Obama Is Sworn In as the 44th President [NYT]
Obama raises hand, lifts a nation [CNN]
It's President Obama [MSNBC]

• The 7,000-square-foot penthouse duplex at 1020 Fifth Avenue that's been on and off the market in recent years and was most recently priced at $46.5 million, has undergone a price cut. The five-bedroom spread, owned by heirs to the Kress retail fortune, is now listed at $39 million. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• Wesley Vultaggio, who works at AriZona, the beverage company his father co-founded, has paid $6 million for a apartment at 47 Mercer Street. [Cityfile]
• Umberto Arpaia, the chef/owner of Cellini in Midtown and brother of fellow restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, paid $4.85 million for an 18-foot-wide townhouse at 242 East 68th Street. [Cityfile]

• Fiat will take a 35 percent stake in struggling Chrysler. [WSJ]
• Steve Feinberg's Cerberus Capital Management will cut 10 percent of its staff around the world. [WSJ]
• American Express's Ken Chenault plans to sell the company's stake in Chinese bank Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. [NYP]
• Bank of America may need as much as $80 billion to stay afloat. [BN]
• The hunt is still on for Arthur Nadel, the hedge fund manager from Florida who may have made off with as much as $350 million. [DB, NYP]
• Notwithstanding the bailout, top execs on Wall Street have been some of the biggest donors to the Presidential Inauguration Committee. [NYT]

What has Diane von Furstenberg been up to since she arrived in Washington over the weekend to attend the inauguration? Allow her to fill you in. [DVF]

Barack isn't the only one with a reason to celebrate today. Georgina Bloomberg, the daughter of New York's mayor, turns 26. Real estate developer Kent Swig is 48. Newsweek editor and CNN fixture Fareed Zakaria is turning 45. Famed cardiologist Valentin Fuster is 66. The Office's Rainn Wilson is turning 43. Bill Maher is 53. Director David Lynch is 63. James Denton is turning 46. Lorenzo Lamas is 51. Buzz Aldrin is turning 79. And Melissa Rivers, the daughter of Joan Rivers, is 41 today.

• Giuseppe Cipriani hasn't been seen in New York for months, but he says that has nothing to do with the handful of investigations now underway, or because he's banned from the US. He's just "busy" and says he'll return to New York "soon." His son Ignazio has been busy, too. The 20-year-old has been charged with third-degree assault for beating up a limo driver outside 1OAK back in December. [NYP, R&M]
• The latest man to fall into Paris Hilton's clutches: She was was spotted at Sundance making out with MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe. [P6, NYDN]
• Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton, may be planning to move to New York to take a job in fashion, thanks to advice she received from Tom Ford and Anna Wintour. [Daily Express]
• Maureen Dowd threw a big party on Sunday eve to honor of David Geffen. In attendance: Tom Hanks, Jeff Zucker, David Katzenberg, Ron Howard, and George Stephanopoulos, who knocked over a tray of martinis and left the party red-faced. [P6]

We're off for the holiday and will return on Tuesday. If you'd like to contact us in the meantime, you can email tips@cityfile.com.

You're going to be shocked to hear this, but it turns out lots of Wall Streeters are looking to sell their lavish, eight-figure homes, a process that isn't quite so easy given the state of the economy. Today's Wall Street Journal has details on a collection of former high-flyers at Lehman and AIG who are now (desperately) looking for offers. But not everyone is moving out because they're suffering! It's unlikely any one in New York is making more money right now than John Paulson, the hedge fund mogul who bet against the housing market and won big. (He'll probably continue to rake it in: Just today he announced plans to launch a new distressed investment fund.) Just in case you're still sitting pretty—or you're playing the lottery this weekend and you're an optimist by nature—you'll find details on four of the homes after the jump.

Your favorite Greek-American, politically ambitious supermarket billionaire has come up with a new name for the souped-up Gristedes that he wanted to call Trader John's, an idea that Trader Joe's didn't find very amusing. John Catsimatidis is calling his new outlet Grocer John's and he'd like you to know it represents "the new wave of marketing in New York." He'd also like you to be aware that two pounds of golden ripe bananas will run you a buck. [Racked, previously]

• Kate Moss will celebrate her 35th birthday this weekend with a "four-day marathon of excess." The sight of a bunch of models standing around a giant pig on a spit at a hog roast? Priceless! [DM]
• She's no Michelle, but Oscar will be dressing Hillary for the inauguration. [People]
• Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang, and Calvin Klein Inc. have all cancelled their Fashion Week postshow parties, alas. [WWD]
• Following in the footsteps of Saks, Lord & Taylor is now laying off staff, too. [Fashionista]
• L'eau de Brooklyn will debut in March. [BS]
• Alexander McQueen and Puma are teaming up on a new line. [Pipeline]
• Goodbye, Bush: Celebrate Bush's exit with a discounted bikini wax. [Racked]

We've all wondered what drove Bernie Madoff to (allegedly) commit his crimes. Was he an obsessive-compulsive narcissist? Just greedy? One factor we didn't consider: genetics. Fortune reports this afternoon that Bernie wasn't the first member of his family to run afoul with the authorities. A broker-deal registered to Bernie's mother, Sylvia Madoff, was shuttered by the SEC more than 40 years ago for failing to file financial records with the agency. Strangely, acquaintances of the family don't recall Mrs. Madoff working as a broker, which would have been highly unusual for a woman at the time, and the firm, Gibraltar Securities, used the Madoff family house in Queens as its mailing address. (Fortune suggests the firm was used as a front by Bernie's father, Ralph.) Unless Bernie or his brother address the matter, it's unlikely we'll ever find out since both Sylvia and Ralph Madoff died in the 1970s. But for prosecutors scouring the globe for Madoff's illicit gains, perhaps it's just the clue they've been looking for! The tiny British colony of Gibraltar is one of the world's most notorious tax havens. [Fortune]

• Add Bobby Flay to the list of chefs being sued by their waiters. [GS]
• The death toll mounts: A list of restaurants that closed this week. [Eater]
• Oh, the lengths restaurants will go to catch a critic in their midst. [GS]
• Not surprisingly, JGV is a fan of Co., which he invested in recently. [JGV]
• Got $395 to burn? Aquavit has a five-course menu for you next week. [Zagat]
• One good thing about the recession: We thought we'd never have to read another article about eating gold ever again. And yet we were wrong. [WSJ]

You may want to think twice before you go home with the guy who takes you out for dinner tonight. A group of researchers say their new "mathematical model" proves that "more reliable men" are willing to wait longer before having sex for the first time. [Telegraph]

Get ready to see nine months of fab, phat maternity wear: Kimora Lee Simmons and boyfriend Djimon Hounsou say they're having a baby. Kimora reportedly spilled the beans to her employees last week. No word on whether it's a boy or a girl, or if they've come up with a name yet. Clearly they'll have some work to do to find a name that goes along with Kimora, Djimon, Ming, and Aoki. [E!]

"Having a hard time meeting that big mortgage payment for the oversized place you probably shouldn't have borrowed to pay for? Well, relief might be in the cards. That is if you're willing to have a porno shot in your home." [Dealbreaker]

• How do you keep your magazine afloat? Put ads on the cover! [NYT]
• NBC is renewing 30 Rock, The Office, and The Biggest Loser. [AP]
• Music sales fell by about 7 percent last year. [NYT]
• The head of Hearst Magazines International is retiring. [NYP]
• Clear Channel is cutting $400 million in costs. [NYP]
• The Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for bankruptcy. [AP]
• Donny Deutsch's ad agency is laying off staffers. [AgencySpy]

Citigroup reported $18 billion in losses 2008, has fired some 60,000 employees in recent months, and is currently in the process of dismantling the financial services giant. Earlier this week, the bank announced plans to sell a majority stake in Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley. Today, it revealed plans to divide the bank into two pieces. One person on the sidelines watching his legacy unravel: Sandy Weill, Citigroup's former chairman and chief executive, who built Citi into a sprawling empire based on the belief that "financial supermarkets" represented the future of banking. Except Weill is not on the sidelines, exactly. As Citigroup has unraveled these past few months and hovered on the brink of collapse, Weill has been watching the carnage unfold from one of the most spectacular offices in New York. Offices that Citigroup continues to pay for.

Whoopi Goldberg served as emcee at the National Board of Review's annual awards ceremony at Cipriani 42nd Street on Wednesday night. Attendees at the Bulgari-sponsored event included Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber (left), Clint and Dina Eastwood, Ed Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Salma Hayek, Anne Hathaway, Julian Schnabel, Diane Lane and Josh Brolin, Sir Howard Stringer, John Patrick Shanley, Eva Amurri, Tim Robbins, Joy and Regis Philbin, Meredith Vieira, Heather Graham, Amy Adams, Debbie Bancroft, Veronica Webb, Bethenny Frankel, CNN's Alina Cho, Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel, director Danny Boyle, along with a smattering of Bulgaris, including Ilaria, Veronica, Nicola, Natalia, and Beatrice. [PMc, Wireimage, The Daily]

If you were thinking that the stress of the economic meltdown isn't talking a toll on financial news reporters, well, it is. This morning CNBC's Charlie Gasparino got into a little on-air tiff with colleague Dennis Kneale. Skip ahead 35 seconds or so to see Gasparino tell Kneale he isn't a real reporter and Kneale respond by telling Gasparino he's damaging the CNBC brand. Gasparino, of course, is doing no such thing. That's what Jim Cramer is there to do!

VitaminWater, the drinks with names like "defense," "energy," and "endurance" that Alicia Keys is currently getting $25 million to promote, is basically just sugar and water, according to a nutrition advocacy group bringing a class-action lawsuit against the brand's owner CocaCola. (The "inventor" of VitaminWater, J. Darius Bikoff, sold it to Coke in 2007 for $4 billion.) Consumers are being outrageously misled by the "nonsense" claim that VitaminWater is good for your health, says the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, pointing out that one bottle contains around 33 grams of sugar. "I had no idea," laments lead plaintiff James Koh, "that I was actually getting almost a Coke's worth of sugar and calories." Somewhere, recent spokesmodel Jennifer Aniston is dying of shock while speed dialing her personal trainer.