to vote for the despised Republican. Wolfe told the Guardian: "Tina and her circle in the media do not have a clue about the rest of the United States."

Above all, how on earth can Brown spare the time? In her career choices Tina Brown has of late become as promiscuous as the college students ridiculed in Charlotte Simmons. She pops up in the restroom to which reporters covering Hillary Clinton's campaign had been exiled, working on a book on the candidate which now seems redundant; she's still pitching her book on Lady Diana to middle-aged women in cities such as Pittsburgh and Naples, FL; originally British, Tina Brown is one of the candidates to take over the BBC's famed Letter from America radio broadcast; as the supposed founder of the forthcoming Daily Beast web site, she's been establishing her internet bona fides talking to the dreary Online News Association.

That wouldn't matter except that she's been presenting herself as an internet convert, full of passion for a new medium “vibrant with life instead of constantly obsessed with fears of its own extinction.” She's a founder of a website which is supposed to launch in weeks. One would have thought Barry Diller would be expecting the degree of maniacal commitment that Brown once brought to magazines and that internet entrepreneurs are expected to bring to their ventures.

The whole thing, starting with the subprime, is the fault of the computer. I was just talking to a banker the other day, and not that long ago, 20 years ago, an investment banking house, let’s say, Lehman Brothers, when it got a package of mortgages, they would go through every mortgage, every single one, and they’d throw out the ones that just seemed absurd, they just wouldn’t accept them. Things used to arrive on paper. Today things arrive on a screen, and a screen is back lit, and one of the biggest pains in the neck is trying to read something dully written and complicated on a computer screen. It will drive you nuts—I mean, try it sometime.

It's actually true that the financial crisis was caused in part by certain Collateralized Debt Obligations and other complex, devil's brew financial vehicles whose risk could only be assessed — or claimed to be assessed, really — using computer models and whose contents were poorly understood if examined in the first place. But the proper response to an investment you don't understand is to refrain from buying it, not to blame the tool that made it possible.

After all, as Wolfe should know, investment banks only started caring about boring old home mortgages when computer technology made it possible to quickly bundle and sell them on the global market. And good luck running a hedge fund without heavy use of computers and the internet.

Furthermore — wait, why are we seriously arguing finance with a novelist? Isn't there something else we can talk about, Tom?

Did I mention to you I’m pimping out my cars?

Much better!

[Observer]

Man. It's like, you score an interview with a heavyweight like Wolfe, and then screw it up by subjecting him to embarrassing questions like these:

Are you afraid of death?

HI ,since i was very young,i have dreams,visions,premonitions and receve messeges ,FROM JESUS,ST MARY,ANGELS.HE ANSWERED TO MY prayer ,to write this book, …Gods Blessing Through Dreams,Visions,& Premonitions. my web http://www.godisblessingmylife. .tk. true story

MMy mother read an article several years ago which mentioned a favorite childhood book which had Bear in the title. Could you possibly email me the title?

Many thanks,
Sharon

Did you ever use LSD or marijuana while traveling with the Merry Pranksters?

Sigh.

• Charlie Sheen is sorry to black people for calling his ex-wife Denise Richards a "f—king n—--r." He's especially sorry to "Tony Todd, an African-American, who was my best man at my first two weddings." Ha! Richards, with whom Sheen has been bitterly feuding, doesn't get an apology, and can presumably just "f—king" deal. [Us]
• Yesterday, everyone was worried fashiongay Andre Leon Talley would ruin Michelle Obama by putting her in a bolero jacket or some other atrocious thing. He hasn't done that yet. Instead, the Vogue editor-at-large introduced the would-be first lady at a fashion-industry fundraiser while he was wearing "a kind of turban that recalled the much-discussed costume [Barack Obama] once wore in Somalia." No one should have a problem with Obama hanging out with what looks like a gay muslim, even an elitist gay fashion muslim in New York, so obviously no one, anywhere, will. [R&M]
• Not only did Anne Hathaway break up with her scuzzy Italian boyfriend, she also moved out. Yay! But what's this business about dinner at Cipriani? [P6]
• Relentlessly cranky novelist Tom Wolfe demanded to know why a developer insinuated he was anti-Semitic. OK, this time he might have a legitimate reason to be cranky. [P6]
• Broadway and former TV star Mario Lopez is being named People's "Hottest Bachelor," but he's still totally getting evicted from his Broadway theater to make way for Katie Holmes. The guy's biceps can't catch a break.
• Supposedly Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt just bought a $10,000 stash of guns, including "two Benelli semiautomatic M4 tactical shotguns, two Wilson close quarter combat .45-caliber pistols and one Scout semiautomatic rifle." Suddenly, I'm kind of interested in seeing them in front of some reality television cameras again. Near other reality television stars. While drunk and angry. [The Superficial]
• So sad: Freeloading music critics get free drinks, but no free food, at a listening party. They stormed out in a huff, logically. [P6]
• The mother of 50 Cent's 11-year-old son claims the rapper burned down her Long Island mansion. He claims she totally monitors his cell-phone conversations with the son. Call it a draw? [R&M]

People who have spoken with Mr. Cayne say that he, like everyone at Bear, was stunned by the firm’s precipitous collapse and the rock-bottom price of its sale. In the past weeks, together with his wife, Patricia Cayne, who is a student of Jewish religious traditions, Mr. Cayne has spent considerable time searching for comparable events in religious history to see what lessons can be learned from the collapse of his firm, said a person who has spoken to him recently...

While Mr. Cayne has not publicly said why he sold his shares, people who know him say that it suggests a need to separate himself, emotionally as well as financially, from the firm that for so long had been part of every fiber of his being and that now had become a source of pain and disappointment.

Here's a taste of Wolfe's Croker, from A Man In Full, after his corporate meltdown and religious conversion:

"...You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there'll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you. 'You have priceless silver and goblets of gold,' said the philosopher, 'but your reason is of common clay.' As of this morning, I am as rich as the richest of you, for I am hereby handing over anything I own, the Croker Global Corporation, every last branch of it..."

"I don't know what you're like," Croker was saying, "but if you're like most uv'us here is Atlanta, you're driving yourself crazy over possessions. Just think about that for a second..."

"I can tell you that the only real possession you'll ever have is your character, that and your 'scheme of life,' you might say. The Manager has given every person a spark from His own divinity, and no one can take that away from you, not even the Manager himself, and from that spark comes your character. Everything else is temporary and worthless in the long run..."

"But you say, 'I'd rather die than sit down beside the road with a Dixie cup, begging.' Do you realize what you're really saying? You're saying, 'It ain't what I'm gonna eat or where I'm gonna stay I'm worrying about, it's saving face, it's what everybody in Buckhead's gon' think about me..."

Times: Down $900 Million or More, the Chairman of Bear Sells

Thursday, July 26, 2007. 7:45 pm. I'm on the Hampton Jitney, Montauk Highway, Route 27, we pull into the forlorn Southampton Jitney HQ/Health Spa parking lot. I'm drowsy from a full afternoon on Main Beach, when I notice famed New Journalism author & bon vivant TOM WOLFE walking slowly to his car in the parking lot just beneath my bus window.

Wolfe's owl-like visage is unmistakable, but I'm very put off by the rag tag outfit he's wearing this mid-summer evening. Normally of course one imagines Wolfe dressed to the nines in his signature ice cream white suit, custom dress shirt, silk tie and jazz-age spat shoes.

Shockingly, Wolfe is wearing faded, worn navy sweatpants, ill-fitting and slovenly, as one might wear for a touch football game on the Great Lawn. He has on a royal blue shirt rolled up at the sleeves. The cut and hue of the shirt actually has a sloppy cowboy denim shirt quality to it. Wolfe has balloon-like white sneakers on his feet, most like the casual Reebok white aerobic shoes that my father sported in South Beach a couple of years before his death. Wolfe's famous parted grey hair is all askew, splayed across his forehead and touching his eye and nose like some gator-trailed, drunken Brooklyn hipster at Studio B's closing time.

Wolfe walks the few steps to his car [perhaps he was dropping off a friend for the ride back to Manhattan; I caught the bus in Amagansett at 6:50 but it took us an hour to reach South]. His choice of automobile was the only aspect of the experience that seemed suited to the great author. Wolfe's car was a Cadillac, in the pristine ice cream white that one sees in his custom three-piece suits. It's a Caddy of fairly recent vintage, big and boxey and somewhat inflated like his white Reebok sneakers. It has a similar design quality to the Escalade, but it's a luxury 4 door Cadillac, big and puffy, not like the classic long, sleek Lincoln Towncar that I prefer; more like a sawed-off shoebox Rolls Royce design, but still impeccable in the whiteness of the paint and the opulence of the high suspension.

The other Wolfe-ian aspect were his rims: Wolfe had installed full white-walled wafer-like ice cream white metal disc rims inside his fat tires, with a showy Cadillac logo in the center. Very Palm Beach or Beverly Hills, I thought to myself. He inched out of his parking space, so, so slowly, a foot at a time, haltingly, perhaps wisely avoiding a collision with the huge lurking Jitney Prevost bus that has taken more than a few lives in past summers on Montauk Highway.

I suppose in the city Wolfe takes pride in his immaculate three piece suits and manicured Southern Gentleman profile. But like certain East Enders, he dresses way down in the country—yet making sure his choice of car bespeaks a man of over-arching, even intimidating, refinement, accomplishment, taste and means.

The Earl Grey -
11937 / 10021

Inside the restaurant, Tom Wolfe had his photo taken with Julia Allison. (That bears repeating: Tom Wolfe had his photo taken with Julia Allison.) Kurt Andersen made a little chit-chat before begging off to the Larry King appreciation party in the next room. (They had better snacks, by far. Also CNN partygoers received a Coach-imitation leather tote with a CNN tag, and a DVD of King's reputedly best work. You could sneak in through the kitchen.) The two parties side-by-side may have been a slight disaster on the part of Steven Rubenstein and his PR folks, but it came off fine, actually. (It was a question of wattage; did we see Hillary Clinton presswoman Jennifer Hanley outside, meaning that Hillary Clinton was inside the CNN party?)

Uniformed waiters were aggressive with the hors d'oeuvres, most of which featured caviar in some form, but the knot of yarmulked men gathered by the bar ignored them. (The duck, the shrimp, the crabcakes!) Also not eating, or drinking, was Jared's rehabilitated felon father, Charles Kushner, who mostly spoke in low tones to men at the end of the bar. Ever-gracious Jared entertained a seemingly endless stream of well-wishers and posed for photographs. The real estate broker-developer Michael Shvo said he'd call him about having lunch. Jared recently purchased the most expensive office building in America.

So how were things at the paper? "We're having a lot of fun," Jared said. Was he dating Ivanka Trump? "We're just friends. But thanks for asking." So that partnership was all business too.

Ms. Trump was in a very nice short black dress, looking tall and blonde; she talked for what seemed like eons with Jared's assistant Kimberly. Steven Rubenstein, who represents the Observer and the Kushner family, made sure everyone was having a good time and that the photographers were getting all the right people; he talked with did not talk with New York Times reporter Allen Salkin, who wrote such nice things about Jared in the Sunday Styles section.

Cindy Adams talked to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, notebook in hand, hair at attention. Salon editor Joan Walsh, in a pantsuit, stayed close to Salon writer and former NYO staffer Rebecca Traister. Harry Evans was there with his wife, former lots-of-places editor Tina Brown, who spent a lot of time deep in very close conversation with W/WWD boy Jacob Bernstein.

"I love this tabloid!" Mr. Evans said, Britishly. "I seized it with great joy before a long bus ride, and I loved every word!" He is somewhat reminiscent of a brilliant leprechaun. "Joe Conason on politics! John Heilpern! The Obama piece! I thought it was terrific! The tabloid format is far better." Mr. Evans said that the bus had taken him to Southampton.

Ms. Brown has recently finished her book about Princess Diana. "It's like a plum pudding—there are great nuggets everywhere!" she said. "It's as much about celebrity culture as it is about Diana herself." And how did Ms. Brown feel about the Stephen Frears film The Queen? "I loved The Queen," Ms. Brown said. "It was very accurate! Except for the portrayal of Robin Janvrin, the Queen's private secretary. He looks like Kenneth Branagh in real life."

Ms. Brown said that the book had taken her a year and a half; for it, she conducted 250 interviews. "I feel like a giant whale has been lifted from my head."

Maer Roshan, who worked for Ms. Brown at her short-lived magazine Talk, was there with a bundle of his Radar-ites, including his lieutenant Chris Tennant, who was holding court with several ladies in a booth. He was wearing jeans that appeared to have been painted on. That tall woman with the jet-black hair, talking with the older man? So tall! Atoosa Rubenstein! Lots of flashbulbs.

Observer reporters seemed vaguely uncomfortable at such an extravagant gathering ("It's the Observer with money," more than one was overheard whispering), and they swiped multiple Bellinis as they came around on silver trays. Transom reporter Spencer Morgan however did not look uncomfortable.

Jessica Joffe wore eyeglasses. Slate editor Jacob Weisberg and Domino editor Deborah Needleman arrived with New York's Ariel Levy. Jacob is going on a three-month book leave soon. Andrew Balazs, Columbia J-school graduate, was there solo. Lloyd Grove was not in attendance, but Ben Widdicombe, Hud Morgan, and Daily News gossip boy Patrick Huguenin were.

We were promised there'd be no speeches but there was a microphone and so Jared took it and said that 20 years ago, when the New York Observer was founded, he was starting a venture called... kindergarten. His voice still has a little hint of his Livingston, New Jersey upbringing. The new website, he said, was to launch on Monday, but as a preview, they had a page up on the screen. (The Four Seasons, it turns out, does not have Internet access.) Jared said he was very fortunate to work with Peter Kaplan, the editor of the newspaper, a sentiment that was greeted with cheers from the crowd. "We get to go to the 21st century with a new newspaper," said Kaplan. He then referred to the paper's former owner and publisher, Arthur Carter, as "my buddy and weekly tormenter."

Of the paper, he said: "The paper is younger, thinner, and better looking, like Jared."

We talked to Peter Kaplan in person. "For anyone under 30, the New York Times is a queen-sized sheet!" he said. "Going smaller was the best thing we could have done. We're still smart. We still have an edge." He said something about possibly becoming the smartest tabloid in America. "It was time to make a change. I love it. It's great!"

Jacob Bernstein left in Peggy Siegal's car. The New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten may have left with William Berlind for stiffer drinks. Patrick McMullan's photographers would prove unable to identify Alex Kuczynski. Ivanka Trump left alone, and on foot, heading east on 52nd Street. —Doree

Portfoliomag.com

Inside that cover, there are a healthy eleven pages of ads before Lipman's Editor's Letter, ranging from the stolid (GE, Chevron, Fidelity, etc.) to the sexy (BMW, Visa's line of luxury cards). Lipman's letter is almost aggressively boastful about the vapidity of the content that you'll find within the book; Portfolio is apparently the brilliant girl in high school who acted dumb to attract the boys. "Today's 24/7 news cycle bombards us with information but gives us less time to process it," says Lipman, who notes that:

We chose a monthly frequency for Cond Nast Portfolio so we can offer you deep dives into important subjects, providing you with the most compelling—and most useful—information. After this issue, we take a break and begin publishing monthly with our September issue.

After a three page Ralph Lauren spread we come to the Table of Contents page. As is this case with most upmarket titles aimed (ideally!) at people who want to have something to flip through while their driver hies them to Teterboro, the T.O.C. is broken up by ad pages. We pass by Rolex (one page), Armani (spread), Canon (spread), Travelers Insurance (spread), hit the second page of the T.O.C., and then it's a Hermes one pager and a Cartier spread to take us to the Contents' conclusion. We're certainly feeling an urge to consume! Up next is a foldout ad for Grey Goose. We're certainly feeling an urge to become incredibly drunk! There's an ad for Think Tank ("an exclusive forum for Conde Nast Portfolio readers to share their thinking") that directs you to the Portfolio website, where you can join this virtual community. (Sure, Conde may be shelling out upwards of $100 million on a new print mag, but they get the Web.) Calvin Klein has a three page ad, Van Heusen is in for one, DeBeers takes a spread, Portfolio.com gets another plug (they get the Web), IBM has four pages and then, lo and behold, there's an ad for Portfolio.com (they get the Web)! A two page Prudential "Red Zone" ad follows and looks like nothing so much as a promo for Old Spice.

And then is something called "Photo Genesis." It's about how "the biggest names in business can be tricky to photograph," presumably because they are all vampires for whom sunlight represents the ultimate enemy. Is this section some kind of contributor's page for the photogs? Probably! FedEx is in for a page, Goldman Sachs gets a spread to show how much they love developing countries, which they illustrate with eight pictures of children who will no doubt be adopted by Angelina Jolie in the immediate future. Hyatt Place—a new hotel designed around you—takes a spread. BlackBerry's got a single-pager starring the CEO of Capital Management Group.

Then it's the second page of Photo Genesis. Look, there's Tom Wolfe! And Bill Ford! Also, business people only ask for one photographer by name: Annie Leibovitz. Why? She's the only one they've ever heard of.

Cargill goes for a spread and then we reach the Index of Companies and People mentioned in the magazine, which is presumably placed here to remind you that there's some sort of business element to the book. The index is, of course, interspersed with more ads (four pages for Ameriprise Financial), but we did note that Conde Nast is not included. David Geffen gets three mentions, apparently, and Peter Guber one. We're starting to get a better idea of what the magazine is about.

Banana Republic has a spread—the pastels make our eyes happy—and then it's the masthead. Let's give a random shout-out to Art Assistant Paloma Shutes as we whiz by. CreditSuisse has a foldout ad, which is backed by THe FILe, "events + promotions + news from our advertisers." Um, what the hell else has the magazine been thus far? Ermenegildo Zegna does four pages, in two of which well-dressed gentlemen are shown reading the Financial Times. Ooh, showing a real business publication in the pages of Portfolio. This magazine is ballsy!

The second page of THe FILe directs you to, yes, Portfolio.com (who gets the Web?). An Omega watch ad surrounds the business masthead, and this time we're gonna give a wave to Events Director Elise Mehrige. Lincoln takes four pages, CA gets one and then... Contributors!

This is an odd layout. The writers are shown on a map of the world with datelines underneath their names signifying where they reported from. It's a little jarring:

Gabriel Sherman
NAPLES, FLORIDA

looks like a nametag you'd see on a server at an Applebees. (Also, Gabriel Sherman looks kind of like Macaulay Culkin if he were just about to be molested by Tom Wolfe, which, for all we know, may be the plot of Home Alone 5.)

Samsung, John Hardy and UBS account for four pages, and then we get "MAY AGENDA," which, at page 87, can be fairly said to be the first piece of real content in the magazine. Our first impression is that we have mistakenly picked up the world's heaviest New York: there's something about the layout and line art that feel vaguely Mossian. But what's on the calendar? The Kentucky Derby's on May 5th, and there's "speculation that Queen Elizabeth II will be on hand." There's a gala for the Met on the 7th. The iPhone launches in June, but we'll not see another Portfolio until September, so best to cram it in now. (Incidentally, this counts as one of the two mentions of Steve Jobs in this issue, if the Index is at all accurate.) There's a goofy icon of the Google boys (shareholders' meeting on the 10th, y'all!), and then it's back to the ads.

Four-page foldout for Accenture featuring Tiger Woods. THe FILe gets another page. 650 Sixth Avenue—the first piece of real estate advertising we've seen thus far!— does a one-pager. It's "gallery style condominium living," which sounds incredibly hip and happening. Plus it's right near The Container Store! Northwestern Mutual does a spread, Patek Philippe has one page, and now we're at brief. The magazine may actually be starting for real this time!

Stick with us, we're not doing this for ourselves!

Brief is: "WHO'S DOING WHAT TO WHOM AND WHY." Wow, that's Us Weekly's mission statement too! Apparently this is the "front of book." Jesse Eisinger does a bit on how private equity firms are doing such gigantic deals that they can no longer avoid scrutiny. It's broken up by a Xerox spread, so we sort of lost the thread in the middle, but there's half-page graphy/charty thing on the other side that, again, looks like it came out of New York.

After an Intel ad we get a brief interview with Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin. (Kudos to the editors for going with "Siriusly Speaking" rather than "The Karmazin' Race.") Mel claims to have learned "nothing good" from former employer Sumner Redstone. Interviewer Nancy Hass asks some toughish questions, but stuff like "You are a man with an urge to merge" doesn't exactly go for the jugular. Below the interview is a photo-laden timeline that could have come from Radar, Spy or Vanity Fair, actually.

Microsoft has a page, and then there's a photospread on the ad people who will make the big decisions at the television upfronts. Unilever's Laura Klauberg has nice legs. A Microsoft spread following up on the previous ad gives way to a page on architecture ("Mine's Bigger") that is both chart and list on the "ridiculous race to build the world's tallest building." Canali has a page. The next page has a cartoon! It's about corporate-cafeteria health-code violations! (Advertiser Credit Suisse, as well as Newsweek and Verizon get mentions, but there is nothing about the Conde caf, which we're sure is spotless.)

There's a then-and-now charticle (So many entry points!) concerning Bubble 2.0 (FAVORITE POL: Then: Bill, Now: Hillary. You get the idea). After another page of THe FILe, there's a humorous collection of real excuses corporations made for not meeting estimates, which is slightly less amusing when you realize that the item atop it is all about MINING DEATHS. Well, we guess they both do fall under the "WORKPLACE" rubric.

Nic Cage is selling Montblanc watches? What, they couldn't find anyone creepier? Anyway, that ad is followed up by a four-page Merrill Lynch thing. Their slogan is "TOTAL MERILL" which seems an odd choice when it's placed directly next to a giant bull. Anyway. There's a full spread about China's preparation for the 2008 Olympics, which mainly consists of a giant picture of the still-under-construction stadium. Helpful logos at bottom bring you information about how much steel is being used, daily worker pay, etc.

Porsche has an ad spread. There's a page about exit compensation that tries to muster some outrage about the giant sums given to underperforming executives upon their departure that would be more convincing were it not placed aside an ad for Audemars Piguet watches, which are apparently made for the rich executive with Asperger's. That ad continues on for three more pages, and is followed by an ad from Portfolio.com thanking its "digital partners" for "embracing innovation."

"THE LAST WORD" in brief is an Alexandra "Daughter of Tom" Wolfe piece on "the past year's most extravagant bar and bat mitzvahs." As our co-editor Emily said, "I remember reading 'there are lavish bar mitzvahs' articles when i was PREPARING FOR MY BAT MITZVAH. And they had better headlines." (This one is called "Mazel Top This," so we're inclined to agree.) Still, you're not going to see pictures of Snoop Dogg and Liza Minnelli in fusty old Forbes, are you?

We don't read Forbes, so that's an actual question.

Burberry: One page. Mass Mutual: a spread. And, here we go. Columnists. John Cassidy tackles Economics (Global warming might not be as bad as we think, economists say. Oh do they.) Jesse Eisenger covers Wall Street (Will derivatives fuck up the market? Maybe not! But probably!). At this point we're just gonna stop counting the ads unless there's something really sexy or egregious, but trust us, there's one on every other page. We're not sure what they're charging over at Conde, but even if it's pennies they've probably already earned out on that 100-million-dollar investment.

Gabriel Sherman (NAPLES, FLORIDA) profiles Bruce Sherman (no relation). Sherman's the CEO of Private Capital Management, and he's got newspaper owners everywhere pissing in their Ermenegildo Zegna trousers (wow, those ads really work!) as he tries to destroy the industry force news conglomerates to become more efficient through the bullying tactic we currently refer to as "shareholder activism." Sherman has already been successful in forcing Knight Ridder to sell itself off. Now he's teaming up with Morgan Stanley's Hasan Elmasry in an attempt to do the same to the New York Times Company. (Good luck with that. No seriously, good luck!) This is a lengthy, detailed profile that may be of interest to the casual reader who knows little about mysterious asset managers who are trying to change the way newspapers focus on their bottom lines. Not being among such we cannot judge it on its merits, but again, long and detailed. So points for that.

Sheelah Kolhatkar wonders why there aren't more women making the deals for private equity firms. (Answer: Men are bad.) It's a spread with a big picture of the six women who apparently have made it in the man's world, and there's a chart on the following page of the men who run the show. We don't really follow finance all that closely and we still feel like we knew everything in this piece. Still, it's mercifully brief, so we're giving the same amount of points that we did to the Sherman thing.

Michael Lewis, who made his name writing about finance and then revitalized his career by writing a book about finance as it pertains to sports, has an article about sports finance. It's a little logo-heavy, but so long as he's not writing about his children, we've always found Lewis extremely readable. You could do worse!

Special four-page Mark Ecko advertorial supplement. The sound you hear is us skipping over the pages with the celerity of Paul Rubens at a masturbation contest. Kolhatkar returns with a piece on Ken Griffin, "hedge fund wunderkind." It starts off with this: "The people who run hedge funds, as everyone knows, are tight-lipped." We did know that! You know who else is tight-lipped? Bruce Sherman, asset manager. Still, he talked to Portfolio, just like Ken Griffin, who untightened his lips long enough to talk about his wife and his art collection. Will he take Citadel, his hedge fund, public? "It's a strategic option." We feel somehow less informed.

Someone should tell the people who do print ads for Loews Hotels that color photographs superimposed over silver tint makes for a jarring, hideous ad.

"Behind the Green Doerr" is an article about John Doerr, a venture capitalist who wants to help the environment or something. We refuse to read any more articles about "green" anything—seriously, fuck the environment—so we can't evaluate this one, but it begins with Bono, which may give you some idea of where it goes.

Art! There's an art piece! It's about Marianne Boesky, the daughter of Ivan, whom older readers may remember as Wall Street's 80's symbol of greed gone wild. This one is sort of interesting. Also the art industry can be as cut-throat as the financial industry. We're going to go back and really read this one later. Also, it seems like Mike Ovitz comes off as a dick, which is always enjoyable.

Former Time writer Matt Cooper is still working his fifteen minutes of Plame. Matt was so totally ready to go to prison over the leak of the CIA agent's identity, right up until the moment where he spilled everything to stay out of jail. Best line: "As [Judy] Miller was hauled off to jail and I was let go, I told her to stay strong." Ever the comedian, we don't doubt that Cooper added something about not bending down for the soap.

There's a ten-page Lexus ad. If nothing else this magazine makes you realize how little money you have in your savings account. Or, we suppose, how much.

Here we are at page 227. We're in the final third of the damn thing now. It's culture | inc. (WHERE art MEETS commerce). Quick piece, complete with charticle, on the ins-and-outs of arts patronage. Alexandra Wolfe looks at the Chinese art market: Is it inflated? Some say yes! Others are unsure! A little infobox with five contemporary Chinese artists adds value, we guess. Investing in the theater: It's a risky proposition! Eileen Daspin introduces you to some folks who think that Legally Blonde: The Musical will somehow help cover their nut. Graphical box included for your pleasure. "DECONSTRUCTED PROGRAM" does the annotated document thing so popular with editors these days. Portfolio chooses to examine who's funding the Seattle Symphony. The answers may surprise you, particularly if you don't know anything about Seattle. Or the Symphony. Or people who might care about those two things in combination.

Level Vodka ad. Mmm. Vodka.

How is Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons helping to turn around the fortunes of the struggling Apollo Theater? A photicle (you know, the big picture accompanied by the small, numbered line art drawing that tells you who everyone is) may provide the answers!

There's a piece about the private equity/asset management guys who own Octone Records, which is responsible for Maroon 5. Bastards. Also, "This Love" is now stuck in our head. MOTHERFUCKERS.

Now it's THE GOLD Standard, Portfolio's Strategist. Things you should buy your rich fat ass this month: Tennis rackets, cameras, watches, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, a book about our inability to accept that life is essentially random. Having waded this far through Portfolio we are entirely convinced. A few capsule book reviews trail after.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct your attention to page 267, where Tom Wolfe examines the NEW MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Guess what? They're hedge fund managers! Do you like Tom Wolfe writing about rich people? Then go buy Portfolio, because he's doing it some more in this issue.

What else! The ruler of Dubai likes horsies. Horsie dynasty graphic included. Is Ford fucked? We're not sure, the article jumps to the back. Eira Thomas is a Canadian diamond mining magnate who is styled in green gown and mining boots. She lives in two different worlds! John Hockenberry wants you to know that if you pay taxes you are helping to fund the military/industrial complex. Ryan Kavanaugh is some red-headed 32-year-old standing on the corner where Hollywood meets Wall Street. (This one might actually be interesting, we see Harvey Weinstein barking in it.) Harry Hurt III writes about someone other than himself for once: Texas legend T. Boone Pickens. Oh, look, here's the rest of that Ford piece. Yeah, it's probably fucked. We're almost there! Look, an ad for Portfolio.com on your mobile! (They get the etc.) Okay, back page! It's "the demystifier." It's a charticle explaining the credit default swap. We still don't get it. Final ad: four page Cadillac foldout.

So, Portfolio? Honestly, this really is the Vanity Fair for the finance set. With the resources they're planning to pour into it, we don't doubt it'll survive for a couple years at least. Is it a good magazine? That depends! If you think Vanity Fair and New York are good magazines—and many people seem to—then, yes, you will find this a good magazine. By the standards of Manhattan, it certainly reeks of overclass success: fat, healthy, holding up a glass of high-end vodka with a $15,000 watch weighing down each wrist. —balk