Financial sector fat cats have been looking underfed of late, that’s why we were relieved to hear about this newest development: helicopters that shuttle them to and from Wall Street in eight minutes flat. For $200/day Liberty Helicopters will offer group rides—accommodating up to six passengers—between New Jersey and lower Manhattan. It seems showy and wasteful, sure, but Matt Zuccaro, president of Helicopter Association International reminds us that for the business community, “Time is money.” Just think of it as cab sharing for the obscenely wealthy. more ›

This spring the city's hiring freeze may finally thaw. According to a new study lots of New York businesses say they’ll take on new employees in the coming months. Sixteen percent of the 18,000 companies surveyed said hiring was in the cards; that’s 4 percent more than last quarter. NY1 says just nine percent will make job cuts, down from twice that much in the previous count. We'll believe it when we see it, but stats say construction workers will find sites-a-plenty. As for finance, that industry's still on lockdown. more ›

As expected, Wall Street will resume giving its brokers and bankers big fat bonuses this year. A report from the state budget division estimates that $64.2 billion in bonuses will be handed out in 2010—that's $57 billion more than last year, though still $19 billion less than in 2008. But the crafty financial institutions have adopted an array of creative tactics to quell public outrage over bonuses: the latest strategy is to pay their workers in stock, reports Reuters, that way it won't show up on the tax bill until five years later. Also, guns! (Okay, fine, rumors of guns.) more ›

Good news all around today! The unemployed will probably get another five months to choose a barrel-and-suspenders combo that doesn't make their butts look big, and a new study shows that Wall Street holiday bonuses are set to return to pre-recession levels. So everybody's happy, and there's no need for any pitchfork riots or bricks through Park Avenue windows. Go Yankees! more ›

There's bad news and slightly less bad news in the unemployment data for August, released yesterday at a grim press conference held by Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Paterson, and state labor commissioner M. Patricia Smith. First, the bad news, if you're the kind of person who likes prosperity and abundance: The city’s unemployment rate rose from 9.5 percent in July to 10.3 percent in August, its highest level since May 1993. NYC's unemployment rate is now well above the national rate of 9.7 percent, and more than 415,000 residents are jobless. Paterson told reporters that Ben Bernanke's recent Pollyannaish pronouncement about the national recession being over "doesn’t apply to us." more ›