Rumors ran wild in the last 24 hours that the Steinbrenner family was considering selling the Yankees in the wake of the Dodgers $2.175 billion sale this year. "There has been chatter all around the banking and financial industries in the city for a couple of weeks now," one anonymous baseball source told the Daily News, who broke the rumor. Managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner adamantly denied it in a statement: "I just learned of the Daily News story," Steinbrenner said. "It is pure fiction. The Yankees are not for sale. I expect that the Yankees will be in my family for many years to come." more ›

Listen, Eduardo Saverin, you may have co-founded Facebook and you may have renounced your U.S. citizenship in anticipation of tomorrow's big IPO day, but there's something you're not familiar with: The wrath of Senator Chuck Schumer. Chuck and Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are looking into ways to bar tax dodgers like Saverin. Schumer said today, "Saverin has turned his back on the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire. This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong... Sen. Casey and I have a status update for him: Pay your taxes in full, or don't ever try to visit the U.S. again." more ›

Hey, waitresses: trying to drum up some extra rent money? Well, you might want to slap on some Revlon Ravish Me Red—according to a recent French study, waitresses who wear red lipstick make more tips. more ›

Last night episode of Mad Men included a lengthy scene soundtracked by The Beatles Revolver-era psychedelic song "Tomorrow Never Knows." (The scene directly contrasts an earlier scene where an advertiser can't afford to use a real Beatles song in his commercial.) The entire song plays, bringing the viewer from Don Draper's arm chair all the way to the end of the credits. So how much did that cost Matthew Weiner & Co.? According to Forbes around $250,000 (about $150,000 more than a song by another band would normally cost). more ›

It isn't the return of congestion pricing, but Manhattan Borough President, presumed mayoral candidate and rapper Scott Stringer does want to bring back another favorite financial fear of the car-class: The Commuter Tax. You know, the one on folks who work in the city but live elsewhere that was with us for 33 years until 1999. Stringer wants it back. He's proposing reinstating it at the old rate of about "0.45 percent for most commuters." more ›

If you didn't think Keith Olbermann could get any more insufferable, then you didn't watch his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman last night. While he admitted, "I screwed up. I screwed up really big on this," and "It’s my fault that it didn’t succeed in the sense that I didn’t think the whole thing through," he discussed his $10 million/year salary (part of a $50 million/5-year contract he wants Current TV to commit to), "I didn’t say, ‘You know, if you buy a $10 million chandelier, you should have a house to put it in.' Just walking around with a $10 million chandelier isn’t going to do anybody a lot of good." more ›

One hundred forty-two people (not 100 as previously noted) had lottery tickets that were one number away from the winning combination. So a little crying over Lady Luck is to be expected, right? more ›

After making parents insane from the admissions process, it seems that more and more private schools are then putting the screws to parents by asking them how much they'll donate. And don't think $200 or even $1,000 will cut it: The NY Times begins its story by describing how one woman, whose three-year-old son was at a $21,000/year private school, was approached:

[Rachael Combe] received an invitation from the head of the school to come by for a visit. She assumed the meeting was to discuss how her son was adapting to the school’s curriculum. more ›

With the CityTime scandal slowly being sorted out, Comptroller John Liu wouldn't want you to think that Mayor Bloomberg's administration wasn't finding other ways to hand over your tax dollars to overzealous, under-supervised contractors. Not when the city's already messy Emergency Communications Transformation Program (ECTP), meant to update our 911 system, continues to bleed money. Seriously, the project is now projected to be seven years late and a billion over budget. more ›

Now that Greg Smith, ping-pong enthusiast and now former Goldman Sachs employee, has secured his place in the annals of legendary resignations (like this one), the fallout from his NY Times op-ed f*ck-you to Goldman is being analyzed. Goldman's market value fell by $2 billion yesterday, and now the firm is trying to figure out why Smith was so upset. more ›

Surprising no one, the MTA has confirmed that it's going to push hard for 7.5% fare hikes in 2013, 2015, and 2017. "How sure is that? It's going to happen," MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota told NBC. Not so fast, Lhota—the righteous alliance between straphangers and station rats foretold in the Subway Scrolls may cast thy fare increase into peril. more ›

Between cutting coupons, selling off pieces of their outfield, and drastically lowering expectations about the team's immediate future, the Mets really haven't had an inspiring off-season. More recently, Ike Davis has been diagnosed with Valley Fever, David Wright is grumpy about being called an "underdog," and Irving Picard's $386 million lawsuit won't go away. Now according to financial records, Citi Field revenues have dropped more than 30 percent since it opened in 2009, and Mets ticket sales are down by nearly 50 percent in that period. Maybe GM Sandy Alderson wasn't joking about that fundraiser for gas money. more ›

It's pledge week at WFMU again, and tonight is #TomThon, that special time of the year that you should hand over all your cash to radio host Tom Scharpling. more ›

No matter your issues with our billionaire mayor from Boston—where to start?—you have to give the man credit: He sure gives away a lot of dough. Hot on the heels of his quarter-million matching donation to Planned Parenthood the Chronicle of Philanthropy has declared Mike Bloomberg the fifth most generous person in all the land. According to their count hizzoner gave $311,276,000 away last year! more ›

Police have charged a suspect in the fatal beating of a 59-year-old Bronx father who was mugged for $15. Devon Downs, 29, was charged with second-degree murder and robbery in the death of former cab driver Bimal Chanda last fall. An accomplice who also joined in on beating Chanda with a metal object has not been caught yet. “The family is really happy to hear about the arrest, they never thought this day would come,” said Chanda family friend and spokesman Mohammed Ali. “Detectives told us it was a really hard case and that it was hard to identify the suspects.” more ›

This is some real Antiques Roadshow stuff here. The NY Times reports that a needlework sampler crafted by a New Jersey schoolgirl named Mary Antrim in 1807 has sold at auction for $1.07 million dollars. The piece sold at Sotheby's in New York on Sunday, and features a farm scene on linen... it was estimated to go for a mere $120,000. So why did it go for so much more than that? more ›

According to the Wall Street Journal, Occupy Wall Street is down to their last $170,000 after raising more than $700,000 this fall. "If we keep spending at the rate at which we've been doing, we will probably go broke in a month," a member of the accounting group tells the paper. Where did all the money go? Housing, feeding, and clothing lots of people. On Saturday, the movement voted to freeze all spending except for bare necessities: housing, food, and clothing. more ›

We've been off the cable television for quite some time (all you need is a Roku box, people), so it's with great relief that we read that we're saving so much money by having kicked the habit. 20 Something Finance broke down the numbers recently, discovering how much a cable subscription costs each household in an average lifetime, and what one could make by investing that money instead. more ›

Some criminals did not get their Christmas present this year. Last week Customs and Border Protection say they found nearly $300,000 in counterfeit $100 dollar bills in the bag of a woman flying into JFK from Medellin, Colombia. Sadly, the stash wasn't found by the TSA—because we'd love to have seen the note they might have left with all that fake moolah. more ›

See, New York State and Illinois were curious whether they could offer online gaming, and sought clarity on the "Wire Act of 1961, which prohibits wagering over telecommunications systems that cross state or national borders"—specifically, whether the act "prevented those states from using the Internet to sell lottery tickets to adults within their own borders." The Justice Department decision has now "opened the door for states to allow Internet poker and other forms of online betting that do not involve sports. Many states are interested in online gambling as a way to raise tax revenue." more ›

Today, the NY Times delved into the world of a mystical rabbi, his celebrity followers, high-power publicists, and, not least of all, the rabbi's charity's missing millions as it reported on Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto: "The rabbi’s close followers are disclosing what they say is the source of many of his troubles. They said they told federal investigators that the rabbi had been the victim of a bizarre embezzlement and extortion plot that was carried out by two former members of his inner circle, who stole his congregation’s money and tried to frame him." more ›

If you're a connoisseur of funny things you may already know that NYC's own Louis C.K. has a new comedy special out featuring his performances at the Beacon Theater last month. It's on his website for $5, and his thinking is akin to Radiohead's In Rainbows experiment: will people pay for something if they can steal it? Apparently if it's good enough, yes. The comedian tells David Carr that on Thursday night, 175,000 people bought the special, and he was expecting 200,000 total after the weekend. Minus production costs, "That's a $750,000 profit. And he owns the rights, and the long tail of buyers, in perpetuity." Not bad for the recipient of the America's Saddest Handjob. more ›

Though they were unsuccessful in their pursuit of slugger Albert Pujols, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim today, the Miami Marlins have plenty to be happy about this offseason; yesterday they introduced the keystone of the new team, their $106 million star Jose Reyes. Reyes told reporters that the Marlins really made him feel wanted—they even arranged a midnight meeting the night he became a free agent. Reyes sounded particularly disappointed that the Mets made almost no effort to keep him in town, which general manager Sandy Alderson later addressed: “If you’re asking whether I should have sent him a box of chocolates, perhaps I should have done that. But on the other hand, the box of chocolates would have cost $106 million.” more ›